As Google’s beta testing of Project Stream (stadia) starts to make waves with the solo release of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to the platform, game streaming services are once again in the limelight. Google’s claims are impressive – PC-level gaming? On a Mac? A quick YouTube search of the beta testers will confirm that you can indeed stream contemporary AAA titles with as little as a strong internet connection and a Chrome browser. To put this in perspective, in 2017, consumer spending on game consoles was estimated at around $14.1 billion (roughly €12.4 billion): the PlayStation 4 currently retails around €300 and popular PC hardware upwards of €1,000. Project Stream claims that it gives you the same quality experience on a ten-year-old laptop you may have laying around the house. Of course, streaming games comes with its own downsides. These services have popularly been dubbed the ‘Netflix of Gaming,’ but while buffering in a TV show is easily forgiven, consistent lag will kill a video game service before it’s even begun. Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and Nvidia all have their own game library services in development but how many will offer streaming services is unconfirmed.

Of course, Google isn’t the first to come up with a streaming game service, and there’s the obvious question: in the age of Netflix and Spotify, why don’t we already have a popular gaming version? G-Cluster, OnLive, and GameFly Streaming all predate Project Stream, but all three have ceased operation. Perhaps the best example of why this gap exists is from Crytek, who two years into development announced that bandwidth was too expensive at the time and waiting around for household broadband to catch up to support their service wasn’t financially viable. That was more than ten years ago, and perhaps the second wave of Game Streaming is about to hit with eager gamers and urban household internet speeds finally ready for a service that will no longer be ahead of its time. In 2009, Andrei Dobra for Softpedia News commented hopefully that “in the future… we will all be able to enjoy titles such as Crysis on even the most low-end platform.” Almost ten years later that might finally be a reality.