| Factors external to the product that could impact Stadia - Adoption will depend based on Internet speeds - Cable companies and their data caps could result in a demand for high speed and unlimited data but not sure whether the tyranny of Comcast can be broken. Maybe a new lease of life to Google fiber? Just own everything from network to server to platform Good things about Stadia besides no console, multiple devices - Sharing state, youtube shortcut to get you a walkthrough video from youtube is god sent, lobby feature is also epic Some really amazing things about this - People working on the engine or 'hidden' console do not need to care about packaging it in a sleek way or ensure it weighs less. E.g. the hidden console could be ugly, and occupy a lot for space - Google can build it in a way that is scale-able from a hardware perspective without worrying for form - just pure focus on function and performance - For consoles, the constraints are form, power consumed, heat management and yet they are required to deliver high performance - Add a VR device and unleash power of version 2 or 3 of the hidden console on it and you swallow the VR market as well -> Streaming VR games is the future Speculation of the future landscape of gaming (2030) if everything goes well for streaming based gaming - Microsoft and Google leverage their cloud infrastructure to capture significant chunk of the market - NVIDIA also enters the market but either exits or ends up having a very small % of the market, because existing server and cloud infrastructure will play a big role in determining the winner and no one can beat Google and Microsoft in this regard. Doubt whether that gap can be closed by newcomers - Sony is a little late to the market and grapple, they realize that their strengths lie in good narrative games and yet delivering great graphics, good gameplay and go back to that. - There are a lot of multiplayer games ranging from high graphics to small games developed by Indies (making this industry literally the youtube of games), and most of the people gravitate to streaming games slowly - There is still a set of console loyal gamers who buy the PS4 and they join Nintendo in a niche category - Microsoft dabbles in both console and stream, doesn't capture the people's imagination with its work but still comes out with solid content in both places. They hold the 2nd place in market for both styles of gaming. Stadia is not just targeting consoles, it is also looking at freeing up some developers from being forced to tie up with massive publishers. It will also result in smaller dev shops working on simple games where Google compete with Steam |