A new gamer in town? The Google Console?

So, the Google console. Sounds incredible. In theory.  As, according to a report from The Information, word on the street is that Google want to get in to the gaming industry. Yet, not in a way you would think either.

The giant tech company are looking at investing in a streaming service like Nvidia’s GeForce Now. (A service where your computer is merely a monitor and a keyboard. All the processing power is done remotely. All you need is a good internet connection) It’s codenamed “Yeti” and apparently Google have been hard at work on it for two years. There’s even hardware to go alongside the software allegedly. Most notably the product could tie in to Google’s Chromecast and nabbing Phili Harrison (ex-Microsoft/Sony Gaming division)  last month as a VP of hardware. Therefore could point in the direction of a hardware based product too.

So, there is no official word of it just yet and it’s all rumour at the moment. While cool and fun, it would be interesting to see if Google did go down the streaming route. But is gaming heading in this direction? All major gaming companies are sticking with regular old physical copies. Even downloadable copies are stored locally. However this begs the question. Is streaming even any good yet?

Google Console: Streaming Problems

Which brings us on to the internet. Lag. Lag is a killer. For most gamers, Lag is what infuriates them the most. So much so that it could be Google console’s biggest hurdle. Lag from what your seeing on screen. Lag from pressing a button to that relaying to the server and back to you again. Just regular old lag. Consequently those milliseconds could be the difference between life and death. Quite literally for the lifespan of this potential product. However, if Google can get it to almost instant (it will never be instant, just so small, we won’t even recognise it) then Google console may just be a hit. But this depends on the majority of gamer’s internet connections of course.