Phil "Jazz Hands" Harrison
Because there's nothing like doubling down on a conviction in the face of idiotic opposition... here we go again, kids!
Yesterday, I got a lot of angry people telling me how wrong I was about Google's Stadia. Some were quite frightfully rude, and - tellingly - most of the ones who were arsey with me on Twitter didn't even follow me on there.
The thing is... it's water off a duck's back. I've been here before. You're not going to convince me otherwise of this, however aggressively you disagree with me, because the coming advent of cloud-based gaming, and the death of traditional consoles, isn't something I think is going to happen. It's something I know is already happening.
I started writing about games just as home computing was being superseded by 16-bit consoles. When Digitiser launched, we chose not to cover the Amiga because... well... what was the point? It was clearly going to be dead within a year or two. As legend records, Amiga owners were furious. They tried to get us fired, they started petitions... they flooded us with calls and letters.
None of it made a blind bit of difference to the Amiga market's inevitable and hilarious demise a year or so later.
Yesterday, I got a lot of angry people telling me how wrong I was about Google's Stadia. Some were quite frightfully rude, and - tellingly - most of the ones who were arsey with me on Twitter didn't even follow me on there.
The thing is... it's water off a duck's back. I've been here before. You're not going to convince me otherwise of this, however aggressively you disagree with me, because the coming advent of cloud-based gaming, and the death of traditional consoles, isn't something I think is going to happen. It's something I know is already happening.
I started writing about games just as home computing was being superseded by 16-bit consoles. When Digitiser launched, we chose not to cover the Amiga because... well... what was the point? It was clearly going to be dead within a year or two. As legend records, Amiga owners were furious. They tried to get us fired, they started petitions... they flooded us with calls and letters.
None of it made a blind bit of difference to the Amiga market's inevitable and hilarious demise a year or so later.
LADLE
Similarly, we could see the signs again when Sega started sliding from dominance, and CD-ROM was poised to replace cartridges. Sony was doing everything right, Sega and 3DO and the CD-i were doing everything wrong, and the momentum was very clearly heading in one direction. That didn't stop Sega fans snarling at anybody who told them differently.
And here we are, 26 years on from the launch of Digitiser, and our war with the Amiga fanbase, and the same thing is happening again. It's just history repeating, and nothing anybody says is going to convince me otherwise. Not least because most of the arguments against the utter unavoidability of cloud-based gaming and Google Stadia hold about as much water as a tramp's bladder.
To the point, in fact, where I just started ignoring messages on Twitter - something I try to avoid doing as much as possible, being, as I am, the world's most courteous man - because arguing about it became like trying to argue with a bunch of cultists who were furious that the Queen was gravid.
Change, as scary as it can be, is the only real constant.
It's like when you know it's going to rain, right before it does. The wind picks up, curling the leaves. The air shifts, the light changes... you can just sense it.
And that's where we're at today. Yeah, I might be the old man on his porch sniffing at the sky, and declaring "Storm comin'", but these seismic shifts don't happen often in gaming - they come around once every decade or so, at most, and we're right on the cusp of one.
You can shout at the wind, and throw rocks at the clouds, and shove your fingers in your ears and go "La la la!", but Google's Stadia, and cloud-based gaming, is the future.
Similarly, we could see the signs again when Sega started sliding from dominance, and CD-ROM was poised to replace cartridges. Sony was doing everything right, Sega and 3DO and the CD-i were doing everything wrong, and the momentum was very clearly heading in one direction. That didn't stop Sega fans snarling at anybody who told them differently.
And here we are, 26 years on from the launch of Digitiser, and our war with the Amiga fanbase, and the same thing is happening again. It's just history repeating, and nothing anybody says is going to convince me otherwise. Not least because most of the arguments against the utter unavoidability of cloud-based gaming and Google Stadia hold about as much water as a tramp's bladder.
To the point, in fact, where I just started ignoring messages on Twitter - something I try to avoid doing as much as possible, being, as I am, the world's most courteous man - because arguing about it became like trying to argue with a bunch of cultists who were furious that the Queen was gravid.
Change, as scary as it can be, is the only real constant.
It's like when you know it's going to rain, right before it does. The wind picks up, curling the leaves. The air shifts, the light changes... you can just sense it.
And that's where we're at today. Yeah, I might be the old man on his porch sniffing at the sky, and declaring "Storm comin'", but these seismic shifts don't happen often in gaming - they come around once every decade or so, at most, and we're right on the cusp of one.
You can shout at the wind, and throw rocks at the clouds, and shove your fingers in your ears and go "La la la!", but Google's Stadia, and cloud-based gaming, is the future.
RISING TIDE
Polygon has a nice little interview with Google's Stadia boss Phil "The Pill" Harrison in which he addresses all the foam-flecked cognitive dissonance I was confronted with yesterday.
Google seem quite aware - as you'd expect them to be - that the internet isn't entirely set up yet to offer cloud-based gaming for everyone. They know it's going to be a gradual spread outwards, and a long-term project, but one quote from Harrison gets to the core of what I've been saying about Stadia: "There is a rising tide that lifts all boats."
Google knows that cloud-based gaming isn't going to replace consoles overnight, but Google is big enough - its plans for Stadia are ambitious enough - that they're going to drag the rest of the world with them. This won't be some sudden, abrupt shift - Google has a multi-year gameplan - and because of the sheer, omnipresent size of Google, it isn't a case of Google trying to fit into the market; the market is going to have to adapt to Google.
The company has an unprecedented level of reach and resources that are almost infinite. Forget previous follies, like the Google Glasses; cloud-based gaming is occurring now. This is the way that gaming has, quietly, been going for a while, and now that Google is on board it's going to go into hyperdrive.
Google is not OnLive, or one of those other small-potatoes companies which tried to do too much to soon. Insisting otherwise is like playing, I dunno, Make My Video With Kriss Kross on the Mega CD, and failing to see the obvious potential of CD-ROM as a format.
Night Trap, 7th Guest, Myst... did their awfulness stop CD-ROM, and then DVD-ROM, completely changing the way we play games?
And if you needed further evidence to ignore - which some of you will do, because you're wilfully stupid and ignorant and terrified - Google isn't the only major player in this game.
Polygon has a nice little interview with Google's Stadia boss Phil "The Pill" Harrison in which he addresses all the foam-flecked cognitive dissonance I was confronted with yesterday.
Google seem quite aware - as you'd expect them to be - that the internet isn't entirely set up yet to offer cloud-based gaming for everyone. They know it's going to be a gradual spread outwards, and a long-term project, but one quote from Harrison gets to the core of what I've been saying about Stadia: "There is a rising tide that lifts all boats."
Google knows that cloud-based gaming isn't going to replace consoles overnight, but Google is big enough - its plans for Stadia are ambitious enough - that they're going to drag the rest of the world with them. This won't be some sudden, abrupt shift - Google has a multi-year gameplan - and because of the sheer, omnipresent size of Google, it isn't a case of Google trying to fit into the market; the market is going to have to adapt to Google.
The company has an unprecedented level of reach and resources that are almost infinite. Forget previous follies, like the Google Glasses; cloud-based gaming is occurring now. This is the way that gaming has, quietly, been going for a while, and now that Google is on board it's going to go into hyperdrive.
Google is not OnLive, or one of those other small-potatoes companies which tried to do too much to soon. Insisting otherwise is like playing, I dunno, Make My Video With Kriss Kross on the Mega CD, and failing to see the obvious potential of CD-ROM as a format.
Night Trap, 7th Guest, Myst... did their awfulness stop CD-ROM, and then DVD-ROM, completely changing the way we play games?
And if you needed further evidence to ignore - which some of you will do, because you're wilfully stupid and ignorant and terrified - Google isn't the only major player in this game.
SPENCE'
In the wake of Google's Game Designers Conference keynote, a memo to employees, from Microsoft's Phil Spencer, was leaked to Thurrott. It read:
“We just wrapped up watching the Google announcement of Stadia as team here at GDC. Their announcement is validation of the path we embarked on two years ago.
"Today we saw a big tech competitor enter the gaming market, and frame the necessary ingredients for success as Content, Community and Cloud. There were no big surprises in their announcement although I was impressed by their leveraging of YouTube, the use of Google Assistant and the new WiFi controller.
"But I want get back to us, there has been really good work to get us to the position where we are poised to compete for 2 billion gamers across the planet. Google went big today and we have a couple of months until E3 when we will go big.
"We have to stay agile and continue to build with our customer at the center. We have the content, community, cloud team and strategy, and as I’ve been saying for a while, it’s all about execution. This is even more true today. Energizing times."
In short, don't necessarily expect another Xbox. Microsoft has been working on its Project xCloud for two years already - and is planning to unveil it at this year's E3.
If you want even to further confirmation that Microsoft certainly isn't putting all of its spawn into the Xbox trough, the company has also announced a partnership with Nintendo to start bringing certain Microsoft Live titles to the Switch, starting with Cuphead next month.
Consider their bets hedged.
In the wake of Google's Game Designers Conference keynote, a memo to employees, from Microsoft's Phil Spencer, was leaked to Thurrott. It read:
“We just wrapped up watching the Google announcement of Stadia as team here at GDC. Their announcement is validation of the path we embarked on two years ago.
"Today we saw a big tech competitor enter the gaming market, and frame the necessary ingredients for success as Content, Community and Cloud. There were no big surprises in their announcement although I was impressed by their leveraging of YouTube, the use of Google Assistant and the new WiFi controller.
"But I want get back to us, there has been really good work to get us to the position where we are poised to compete for 2 billion gamers across the planet. Google went big today and we have a couple of months until E3 when we will go big.
"We have to stay agile and continue to build with our customer at the center. We have the content, community, cloud team and strategy, and as I’ve been saying for a while, it’s all about execution. This is even more true today. Energizing times."
In short, don't necessarily expect another Xbox. Microsoft has been working on its Project xCloud for two years already - and is planning to unveil it at this year's E3.
If you want even to further confirmation that Microsoft certainly isn't putting all of its spawn into the Xbox trough, the company has also announced a partnership with Nintendo to start bringing certain Microsoft Live titles to the Switch, starting with Cuphead next month.
Consider their bets hedged.
STORM COMIN'
Cloud-based gaming is inevitable. Sure, be angry, be scared, be in denial, shoot the messengers. But denying that it's on the way isn't going to make a blind bit of difference to its utter inexorable ascendancy.
I mean, tv, film, music... I was pretty sure, at one point, that I'd never abandon linear TV scheduling, and here I am now and I've not watched linear TV in years. I was certain that I'd always want to own physical copies of albums, yet I've not gone into a shop and bought an album for the best part of a decade. Yes, you can debate the pros and cons of all this, if you can be arsed, but it doesn't change the reality we now live in.
Basically, physical media - and sorry to break this to you, collectors - is in its death throes, and video games are already way behind the curve in comparison to other entertainment industries. Oh, I'm sure you'll still be able to buy your collectors editions (just look how vinyl has had made a comeback), but for most of us - for the vast majority - owning a product, in the traditional sense, is already over.
Stop staring at your belly buttons and look at the bigger picture.
I mean, one of the more ridiculous arguments I faced yesterday is that people won't own their games outright in this new world, and what's to stop Google switching off their servers in ten years, and wiping their games? Aside from a very similar case to be made about the sheer number of games which now exist only as downloads, do you think all the people with Apple Music and Spotify accounts ever give this a second thought?
Is it a good thing or a bad thing? As I say, it's irrelevant, because it's going to happen regardless. And just as ISPs are going to have to adapt, just as Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo are going to have to adapt,... we're all going to have to adapt - same as we did when our Amigas became obsolete, when the SNES wasn't backwardly compatible with the NES, and when we all had to get rid of our CD drives and replace them with DVD drives.
The earth isn't flat, vaccinating your children won't make them autistic, global warming isn't a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese, and streaming is the future of gaming. It's just a fact.
Whether you like it or not.
Cloud-based gaming is inevitable. Sure, be angry, be scared, be in denial, shoot the messengers. But denying that it's on the way isn't going to make a blind bit of difference to its utter inexorable ascendancy.
I mean, tv, film, music... I was pretty sure, at one point, that I'd never abandon linear TV scheduling, and here I am now and I've not watched linear TV in years. I was certain that I'd always want to own physical copies of albums, yet I've not gone into a shop and bought an album for the best part of a decade. Yes, you can debate the pros and cons of all this, if you can be arsed, but it doesn't change the reality we now live in.
Basically, physical media - and sorry to break this to you, collectors - is in its death throes, and video games are already way behind the curve in comparison to other entertainment industries. Oh, I'm sure you'll still be able to buy your collectors editions (just look how vinyl has had made a comeback), but for most of us - for the vast majority - owning a product, in the traditional sense, is already over.
Stop staring at your belly buttons and look at the bigger picture.
I mean, one of the more ridiculous arguments I faced yesterday is that people won't own their games outright in this new world, and what's to stop Google switching off their servers in ten years, and wiping their games? Aside from a very similar case to be made about the sheer number of games which now exist only as downloads, do you think all the people with Apple Music and Spotify accounts ever give this a second thought?
Is it a good thing or a bad thing? As I say, it's irrelevant, because it's going to happen regardless. And just as ISPs are going to have to adapt, just as Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo are going to have to adapt,... we're all going to have to adapt - same as we did when our Amigas became obsolete, when the SNES wasn't backwardly compatible with the NES, and when we all had to get rid of our CD drives and replace them with DVD drives.
The earth isn't flat, vaccinating your children won't make them autistic, global warming isn't a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese, and streaming is the future of gaming. It's just a fact.
Whether you like it or not.
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