THE $200-BILLION video game industry has virtually been a duopoly of Sony and Microsoft, with the exception of a smaller and loyal following for Nintendo. All three follow the concept of console gaming—Sony has PlayStation, Microsoft has Xbox and Nintendo has had seven consoles, beside a few handhelds.
While there have been many attempts to free gaming from consoles, none has been as promising as Stadia, a gaming service Google announced last week. Google says it is “device agnostic”. You just need the controller, which connects to the Wi-Fi to access Google's data centre and lets you play the game on any screen, be it your television, computer, mobile phone or tablet. You don't even have to resync the controller every time you change the screen, because the controller directly connects to the data centre. As you run the game on the servers, it is bye-bye to annoying downloads and updates.
Cloud gaming is a concept many have tried and failed at in the past. Well, Sony, Microsoft, Amazon, Nintendo and EA are still working on it; and Microsoft's xCloud is at an advanced stage. But they are all hamstrung by technical uncertainties. Running games on a server at a remote location without latency or lag is very tough, even for tech giants like Google or Microsoft. Even if they are equipped to do it, internet speeds wildly vary around the world, and cloud gaming is a non-starter in many geographical areas.