According to sources at Kotaku, noted tech conglomerate of a thousand projects that end up going nowhere Google could very well be putting out a gaming platform of their own soon enough.
There aren’t any specifics, but the rough concept seems to outline both a piece of new hardware, as well as a focus on streaming to said hardware, potentially something ala OnLive or the recently teased EA Origin Premium. To this end, Google has started to meet with major game companies at events like E3 or the Game Developers Conference, as well as poaching top talent like Phil Harrison, who has worked at both Sony and Microsoft.
The project is apparently codenamed Yeti, and is pitched by the concept of doing something like “playing The Witcher 3 in a tab of your web browser.”
Sure that sounds great on paper, but the problem with all of this recent focus on game streaming is that it fails to evaluate the current environment of both gaming, and the world at large. Bandwidth caps and very little access to affordable high speed internet are constant problems throughout the world, especially outside of the United States. We’ve even been seeing services like PS Now, which was entirely streaming based, switch over to offering downloadable options to curb these sorts of issues.
We’ve even seen problems like the fall of Net Neutrality start to take hold across the United States, and unless Google is planning on actually expanding on their abandoned Google Fiber program, which is only available in a few cities as is, I find it hard to believe a service like this could actually make any money or gain a wide userbase.
We could very well learn more about this console/service in the coming months, or years, or potentially even never. Google has always had a history of abandoning projects (like the aforementioned Google Fiber), so I wouldn’t be too surprised if Yeti ends up staying as mythical as its namesake.
