dnt think this will take off just like google glass and 3d television, all gaming sites that sell games would go out of business, so gamestop,game, and many others, google have clearly not thought this through and i think alot of game companys will be against it, and isnt microsoft making there next xbox without a disk drive its just gonna be cloud gaming.

so no more selling games on ebay or amazon or buying from 2nd hand shops or just borrowing from your friend

hope this fails like google glass

I didn't misunderstood you. I got the idea that you were against it.
I just meant to say that there's no need to panic. As you may see from many (most?) comments on this thread, streaming video games it's not a problem in the immediate future.

Even the streaming film industry - which is very recent - still has to show which way it will go. Netflix was the giant among them all. But now it has very solid and strong competition against the likes of Amazon, HBO and now even Disney. I suspect most of them will not survive the war. And it's the customers who loose the most in the end.

As for GOG, the only way it can survive and stay afloat is to keep doing what it has done so far: offer a different product - DRM-free games.
Because it's perfectly clear by now that the other stores (Steam, Origin, EPIC, etc) sure want to keep their games under their client and download managers.

I'm far more interested in the outcome between Valve and EPIC, though. I have a weird feeling one of them will not stand.

Apparently this service requires 20GB of data per hour, and will therefore be limited in its audience. (According to Google (search engine, not a page about the service), this means about a 45MBps connection.)

There's also the issue of latency; one *neede* a low latency connection for this to be viable, particularly for action games.

For these reasons alone, I don't think this will be replacing locally executed games anytime soon.

Games as a Service is a great way to get a constant stream of money and keep the leash always in the hand of platform/publishers. I think at some point due to some "Big Data" analysis, companies found out (PURE SPECULATION ALERT) that the ones with good internet are their proverbial "Whales". Once they could double down on them and set a industry wide "Cloud Gaming" as a de facto, it will maybe force people (who didnt have access to good internet) to upgrade their internet by paying more ( for already overpriced internet in a lot of parts of the world ), thus bringing in more profit.

And those who stick to old ways of ownership and offline gaming are just considered to be pirates and thieves in a presentation\s footnote somewhere. The whole cloud gaming and always online is nothing but a DRM with even darker intentions like paying for access to something that can be removed anytime at the platform's/publisher's whim.

I dont know....I am too angry to even type :D Its messy and downright abhorring.

My main concern would be that once enough people are hooked into streaming services, prices will go up, and if content is exclusive to that streaming platform, you may well have to pay that higher price or live without that show.

I do stream movies & TV shows, and yes, it's very cheap at the moment so I'm prepared to put up with the occassional breakup of image quality or temporary pauses for shows that I only expect to watch once and don't really care that much about. However, I still buy movies & series on physical media if I want to have a truly immersive experience, or I want to ensure that I'll be able to watch them in the future. I've already missed a number of movies that disappeared off the streaming service I use before I could watch them, and I hate that feeling of being pressured into having to quickly watch as much as I can in case it disappears!

Edit: spelling.

why do people think just cos google is making cloud streaming for games, it means all other ways of playing will be obsolete,

cd's for gaming came outwith the mega CD yet there was a few consoles later that still used catridges like the SNES and N64, and even today catridges still exist with nintendo on the switch, just cos google says something doesnt mean its gonna destroy an entire industry, to many doomsayers in this forum.

dnt get me wrong i hate google and the style of gaming there trying to push

Are you still buying cartridges today?

Because that's kind of the point. Looking further ahead. Yes, you may have a generation or two that still sticks with the way it used to be, bu tif streaming games actually picks up and gets popularized, there's going to come a time where only releasing your game on a streaming platform becomes profitable, sort of in the same way as you now have tons of games that release only on the internet without any more physical releases.

In that sense, if streaming games becomes big enough, it also becomes the most effective DRM because if a game would release *only* on streaming platforms, the files never even have to be released to the public. They'll only be available at the streaming centers, so piracy becomes far less likely or at the very least, a lot riskier for the people leaking the games.It won't be about cracking the games anymore, it'll be about whether you can even get your hands on the game files at all. It'll also allow them to phase out games when they want to move on to sequals or new payment schemes etc.

Yep. Without a doubt, large numbers of people will begin to extol the virtues of streaming (no more massive 250GB game downloads! cheating made harder than ever before). Just as they extol the virtues of proprietary gaming clients, authentication, and DRM.

The only question is whether (or when) this thing becomes viable enough to convince the mainstream.

It's not particularly viable as of today. A lucky few have fast enough connections and a datacenter in the neighborhood.

There's another dreaded derivative from the streaming as the mainstream platform for gaming. It would be the killing blow for modding.

Modding has been improving and giving games a longer life than they would have had without. It's a non profitable nor nor monetizing hobby which in the long run represents more sales for zero investment as it's the community which works on the game content for free.

So tell me, if instead of having installed data people play interactive videos, how would ever they improve, tweak, give new life to good old games?

The way I see it, the streaming would take over first the market for console gamers, which aren't interested in PC tweaks and are simple, yet skilled, users. Advanced users of PC still would have a time demanding digital downloads; time will tell if DRM niche will survive. I want to believe that indie developers will release smart, addicting digital downloads in some platform; to me the superproductions AAA games can rot in hell.

Don't forget about books. Imagine a future where you cannot read a pdf or epub, mobi... without connection and streaming. It's one step to Fahrenheit 451: one day the book you were reading would be unavailable in your country for whatever reason.

This part all sounds very much like what Steam paved the way for. Getting people used to always online connection to access the games they allegedly "own". There were some optimists back in the day who would insist Steam and retail (real retail, not Steam-key-in-a-box "retail") could exist side-by-side. But we know what side won out, because of fanboys, marketing, and "muh conveeeeeeenience".