Industry veteran Phil Harrison joins Google

Games industry veteran Phil Harrison is joining Google, taking up the role of vice president and general manager at the monolithic search giant’s California headquarters.

Harrison is best known for a 15 year tenure as head of Sony’s network of game studios, in addition to three years as a senior bod at Microsoft’s Xbox team.

Harrison revealed the new role with a tweet: “Excited to be able to share that today I’ve started a new role as Vice President and GM of Google – and relocating (back) to California."

Google hasn’t revealed the information itself, or the specific project that he’s working on, but considering Harrison is best known for managing large scale projects at game studios, it’s possible he’ll be working on a substantially sized project for Google, potentially in gaming.

Google isn’t known for its games prowess, but have a keen investment in mobile games with their Android platform as well as browser games which are played through the company’s search page. To celebrate Christmas, Google made a PUBG-inspired survival game that saw players come together to pelt each other with snowballs. The company hosted a Google Developer Day at GDC last year, and has also been keen to get VR games on Android-based VR platform Daydream, which launched in 2016.

Harrison’s role may be unclear for now, but if it’s games related, it’s worth considering GDC is right around the corner.