Like Tom Brown and many other voices here Im lukewarm on Googles Stadia – and any streaming service. Part of this is me being too tied to old-fashioned gaming (Ive always eschewed even mobile) and the tangible nature of hardware under the TV. But another part of it is that Im not sure this is really going to catch the publics imagination.
The most popular gaming system in the last few years has been the Nintendo Switch, especially in Japan. Consoles that allow you to play anywhere, machines that get people gathering round the same TV, intriguing phenomenon like Pokémon GO that get you out of the house. That is, specific hardware and tangibility. The Stadia looks to have already boxed itself into a lack of innovation – doomed to be constantly updated in hardware specs but never to turn any heads.
My opinion is that gaming hardware is moving into on-the-move, flexible, secure experiences. I want to take my machine out on a flight and play straight away. I dont want to log in, log on, connect or update. I dont want to worry about the speed of a busy cafes shared signal. I know I can take my Wii U and PlayStation 4 halfway across the world to China, where I live (and which has a sovereign internet where lots of stuff outside the country is blocked and trying to access anything in the country from outside is very slow) and definitely play the games I have stored on my machine.
This leads me to the second reason I dont think itll take off quite yet, which is much more pertinent: internet speeds. I dont know about anyone else back in the UK but my YouTube still sometimes pauses when loading a 480p video, my Wi-Fi signal is weak downstairs and the UKs 4G mobile signal all but disappears in my low-lying Kent village. And we saw how petrified the core fanbase was when Xbox One was announced to require an always-on connection, and I dont think network reliability or stability has improved much since then.
