Single player games are apparently dead, so believes Phil Harrison.

According to a new report by 9to5Google, Google passed on a Stadia-exclusive follow-up to Death Stranding. It seems as though the main sticking point for the management at Stadia is the fact that this proposed game by Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions would be a strictly single player experience.

This is a slight departure from 2019's Death Stranding. That game is very much an asynchronous multiplayer game, despite how you seem to be playing "alone" throughout the story. The multiplayer aspect in Death Stranding stems from the fact that you are constantly seeing the impact other players have on the game world. You will see signs, roads, and other traversal aids appear in your world that other players placed and used in their world. Similarly, other players are able to see items and structures that you placed and used in your world appear in their world.

However, it seems as though this push to a strictly single-player experience is what led Stadia to ultimately cancel their collaboration with Kojima. Stadia believed that there just wasn't a market for single player titles. This came after the game had initially been given approval from Google and was in the earliest stages of development. Mockups of some of the early work were shown to Stadia around mid-2020, at which point Google cancelled the project entirely.

While having an exclusive game from Hideo Kojima would have undoubtedly helped Stadia see some measure of increased success, it still probably wouldn't have been enough. As we all know by now, Google Stadia shut down in January 2023.