Stadia is Google’s (very potent) answer to PlayStation Now or Netflix for gaming, i.e. major titles getting streamed directly to your TV or browser without the need for a PS4, Xbox etc. There is a demo of a high-end game, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, being played over just a normal browser. The processing isn’t done in your home, but on super-servers run by super-Google.

Over time, it’s sure to find its place, and we could see a serious streamlining in the console hardware that sits near beneath your smartTV, if not a merging of the two. As internet and fibre (or ‘the last mile’) as it’s called into homes gets better, the end of physical disk formats and limited edition box-sets could be coming to a nice, less wasteful end. Please my new, full post about this over at Prizesdrop.com.

But Don’t Throw Away Your PC

The advent of game streaming could be good news for desktop PCs and laptops, where owning one still represents a huge asset for a household, especially for helping to secure personal data and device storage decentrally. There are many emerging projects for token-earning by sharing one’s hard drive or putting spare CPU power to work.

Rather than paying monopolies like Google (even more) to provide – and access – our data, media and entertainment for us, it will become essential to keep some computer power under personal control in the home. It’s an important separation.

In fact, every household should continue to own computer resources so they can contribute towards decentralised or community-run networks of the future that will keep our data, images, tokens and digital ‘items’ safe and secure in DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology). Gamers should not despair at a subscription-intensive future, but look forward to the rise of projects like THETA instead.

Why? Because centrally owned and managed data-centers remain more vulnerable to technical outages and company whims or market strength. Gamers like to re-play old titles and do all kinds of creative modifications to many community-based games like Minecraft. So is Google Stadia the future? It’s a nice new option, and could hasten the end of physical disks, [Read more…] but fortunately… there is another, crypto-led future unfolding…

April 2019