Sources: Google Is Planning A Game Platform That Could Take On Xbox And PlayStation

DooKey

DooKey

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Several months back we talked about Google and their possible entry into the gaming market. The rumors are still persisting and Kotaku is claiming they have sources that say the rumors are true. If their sources are correct it's going to be a three-pronged approach beginning with a streaming platform, unknown hardware, and aggressive recruiting of developers. Where there's smoke there's fire and the smoke it building up more and more. We'll keep on eye on this one for a while because it would be nice to see Microsoft and Sony get some console competition.

Google also took meetings at E3 in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, those sources said, and from what we’ve heard, the company is looking not just to woo game developers to the Yeti service but to buy development studios entirely. (Google did not respond to a request for comment.)
 
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RogueTadhg said:
No mention of Nintendo?
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Nintendo is not their competition. Nintendo is on their own little planet. I can see Google releasing a console but honestly the market is too saturated for a 4th player. They would have to throw a lot of money at it buying exclusive games. Otherwise it will fail.
 
Tough market to get into these days but I guess everyone wants a slice of the pie. Not really sure what Google can bring that's interesting are unique, maybe a first rate streaming service? Maybe something like the Shield? Android/ChromeOS console? All of the above?
 
Regardless of my soapbox opinions on game streaming (especially over the internet), its clear the market is heading that way and makes sense Google is now joining that demand. Amazon has the Lumberyard engine and im willing to bet, Google is developing its own equivalent engine that runs on Google Cloud. Then its just a matter of coming out with there own boxes to connect to the consumers TV.
 
vegeta535 said:
Nintendo is not their competition. Nintendo is on their own little planet. I can see Google releasing a console but honestly the market is too saturated for a 4th player. They would have to throw a lot of money at it buying exclusive games. Otherwise it will fail.
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Yup, the market IS too saturated for 4 players...which means MS is probably going to get kicked out of the game. The industry needs a truly disruptive influence here, and I am hoping Google brings their "A" game. It will push the others to do better.
 
Just like Apple did? Or did we already forget that. If anything they are making a game streaming service for their Android TVs. They would be starting from scratch if they made a true console: no game companies, no partnerships with major third parties, and no consumer interest in their non-existent gaming brand. The only reason to do this would be to stick their thumb in Microsoft's eye, and they have the money to do it, but it would be such a distraction for them that I just don't see it.
 
As long as their games can be co developed for pc I'm cool with this. However, further fragmentation would seemingly lead to titles being watered down so they can be compatible with every console.
 
heatlesssun said:
Not really sure what Google can bring that's interesting are unique, maybe a first rate streaming service?
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If they manage to bring a firstparty exclusive or two then that's already more than Microsoft.

However I wouldnt mind a gaming focused Google OS for x86 with Nvidia/AMD drivers, that fully realizes the SteamOS concept that Valve lost interest in.
 
oldmanbal said:
As long as their games can be co developed for pc I'm cool with this. However, further fragmentation would seemingly lead to titles being watered down so they can be compatible with every console.
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Google’s plan appears to be there is no traditional console, just a streaming box. Then everything gets rendered in the cloud by PCs.
 
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vegeta535 said:
Nintendo is not their competition. Nintendo is on their own little planet. I can see Google releasing a console but honestly the market is too saturated for a 4th player. They would have to throw a lot of money at it buying exclusive games. Otherwise it will fail.
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I think google has a better chance to go against nintendo than go after sony and MS. At least hardware wise.
 
Chieftan is on the hunt. Armed with crossbow approaching the house by stealth. Silence...

Suddenly....

"Hey Google, change my weapon to shotgun!.... uh.... where did he go?"
 
heatlesssun said:
Tough market to get into these days but I guess everyone wants a slice of the pie. Not really sure what Google can bring that's interesting are unique, maybe a first rate streaming service? Maybe something like the Shield? Android/ChromeOS console? All of the above?
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I dunno, my brother picked up one of those switches and that is a pretty cool concept. I could see them doing something like that where you have full access to the play store as well as downloadable games. I think it would be a hit with college students at least. Portable gaming machine with MS Office access and all the android apps.
 
I don't think people are really looking at this one in the proper light.

I doubt Google is planning a console.

A streaming platform of course they are. They are already selling the devices... people have been buying them for a few years.

ChromeOS is about to get real gaming. Any offline gaming mode on higher end Chrome models will simply be viewed as an in between space by Google. Streaming is the future.

Complaining about latency and other gameophile things isn't going to stop the future. The future is average gamers buying pretty basic laptops or set top boxes that do everything they need including high end gaming. People are already using ChromeOS, the always on computer isn't as crazy an idea for most people as it was 5 years ago.

Googles hardware is already out there... all they need to do is provide the service and design a kick ass Google branded Bluetooth game controller.
 
Ocellaris said:
Google’s plan appears to be there is no traditional console, just a streaming box. Then everything gets rendered in the cloud by PCs.
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And this is a very interesting development if you think about it. While this wouldn't work for every game, I could see it working for a certain genres very well. The HW utliziation per person gets much better as well. However, for people with shit high ping connection...dunno about them. :)
 
heatlesssun said:
Maybe Google will get into what Asus did with RoG gaming phones.
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I think it would be interesting if what they did was make a box that streamed the games, but also, where you could dock your Android phone to it to play games that are on your phone on the big screen, and then when you leave.. continue playing the game on your phone on the go. Come home again. Dock your phone and continue right where you left off, but playing on your TV with controllers.

they already have the whole google play ecosystem, no need to re-invent the wheel really.

could be an interesting concept
 
I hope it's not a streaming only solution. Maybe for some games. But it doesn't make sense to me. We have freesync and gsync. We have 144hz displays. Lots of VR latency optimizations, etc. NVidia and AMD are doing all they can to reduce frame times, reduce input lag, reduce frame variance, etc. And we're going to throw all that away and add 40-100ms of RTT latency? And probably end up playing in 720p or 1080p for bandwidth reasons. Maybe 60 fps if we're lucky. I could certainly play a single player rpg, hearthstone, candy crush, and similar games that way. But an FPS, racing game, RTS, etc I'd pass.

I don't think they can engineer around the latency and bandwidth issues. Video codecs are most efficient with high latency. That's how they work. Less keyframes, more dependency on previous (or future frames) = better bitrates but higher latency. It just means it'll require more bandwidth than netflix or youtube to stream an interactive video game vs watch a video at the same quality level.
 
andrewaggb said:
I hope it's not a streaming only solution. Maybe for some games. But it doesn't make sense to me. We have freesync and gsync. We have 144hz displays. Lots of VR latency optimizations, etc. NVidia and AMD are doing all they can to reduce frame times, reduce input lag, reduce frame variance, etc. And we're going to throw all that away and add 40-100ms of RTT latency? And probably end up playing in 720p or 1080p for bandwidth reasons. Maybe 60 fps if we're lucky. I could certainly play a single player rpg, hearthstone, candy crush, and similar games that way. But an FPS, racing game, RTS, etc I'd pass.

I don't think they can engineer around the latency and bandwidth issues. Video codecs are most efficient with high latency. That's how they work. Less keyframes, more dependency on previous (or future frames) = better bitrates but higher latency. It just means it'll require more bandwidth than netflix or youtube to stream an interactive video game vs watch a video at the same quality level.
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If GeforceNow on the shield is any indication, I´d say its OK for slow paced single player games. The arkam series for example, look and feel pretty good. No noticeable latency problems. But while I can play SFIV, its more prone to latency. Some moves and combos are pretty much impossible to do. The timing doesnt´t feel right.

Multiplayer games would only get worse.

I do like GeforceNow (since its free for now). Its much better than I expected. But I don`t think it could replace a console, much less my GTX1070Ti PC.
 
Seeing how Google works, they will have 3 separate teams come out with 3 separate gaming consoles to compete with Nintendo, Xbox and PS4. They will sell millions of beta prototypes of each model then 3 years down the line they will remove the videogame functionality turning them into media players. One will only play music, one will only play tv shows, and the third will only play movies.

Then they will kill off the program.
 
I've got $5 that says it turns out to be an Ouya 2.0. It will be some little stupid gimmicky device that only plays app store games. It will die off in 6 months when Google like Ouya can't figure out why no one wants to pay top dollar to play bullshit apps on their TV.
 
Sounds like a box of google hot air to me or is that steam in the box?
 
I wouldn't mind playing around with an Ouya type device with a Snapdragon 845 running full bore. Something like the Snapdragon 845 in the ROG phone that runs at 2.96Ghz, except with an efficient heatsink and a quite fan so that it can stay at near 3Ghz.
 
Game streaming? Sure, but Google has their fingers in a lot of pies, and this would be a way to tie them together.

What does your average person use a PC for? Could your average person get by with a Chrome PC? My thought is, "Yes."

People have been reluctant to buy into the Chrome OS because they aren't sure if it fulfills all the needs they have for a PC. Google's offering for a PC ecosystem is solid, buy they haven't pried open the market like they have with browsers and cellphones. So if you build a console that's situated in the living room, that can check email, stream games, stream videos, run Googles office apps, browse the internet, print ... How much more does your average person need? If everything is stored on the cloud and your OS and applications are vetted by the cloud, how much risk do you have? Using a game console as a backdoor to getting people to try your entire PC ecosystem is drastic, but Google has the bucks, and they'd only need a few good titles to get it started.

It'd be great for the dorm room.
 
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SomeoneElse said:
Either that or it will run the Android platform and just use the current Google play store as their platform just market as a console. Riddled with Ads and F2P games....
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You say that, but a powerful Android console isn't a bad idea. Just order a big SoC from AMD like Sony/MS, require Vulkan, create a separate section just for the console on the Play Store, and they'd gain plenty of traction from Android's inertia.

painintheworld said:
I wouldn't mind playing around with an Ouya type device with a Snapdragon 845 running full bore. Something like the Snapdragon 845 in the ROG phone that runs at 2.96Ghz, except with an efficient heatsink and a quite fan so that it can stay at near 3Ghz.
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Eh, that's still not very fast.

If Google actually wants to run games locally (which they probably won't, streaming makes so much more sense since they own servers everywhere to keep latency down, and have streaming experience with YT), I think they'd need an SoC not originally designed to fit in a phone.

Now, what they could do is use a beefy mobile SoC for some local interpolation. Kinda like Occulus's asynchronous spacewarp tech.
 
Stoly said:
I think google has a better chance to go against nintendo than go after sony and MS. At least hardware wise.
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They would completely fail going up against Nintendo. They lack the very important thing Nintendo has. Their IPs.
 
brucethemoose said:
You say that, but a powerful Android console isn't a bad idea. Just order a big SoC from AMD like Sony/MS, require Vulkan, create a separate section just for the console on the Play Store, and they'd gain plenty of traction from Android's inertia.
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Only problem with this that I have is None of these mobile App games are AAA title worthy IMO. Mobile is mobile its not hardcore gamer quality games. If google wants to become viable they need to step up games that are going to compete with the God of War/Halo level games ( exclusives to the platform) to become a force. They have tons of devs but for mobile apps its not the same a full fledged game. I honestly see them sticking close to the F2P level games where they want to microtransaction the living crap out of you if they stick with the Android platform for this.
 
Ocellaris said:
Google’s plan appears to be there is no traditional console, just a streaming box. Then everything gets rendered in the cloud by PCs.
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I have a tv that does that :), with usb ports that could be used for controllers.
 
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