So we don't own the games because they're downloaded but now, on top of that, we don't even get to own the hardware
I'd argue we haven't owned most of our games or even our hardware for years. Any game or console with a mandatory online component (that's almost everything right now) isn't really
yours. You're already beholden to the publisher/platform to keep their servers alive, and that's not always going to be the case.
The point I'm trying to make is that people are mostly OK with (or at least begrudgingly accepting of) not
really owning their XBone/PS4 games. The fact that they won't own any games on this google service won't be what makes or breaks it. The fact that they won't own the hardware is more than offset in most peoples minds by the fact that they don't have to
buy the hardware in the first place.
The
only thing that's going to matter is whether or not they've solved the latency issue with streaming games. The speed of light is a constant, so the only way to truly bring down latency is to have your compute hardware in close physical proximity to your display hardware. Google has the capability and resources to put hardware in enough localities to
potentially make it work in most places. Of the few companies logistically capable of pulling off a decent game streaming service, google is one of them. Whether or not they actually throw enough local hardware at the problem to make it happen remains to be seen. The
ars article has a quote from the keynote where google claims they will have gaming hardware deployed at "7,500 edge nodes closer to players to provide better performance", so maybe they'll get it right this time.
), and replaced gmail with protonmail. I don't plan to add any google service now.
