Google really ought to double down on NVIDIA instead of competing with them.
hmm. to replace Nexus player and replace (compete) with Shield TV?
I feel like Game Streaming MIGHT be the future, but hardly anytime soon...
With many ISP throttling speed and putting data caps, this would be a pain in the ass in many many countries.
You would need to change A LOT of how the world works for this to be viable
As someone who actually use a game streaming platform today, have a good internet connection with no caps and only an old gaming PC with crappy specs, I'm intrigued to see what Google comes up with. Before choosing the one I did, I considered seeing up a Google cloud pc on my own but it would cost a bit more, so I decided against it in the end and went with an existing service instead.
Cloud gaming is good these days, but it's still up and coming and there is plenty of room for improvements.
I just hope that I get to install my own games and steam them. Have close to 450 games on steam alone... Didn't go with Nvidia due to them not letting me use my own library.
Game streaming can't work unless we actually get fiber to the home in every house. Otherwise the latency makes it unenjoyable.
The Shield TV has a mediocre CPU but powerful CPU.
If OpenCL were better implemented on Android it would extend the life of the ShieldTV significantly.
If Google is going to compete with NVIDIA, I hope they do a few things:
On the one hand, having more than three options (Nexus Player [defunct], Mibox, Shield TV) will be fantastic; on the other hand, NVIDIA has almost singlehandedly kept Android TV alive. That is no small feat, and Google needs to learn from them and work with them as partners.
I see this as a good thing. Maybe this will push nvidia to improve and update the current geforce now service.
Game streaming is a risky business. Others tried it and closed shop and Sony has it currently and it doesn't seem too popular. I expect it to be defunct by PS5.
Microsoft is the last company to enter home gaming to do it right. And they recently hit a road block with Xbone's always online to play (among other issues) that forced a u-turn.
Google needs to step back and research the gaming industry first. Learn from the many failures and the few successes.
Then again it is Google. Most of everything they do is for shits and giggles and will be closed down within a short time. They make money solely from ads and information. Gaming won't give them more info than they already have.