My 2 cents on Google stepping into gaming

Hey Steemians! I hope that you are all doing great!

Recently, there has been many rumors about the giant tech company stepping into the gaming industry. It actually seems quite serious, based on the last E3. Let me tell you my 2 cents on that rumor. So let’s go ahead!

1- Context of the rumor

So during the last E3, it seems that google approached many gaming studios either trying to persuade them to develop games for their upcoming project or trying to basically buy some of them. The upcoming project of google is called “Yeti”, which envisions a cloud gaming environment without any need for an actual game console. Basically, with Yeti gamers won’t have to worry about their console or PC performance because everything from graphic powers, central processing or even high internet bandwidth would be taken care of by google computers and google cloud system. With a monthly premium, the user would basically have access to a catalog of games, just like in Netflix for movies. Gamers would be able to play games on smart TV, phones, tablets or PC, as long as they have access to a Google browser or Google App, which means better flexibility.

E3 exposition

2- Ubi Soft CEO announced the era of cloud gaming

Recently, the legendary Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot announced during an interview that cloud gaming will be the future of video gaming and it could happen very soon. He is not the first person who’s mentioned that before but he is definitely the first one to believe it would happen in a few years. Other people in the video game industry believed it would happen 15-20 years from now. Mr Guillemot believes that cloud gaming can bring better technical performances and also this could help the video game industry reach new audiences [3].

Legendary French entrepreneur Yves Guillemot

3- My views on the Yeti project

I think if Google does step into the video game industry, it will be a major changing factor for Sony, Microsoft and especially Nintendo. Google is worth many hundred billion dollars. On top of that, they recently hired Phil Harrison, a veteran video game executive who’s previously worked at Sony and Microsoft [1]. I think that probably Google will have the same strategy as Netflix to acquire game studios. Soon, studios will find that it is easier and more profitable to develop games and sell them if they belong to Google. That is how google will get very good studios. Also, google has shown that with projects such as google fiber it is possible for them to provide super fast internet bandwidth to its players [1][2]. And who knows, may be google Yeti console will provide more crossplatform play, just like what Nintendo and Microsoft are doing with Fortnite? If they do that for some of their games that will definitely improve their popularity.

4 - Nintendo, is trying to be as much flexible as possible

Nintendo is a very successful and legendary company. However, Sony and Microsoft are even more powerful since they are not only well established in the video game industry but also in the tech industry as a whole. Since the Game Cube era, it seems that Nintendo has given up console hardware performance to focus on the gameplay. This was a successful strategy for the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo Switch, and not so much for the Game Cube and the Wii U. Nintendo has realized that they need to be as flexible as possible to compete against the two tech giants (Sony and Microsoft). Hence, Nintendo produce more and more mobile games such as Pokemon Go or Super Mario Run. Let me remind you guys that mobile gaming has the highest share in the video game industry in terms of revenues. Nintendo is even preparing movies. I wonder if it is because they started to sense that more and more tech giants would step into the video game industry, like Google? If this is the case, there is no mistaken that Google is going to have a big impact into the video game industry. But I see Nintendo doing well in the future regardless, because they still have lots of money and licenses and can decide to stop making video games to become a studio/publisher as a whole.

Pokemon Go, a very famous Mobile game made in collaboration with Nintendo

Conclusion

I really wonder what is going to happen with the Yeti program. It is partly exciting but also personally a little scary to me. I really like console companies such as Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft and I fear that with other tech giants stepping into the game industry there won’t be much competition. But I could be wrong (and I hope to be wrong). What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments section below!

Thank you guys for reading my blog and I will see you tomorrow for a new post :)!

References

[1] https://kotaku.com/sources-google-is-planning-a-game-platform-that-could-1827217387

[2] https://fiber.google.com/about/

[3] https://uk.pcmag.com/nintendo-switch/95251/news/ubisoft-ceo-predicts-end-of-games-consoles

Pictures

Picture 1 was taken from https://goo.gl/Bd3zuP

Picture 2 was taken from https://goo.gl/jNLH8H

Picture 3 was taken from https://goo.gl/afdQTm

Picture 4 https://goo.gl/6fjy5k

juv79505 sincerely thank you for reading this article. Please feel free to comment below in case you have ideas, questions, suggestions or simply want to criticize this article. Also, note that all pictures used in this article were extracted from the google section “pictures labeled for commercial reuse”. Stay tuned for more articles on health, environment, artificial intelligence, video games, technology in general, books, graphic novels, geography, history, sports and much more!

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