millenials are actually the generation with the most unhealthy relationship with the passive medium of television
Then I must be some kind of crypto-anarchist fringe hacker far removed from the mainstream because I don't even own a TV.
It's not just that he mentioned Wheel of Fortune, it's the other aspects as well. 720p is a realistic streaming resolution, which also happens to match the resolution of my grandparents' low-end LCD television. Also, the "single click in a browser" pitch is one I've heard many, many times.
Here's the deal: You can compile your games for the browser already. Unity and Godot have this export feature, though it may be lacking in terms of compatibility. My own engine is even more compatible, targeting WebGL 1.0 and pre-ASM.js features. Any low-spec game could run well under these conditions if done right, and you can even take it a step further and use Phaser.js with no WebGL at all.
So where does the streaming fit in? Marketing. When Grandma sees Google's big-budget ad featuring a big-budget eldritch creature that's supposed to look like Regis, Grandma exclaims "Regis!" and throws her money at the screen. She gets to "play the video through the email" (or however her Alzheimer's brain perceives it). Server-side compression also tends to introduce smoothing artifacts to further remove the resemblence to a "game". No, it's just a "show" or a "video".
Player
