Google has thrown down a clear challenge to the gaming world: that using the global network of data centres that run its internet empire, it is set to unleash enough raw computing power to blow away the industry’s current way of doing things.
Add YouTube as a shop window — a place where some 200m people a day come to watch gaming-related videos — and the internet giant believes it has some of the most powerful assets on the planet to reshape a $135bn-a-year business.
But as it took the wraps off its first entry into the gaming market, a streaming service called Stadia, the gaps in its armoury were equally telling. There were no actual games it could point to for its first customers to play, and no indication what they would be asked to pay — or, for that matter, what business model it would seek to foist on a games industry wary of the intrusion of giant internet platforms.