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Google has been aggressively targeting social gamers with its increasing selection of distractions on Google+. It seems that the company is looking beyond social gaming and, perhaps, going after (more) traditional console gamers. Google developer advocate Paul Kinlan recently revealed that Chrome will be able to support gamepads natively through WebRTC. Kinland noted that WebRTC could allow streaming services like Onlive and Gaikai to work on Chrome without any plug-ins.
A few outlets have reported that Google is developing its own streaming videogame service, but Kinlan has denied this. Others have speculated that Google is considering buying OnLive or Gaikai. On one hand, it seems outside of the company’s wheelhouse; I’m not sure that Google wants to deal with game publishers and developers in that fashion. On the other hand, it could give Google yet another way to serve relevant ads and give Google+ a differentiator over Facebook. Certainly Google has the server capacity to support a streaming videogame service, but I’m not convinced the company wants to deal with the messy content.
What do you think of the recent Google gaming speculation? Do you see Google getting into streaming videogames? Would you use a gaming service on Chrome that’s socialized by Google+?
Screw that. Google is big and creative, so they should act like it and not try to live in Zynga's shadow.
If I were Google, I would become a publisher and get all up in EA and Activision's faces. Seriously, they could bring independent developers and development teams in and help create/publish their games on all sorts of platforms from the PS3 to the iPhone. Google has the resources and name recognition to do so and they could definitely shake up the video game industry for the better if they were to do this. If Google can offer developers a generous profit sharing business model (instead of the "you create it, I own it" mentality of EA and Activision) with emphasis on the developer owning the rights to their IP, I can see a lot of talent flocking to Google to sign a deal and push their games.
-M
I'm a big Google fan, but I never thought of the company as particularly creative. The company would also have to add a lot of staff to support publishers, developers, and customers. Google has mostly sucked at customer support and I'm not sure the company wants to get into the messy game of pub/dev support.
Always someone somewhere who says Google should buy blank.
I dont use chrome and have no idea what Google+ looks like outside of my iPad.
Hullabaloo.
You don't use the Chrome browser?
NopeSent from my iPhone 4
I don't care. They can do games if they want, nobody's gonna try and stop them until they make something so bad that George Lucas wants to make a trilogy of it. Followed by another trilogy. And then an animated TV show. And books; lots and lots of books.
Google Chrome is nice; it's my preferred web browser. I have Internet Explorer, which is bad. I also have Mozilla Firefox, which was a replacement for I.E. Still pretty ugly. The lack of tool bars and search bars is comforting.
I used to love FF, but it got too stupid and bloated — way too many memory leaks caused by random combinations of plug-ins. Chrome is, by far, my favorite browser. Chrome OS is kind of fun too, but not practical enough for work and not fun enough to replace my iPad 2.
Yeah I recently gave up on FF as well and use Chrome now. Much better. Far fewer crashes.
Whenever Chrome has problems with my computer, it's always an "oops, go back and click again" or "oops, we messed up on opening that new tab" type of problem. Nothing major, really.
IE 9 isn't too bad. I started using it when BF3 came out. The battle log wasn't playing nice with FF.
I use Chrome as my primary browser, but I always seem to have problems with Chrome that Firefox does not have. I get redirect loops and pages that don't always load completely. When trying to look through amazon deals I have to use a different browser because Chrome doesn't allow everything to load. If I could figure out all the little problems I have with Chrome I would really consider getting a Chrome book.
Finally beat Uncharted 3 thanks to a long overdue patch for the aiming controls being released. I wish I'd played the first 20 chapters without the wonky controls.