Over the past few months, the wildest rumors in video game industry circles haven’t involved the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Two. The most interesting chatter has centered on a tech company that’s been quietly making moves to tackle video games in a big way: Google, the conglomerate that operates our email, our internet browsers, and much more.
We haven’t heard many specifics about Google’s video game plans, but what we have heard is that it’s a three-pronged approach: 1) Some sort of streaming platform, 2) some sort of hardware, and 3) an attempt to bring game developers under the Google umbrella, whether through aggressive recruiting or even major acquisitions. That’s the word from five people who have either been briefed on Google’s plans or heard about them secondhand.
Cracking the gaming market is hard. Over the past few decades, only two companies succeeded in entering the gaming market: first Sony, then Microsoft. Virtually all other attempts either flopped hard, or started lukewarm only to quickly peter out. Hence, I have a lot of reservations about Google’s supposed plans here, especially since they seem to involve streaming. Even streaming on my local LAN using PS4 Remote Play, while passable, is clearly not even remotely as good as the “real thing”.
We definitely need more concrete information.
Besides Microsoft and Sony, I think Valve certainly qualifies as a big player that has established itself in the gaming market. They didn’t do much with the Steam console, but they’re a big maker and platform/distributor.
Nah, they just made a more convenient distribution system for the existing market of PC gaming
If it’s an acquisition then it’s most likely going to be Valve.
They have Steam and they have SteamOS/Linux expertise. Whatever system that Google builds, it will most likely be a Linux based system.
Considering that Valve/Steam has a significant developer base, 2 prongs out of the 3 mentioned are fulfilled by these reasons.
Hey, what’s about Nintendo? They’re still alive!
Nevertheless the market entry of Google would certainly be terrible for all participants.
Nintendo will probably stick around for a long while. They know how to design and develop niche hardware interfaces with fun gaming consequences. Also, they produce HARDWARE.
They are older.
Nintendo also isn’t exactly targeting the same market that Sony and Microsoft are though. It’s a lot easier to sanely target the same audience as Sony and Microsoft, as you don’t have to deal as much with what each country’s culture suggests is appropriate content for children.
Google already track me in the real world and online. Do I now have to worry if I spend a lot of time in the Kanto region too…
I think this means they’ve cracked the streaming problem. Probably beefy local nodes on their fiber infrastructure and a new codec.
Edited 2018-06-30 12:47 UTC
I’ve used OnLive, and nvidia’s streaming service, and meh. It’ll never be mainstream, because the lag just to start, but also fidelity. But the real reason is in the US, the internet companies will almost certainly squash it, unless they get a cut.
Cheap in home hardware – like the Switch. That’s the future.
You are obviously not the target market.
You care about things!
The target market if people who do not, you know like console oweners.
Google should focus on next gen VR gaming and game AI. Nobody needs another high poly rate box tied to a TV for traditional games.
> We definitely need more concrete information.
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They’re going to need to get some developers onboard early to get good platform exclusive content if they want this to succeed. Most of the issue with the pop-up competitors is that they never really have any particularly amazing games that are exclusive to that platform. Without at least one killer-app (or occasionally killer feature), new systems die, period. Right now, they have to compete with things like Halo, Destiny, and Smash, which is going to be really tough (though they could go a long way by not charging people for the ability to play online with other people).
They also need to get developers of triple-A games onboard to support the platform. There’s a reason Nintendo isn’t popular with the stereotypical hard-core gamers, and it’s largely that their consoles are treated like second-class citizens by most of the triple-A developers (though this is arguably at least partially a result of Nintendo’s hardware choices and development requirements).
Now, realistically, whatever they come out with will be:
* Running either Android, Fuschia, or some new derivative of Gentoo Linux (ChromeOS and Brillo are both Gentoo under the hood).
* Probably running a 64-bit multi-core ARM chip, most likely with an AI co-processor, as Google is largely already developing primarily for ARM.
* Probably on a 3-year support cycle, just like Google’s phones (which would also put it in-line with most other consoles).
* Probably on a yearly development cycle (again, just like their phones), although this would likely be a very bad thing for the platform (developing for a moving target is hard).
* Most likely reasonably portable, but probably not a handheld (the handheld market is functionally dead other than Nintendo’s offerings, courtesy of smart phones, and Google is not likely to try and compete with one of its own primary markets).
* Almost certainly have VR support natively (I would not be surprised to see something similar to Microsoft’s HoloLens platform).
* If they’re really smart, have support for running Android games natively.