Voost Kain
Banned
Google will reveal details about its unannounced gaming project at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next month, according to an invitation sent by the tech giant Tuesday. The company will hold a keynote presentation on March 19, at 10 a.m. PT, where it’s expected to reveal details about a new endeavor focused on video games.
Official details are scant. Google’s invite only included the tagline “Gather around” and an image of what appeared to be a darkened hallway leading toward a lighted exit.
Google is reported to be working on a “a subscription-based game streaming service that could work either on Google’s Chromecast or possibly a Google-made console,” according to a report from The Information. That project is reportedly codenamed “Yeti.” A follow-up report from Kotaku indicated that Google was pursuing a streaming service paired with hardware, and an “aggressive” effort to acquire or attract game developers to Google’s platform.
In October 2018, Google unveiled Project Stream, technology that enabled high-quality streaming of games through the company’s Chrome browser. Google partnered with publisher Ubisoft to make Assassin’s Creed Odyssey playable over the internet. We called Project Stream’s performance “surprisingly great” during our hands-on testing with the beta.
GDC 2019 will run from March 18-22.
It's an interesting idea, but I think you need to build a gaming ecosystem like Xbox and PS first, otherwise all you're doing with this Yeti console/streambox is offering the same games in a games on demand interface. I'm sure they'll try to get some exclusives but we already have the two main console makers also aiming for streaming, and you have Steam and the epic store now. I don't see anyway that Google can actually break in.
Not to mention in googles case it would be streaming "only" or at least that's what I gathered based on other articles talking about that project, so that's not going to be as popular as they think it'll be. Unless there's an option to download games to the "console" for offline play (which would still require good internet).
We'll see how they present this idea at GDC, maybe they have a more ambitious plan then we think.