Google Stream

What is you guys’ opinion on this advanced and revolutionary technology? will it be the true streaming gsming service to look out for? the one allowing everyone the abikity to play witcher 3 at highest detail on any laptop they own or even a mac? will it finally be what breaks that abrrier for mac gamers like myself tog er access to windows titles via streaming?

When OnLive did this, they had an option where you buy a little box and controller for $100 to hook to your TV so you wouldn't even need a weak PC.

The tech can definitely work - particularly with slower games. Online shooters and fighting games would be rough. You need a really good internet connection, though, and a data center not more than, oh, maybe 500 miles from where you are. Further is OK if you stick to turn based - heck, the moon is close enough if you're playing turn based!

The Good

• CRAZY cheap way to play games with high specs, assuming you don't have internet data caps.
• No maintenance worries. Codec problems are gone.
• Instant install time. This doesn't sound like much but it's absolutely wonderful for game demos. Forget about trolling around YouTube or the like, you can try games one after the other yourself. (OnLive let you play any game free for 30 minutes as a make-shift demo.)
• If it gets to be a really big thing so that games start to release exclusively via these services, piracy goes WAY down. I very much expect that would drive sales way up. Hopefully that would mean a lot more high quality games.
• Streamed-only games would also have the advantage of being able to say exactly what hardware is needed to run the game and code just for that. They wouldn't have to worry about NVIDIA vs. AMD vs. Intel - just pick the best one for the game and tell the streaming companies to use it. That should save some pretty serious development time.
• Multi-player between people on the same service is likely to work more smoothly.

The Bad

• Mods are probably not going to happen. MAYBE some really popular ones (e.g. Long War, unofficial Skyrim patch) can get in if the mod maker agrees and signs umpteen release forms. Nude mods and mods that put in other IPs are extra unlikely. Even tweaking the .ini file probably isn't going to happen.
• If the service doesn't really take off, you could lose everything you buy. A company like Steam is big enough that somebody would buy them out but a little shop like OnLive? Poof, gone. (Not a big deal, IMHO. I think it's pretty rare to go back and play games. Even when you do, by that time the game is likely to be super cheap.)
• While you can crank up the graphic effects a lot, cranking up resolution isn't an option. That costs bandwidth. This one is limitted to 1080p. 4K, 3D Vision, and certainly VR are not going to happen for quite some time.
• Multi-player between different services or services and the rest of the world may be normal but the company could get greedy and block it completely.