Alex Salfiti 
Google is one of the largest companies in the world, pretty much monopolising how we use the internet. From the humble beginnings of the search engine, we now see Google, and its umbrella corporation Alphabet, have at least a tertiary involvement in every major industry. I mean, do you use Chrome to browse the internet? If you don’t, you should, and with the flagship Pixel now into its third generation, it’s hard to walk around London (where I live) and not see an advertisement for it. As far as hardware goes, this is where Google has laid a lot of its eggs along with the Chromebook, but all that is set to change with the rumoured Yeti gaming console that has ex-industry giants on board. But will it work?
Recently Google had users trial a streaming service, that will most likely be the foundation for the Yeti. In said test, they had participants play through Assassins Creed Odyssey using only their Chrome browser. Crazy right?
However the theory behind the Yeti isn’t news. It was announced a few years ago, but new detailed concepts have now hit showing what the pad will look like. Firstly, this brings into question what form the Yeti will take. It might be obvious to state there will be a console but, as this is Google, I wouldn’t think it far fetched that the only thing you need is a compatible TV, an app and the game controller. Thus making gaming truly free and hosted entirely on the cloud.
I guess the biggest questions are, how will Google manage to house and serve the millions of users that will get into the Yeti platform. In short, they are hoping to take advantage of local server farms meaning your games run on the server closest to you, keeping latency to a minimum. Secondly, how will Google fair against the gaming giants Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo? There are rumours everywhere that PS5 could be sans-disc, utilising the cloud in the process, but I think that launching a console based purely on this tenet could be a fast track way of alienating gamers. I mean, not everyone can get over 50mbps.
Are Google biting off more than they can chew on this one? It’s certainly a possibility, with huge consoles like the Wii U and a bunch of Atari nonsense showing that the company producing the hardware doesn’t necessarily point to sales and profitability. Only time will tell what fate awaits the Yeti…
