Was Project Stream a preview of the future or just an experiment by Google?

Google’s Project Stream might be officially over but that doesn’t mean that speculation surrounding it is.

For those of you that might not remember, Project Stream was Google’s experiment with a streaming service for video games that debuted with none other than triple-A title Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to show off its capabilities. And, boy, were people impressed by what they say.

Not only was the game faithfully recreated via stream in terms of graphics but also it controlled well and did everything you would expect a console-based game to do. More of a “proof of concept” than anything else, Project Stream showed that Google could bring serious firepower to the console wars if it wanted to do that. Beyond that, Project Stream provided Google with some much-needed data that they could use to estimate whether or not it was feasible.

Google getting serious about video games?

Since Project Stream didn’t require users to have a fancy desktop or laptop to run the application, it would, in theory, be open to anyone and everyone capable of opening a Chrome web browser. Given that, Google is probably crunching the numbers to see if they can make it work. Or are they?

One assumption about Project Stream from the beginning was that it was some kind of sign from Google that the company was getting serious about video games. No one bothered to think that it might just be an experiment. After all, Google might have pulled it off but making money off of it is another feat entirely.

What will Google do with Project Stream data?

That’s why the data Google got from Project Stream might be more interesting than the experiment itself. We’ll probably not really get a hard look at any of it – and why would we, after all, data is valuable in and of itself – but basically Google can project from hard numbers while Microsoft and Sony are left to guess at what kind of infrastructure they would need to support such a scheme.

It’s not that they aren’t capable of doing it – far from it. It’s just that Google’s unique proposition of playing a triple-A game through their own proprietary web browser is not an experiment either of the other two companies is likely to conduct any time soon. For example, when was the last time you used a Microsoft web browser for anything?

Looking beyond video games, Project Stream could also be an attempt at delving deeper into the analytics for other areas beyond video games. Google entering the video game arena would be an interesting – and huge – change for the current setup but we think that Project Stream might not be the route that they choose to take to get there.

Don’t get us wrong: We think streaming is part of the future in a huge way, but we still expect some sort of hybrid approach which will guarantee customers the best experience available, particularly when it comes to accommodating bleeding-edge graphics on some games.