What does everyone think of Google’s Stadia announcement?
Essentially it removes the redundancy of powerful gaming computers in everyone’s home, which is an expensive redundant endeavour, and instead moves the gaming console to highly optimised server farms then streams instantly to your device, which is a cheaper and more efficient process. Google says they proved last year that performance is not an issue due to them controlling the entire tech stack, from controller, through internet pipes, to server - achieving perfect security and optimal transmission. Allowing instant unlimited 4K gaming experiences, with picture in picture of even your coplayer’s streams - so no more “are you seeing what I’m seeing?” questions ever again.
I’m very concerned about it. It is such a good idea, and I’m not sure how valve, steam, twitch, playstation and microsoft will compete unless they all teamed up to use microsofts servers. Even still, it makes me think this continuous consolidation of entire tech stacks means that for all the empowerment they offer that there is equal disinfranchisement away from ability to compete, which if not listened to cordially, will result in war or mass-entertainment-suicide. It is most concerning as it means probably 99% of the population get a superior experience, which others cannot compete with, and constrains culture to their code of conduct, ejecting others not just from competition but from the game of life itself.
From my experience the USA tech progressives think this is a good thing, that their meta entity is superior and has the moral right to kill “lesser” entities and prevent their ability to compete. Their collectivism and eventual tech feudalism is very concerning.
Then we have Apple, which have a streaming service event next week, but their closed nature is analogous to nationalism but at the corporate level, whereas Google’s openness is analogous to globalism. As much as I’m a fan of nationalism, I still haven’t seen anything convincing that it can compete with globalism, which will always be larger, with more resources, and more tricks that it can play with.
Unless something like #projects:fountain and #projects:invest-10 become a thing, then I really think we will see a world controlled by tech feudalism, rather than a world of unionised individuals.