Hello folks! Today we are talking about video games and the Google Yeti project. So let's begin!

Background

Few months ago, I wrote a post about some rumors related to Google entering the gaming industry.  For those who do not know, the Yeti project is a giant project where gamers would play games without any hardware but just using a Google chrome browser on their streaming device. Gamers will also need a Yeti controller that will remotely connect to their device (PC, laptop, phone etc ...). 

You can think of it as a sort of Netflix project for video games where gamers would have access to a catalog of games given with a paid subscription every month. Only an Internet speed connection of 25 Mps will be required. Just to give you some perspective, an Internet service provider such as Century Link can provide you with a 40 Mps connection speed for a basic subscription. Note that the Yeti streaming project is planned to offer the same technical performance regardless of the device the gamer will be streaming from ( Frame rate per second, resolution etc ...).  The project also ambitions no latency whatsoever during streaming. This seems like very impressive from a technical point of view and we have to wait to actually see whether or not the Yeti project will actually achieve that. 

I- It is now official

Well, now it is official and Google will be running a giant test today with a selected amount of gamers. The test will be on the new game Assassin's Creed Odyssey from Ubisoft apparently at 60 frames per second.   Just to give you some reference so that you can better compare, the game runs at 30 frames per second on Xbox1 and PS4. Let's see what will the result show, but one thing for sure is that Google is very serious about getting into the video game industry. Plus we can now see that they are now actively working with some big studios like Ubisoft (and probably many more). Let's not also forget either that at the beginning of the year they hired Phil Harrison, former executive at PlayStation and Xbox. For those who want more details and information about this and who understands some French, I highly recommend to visit Julien Chieze's video on Youtube who really does a fantastic job explaining the details.

Phil Harrison, former executive at Xbox and Playstation

II- Can Google achieve this?

Well let's not forget who is doing the project Yeti. We are talking about Google who is clearly huge in networking, video processing and Artificial Intelligence. Google already hosts cloud services for any kind of size company or individuals, allowing them to develop web apps, test and scale artificial intelligence services or methods and much more. They have servers all over the world for this and in fact they even give a free year subscription to users, providing that they will only be using CPUs, not GPUs or TPUs (Tensor Processing Units). So yeah to me, in terms of streaming experience and given that they are already in the testing phase of the Yeti System and that they are actively working with some big studios yes I think that they will soon be able to achieve this. Is it good for the users and for the market in general? That is what I am going to try to answer below.

III - Is this good for the market in general and for the users?

Well this is a difficult question to answer,  but I am going to try to answer it and remain as fair as I can. I think that for the average gamer who cannot always afford to buy the newest console Platforms, or the latest graphic card/CPU or a gaming PC this will definitely be a good thing. Hence, he/she will have access to more games than he used to (since he will only pay a subscription per month) and he will also have a better experience in terms of frame rate and resolution. Plus the gamer will be able to play the games everywhere, provided that he/she has enough internet speed. All of this assumes that the Yeti streaming service runs perfectly of course. But one thing for instance that I think will be very very bad with those kind of streaming services is that the user will probably have to give a lot of personal information to the Yeti AI (payment methods, where the user is playing, how many hours the user is playing, the user's friend etc ...). 

When you know that Google is currently building a censored search Engine in China and that even Google former employees are protesting and do not want to commit to that project you start to see things differently. Will the gamers freedom be respected? Will Google have a complete integrity about this? What will the collected data on users be used for? Also, will developers be allow to freely develop all kinds of games they want or they will have to develop games in a fear to be banned just like what happens with content creators on Youtube? I think it is at least legitimate to ask ourselves that question.

As for the gaming industry in general, I think that this can be good or bad. I think for other platform constructors such as Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony it is going to get harder to compete. I think that slowly Google Yeti will attract the brightest gaming studios and developers and grab more and more market shares. I mean it is Google we are talking about they are seriously loaded with money. I think that for mid-size gaming studio or even indie developers this might actually work out well, as they will have more exposure with the Yeti service. Kind of like how you can discover new indie games by browsing on Steam. This is to some extent only though. I think that if Yeti grabs a significant amount of market share, there will be also another monopoly among developers and studios in collaboration with the Yeti project and I am not sure that the modest indie developer will still have that much exposure. But I am not sure. What do you guys think? Do you guys think that the Yeti Project is a good think for indie developers?

Ok that was it for today folks. What do you guys think of the Google Yeti project? Would you guys buy a Yeti subscription? Let me know in the comment section below.

Talk to you guys soon!

Pictures

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

Picture 2 was taken from https://goo.gl/WLBRC3

Picture 3 was taken from https://goo.gl/AHK8cN

Picture 4 was taken from https://goo.gl/3MpynP

Picture 5 was taken from https://goo.gl/XZZhwf

Picture 6 was taken from https://goo.gl/ErT2fu

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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