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Why I’m never buying another game console
A year on, Google Stadia is paving the way for game streaming.
Imagine a video game console with no loading times. A console which lets you play brand-new AAA games as soon as you’ve clicked the ‘buy’ button. A console that you can play from anywhere, on any device.
No discs. No downloads. No hardware.
That console already exists, and its name is Google Stadia. Having used it for a week, I’m convinced it’s the future of gaming.
If you’re anything like me, you were only vaguely aware of Stadia. Stadia is a game streaming service, described by some as “Netflix for games”.
The idea is simple. Unlike other video game consoles which require you to download and run the games on a box under your living room TV, Stadia games run on Google servers in a faraway data centre.
This means you can play Stadia from basically any device with a decent internet connection (Google recommends at least 10mbps download speed).
This all sounds impressive on paper, but it wasn’t until I got to try Stadia for myself that I was convinced it’s the future.
A couple of weeks ago I got an email letting me know that as a YouTube Premium subscriber I was eligible for a free Stadia Premiere edition. Being a sucker for free stuff…