Ubisoft CEO Says Porting to Stadia is Pretty Cheap

People aren’t talking about Google Stadia as much as they were when it was first announced, but it’s still on people’s minds. We’ve gotten a lot of pretty words and sweet reassurance from the Google hive-mind since it was first revealed about how it’ll work and how much it’ll cost, but until it’s in the hands of the public itself we won’t know how much of that is true… and what impact this new system will have on gaming as a whole.

But even now, developers are planning around it: such as Ubisoft, who’s CEO, Yves Guillemot, recently assured his investors that despite being a confusing and slightly intimidating system, porting their library of games to the Google Stadia was not going to be a terribly risky venture: in fact, for the benefits it could provide them, it seems the cost is nearly negligible.
 

"The extra cost to put to make sure the games work well on Stadia is not that high. It's part now of our pipelines and we have a good relationship with Stadia to make sure it is profitable for us."

There’s a few reasons why this could be true. First, while porting a game to Stadia isn’t exactly the same as a straight-PC port, it’s still a lot closer than any of the more traditional consoles. Plus, since all the Stadia’s run at the same power, they don’t have to worry about testing for different strength systems.

On top of that, Ubisoft has the distinct advantage of being one of the Stadia’s earliest adopters, and even had one of their games, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, prototyped with it. Maybe that insider knowledge gives Ubisoft an edge that other studios won’t enjoy, but if that were the case than any unusually high porting costs would have to be temporary across the board.

We might not know for sure, but it’s interesting to speculate.