Stadia....

No matter what way you pronounce the 'a', the idea of Stadia is a game changer. I'm not 100% sold on it and I don't think I will be until the entire planet has gigabit fibre to the home. But the initial idea of it is so very interesting. Especially the use of the controller as the controller of your content access. Then reality kicks in. Practicality really. Lag is eternal no matter how low the milliseconds go. If it does catch on and can run over a 56k modem on a windows 98 pc then good but I'll mourn the loss of today's status quo. I have chromecasts but streaming on the TV furthest away from the Wi-fi router gets choppy without intervention. The new service will find it's the users limitations that are the real stumbling blocks. *Stadia home wi-fi booster kit sales!?!?* Who will pay for a service that is different for everybody. 

I don't do games as a service. I don't do any paid services like that at all.

I'm not sure where google is heading with this new service. It's way too early to tell. My gut tells me this jump is a jump too far for me.

Anyway the console market was heading to a streaming base wasn't it?! I wasn't concerned about that because I thought the current generation was my last. No exclusives on the platform any more meant I could get it all on PC anyway. This new service has the chance to nuke all hardware into irrelevance. That's too big a change to really quantify today. Nothing else has even seemed like it would compete let alone obliterate the competition.

This Stadia is an evolutionary step that will trip me up.

My main gripe is that I like to have the software/game software I buy. Maybe not a physical copy but a software executable for my own installs; regardless of if the company has gone bankrupt.
Steam was a big jump for me when I started it first. Paying for a game 'I own' on their service; What if the service is down or 'gone'? Then so are the games, money down the drain?
I truly do value having the content I buy. That's why I still have physical games from the 90's. GoG was a godsend and I'm more happy to pay for a game there and download it's installer than see it listed in my steam library. Am I sounding like an old fuddy duddy.

To put it another way I like to control the content I buy. If I have an original Xbox and DOA 3 I can setup that console in 20 years time, pop in the disc and play the game. But if I pay for a game and the service is dead 20 years ago what hope of playing what I paid for!

Steam for now is too big to fail; If it did it would be snapped up by the likes of google or Microsoft. Other services like Uplay/Origin etc would no doubt be in the same boat. I do question the likes of if the xbox were to be phased out, how long would they allow games to be downloaded and used!? The same goes for uplay/origin etc. Being bought out and still being accessible or content amalgamated etc.... Still too many unanswered questions. A gaming existential crisis seems imminent.

Online games like WoW, STO or Eve Online are very much a going concern. Of the three I listed two are a paid service that I've cut out. But it's an assumed given, an unwritten rule that with MMO's you get as much out of them as you can while you can. Because they can disappear or change radically in a year. Is that to be the fate of PC gamers!

Way to many questions and philosophical considerations being brought up by this.

Time will tell....