Google has finally given us a teaser of what its vision of gaming is ahead of their GDC conference. After the recent tests with Project Stream and the poor reception of its controller patent, Google has confirmed that it’s working on something in games. Now what that is, we don’t really know yet, as the corporate giant have only released an ambiguous teaser trailer with it stating that it’s about to unveil their vision of the future of gaming.
Speculation has it that Google will focus mainly on streaming, like the Nvidia Shield, rather than traditional gaming hardware like the PS4 and Xbox One. The main reason for this is due to them being hot off the heels of its recent test of Project Stream, which used Assassin’s Creed Odyssey as a way of gauging interest in its streaming service, with the promise of a free copy for those who participated. Project Stream allows users to stream games at 1080p/60fps, if they have the bandwidth to boot. Google also recently filed a patent for a new controller mockup, though it wasn’t very well received.
There hasn’t been a real competitor to the big three since the dawn of the millennium, after Sega discontinued the Dreamcast back in 2001 and turned into a third-party developer, and Google seems like it could provide fierce competition, if it knows what it’s doing. It’s hard to launch a new console in an age where Playstation and Xbox reign supreme, but if Nintendo can rise from the ashes of the failure of what was the Wii U, who can really predict how well Google’s latest venture is going to be received? We’re just going to have to wait until the March 19 to figure out if the future of gaming is going to really rely on streaming or bust.
