Yesterday Google announced Stadia, their cloud gaming project. The interesting parts of the announcement are…
- Play now on youtube
I love the transition from watching to playing, 5 seconds and I’m sure with time it will drop down to even less. - Play on any device and completely cross platform
Really taking complete advantage of streaming and google’s massive cloud infrastructure. - Record play state to the youtube
Completing the circle, by sharing your state (not video) back to youtube, maybe even allowing others to play again with… This makes total sense because youtube is where they can start to show adverts too; although because its all generated it would be easy to advertise in the game its self. - Share play state
As mentioned above, you are not playing a video, but the game again complete with its world state, player position and player inventory.
I think its quite a compelling idea and like everyone else, are interested in how much, how easy its to build for and will google get bored and kill it? I’m less interested in the exclusive games, game pad, etc but acknowledge it will live or die by the games.
I do think theres some incredible possibilities for other types of media especially interactive digital narratives. It certainly could blow netflix’s interactive platform out the water. Said quite a few times, I find netflix’s interactive platform is horrible when you think, theres better more engaging experiences on the console attached to the same TV or even on the mobile you are using to drive it. With Stadia, its all the same thing.
