Google's Cloud Gaming Mirage

Lyrics

Hello, old friend.
White plastic, cold in my hands.
Remember the promise?

It was March, 2019.
Phil Harrison on a stage, selling the future.
No more boxes, no more downloads.
Just a current of light from a server farm, humming at sixty-four degrees.
Straight to this controller.
Straight to me.
We were gonna touch the sky.

But the cloud was just a mirage.
A pretty ghost on the horizon.
And all that power, all that heat and ozone,
just left me here holding a piece of plastic with a useless button.
Yeah, the cloud was a mirage in the data-center haze.

November came. 2019.
Plugged in the Chromecast Ultra, a little black puck full of faith.
I felt the lag, a tiny hesitation between my thumb and the screen.
But I told myself it was the future arriving slow.
I wanted to believe in the signal.
In the stream.

But the cloud was just a mirage.
A pretty ghost on the horizon.
And all that power, all that heat and ozone,
just left me here holding a piece of plastic with a useless button.
Yeah, the cloud was a mirage in the data-center haze.

October first, 2022.
A blog post. So polite. "A difficult decision."
All those games, all those worlds, just... delisted.
Wiped from a server rack somewhere I'll never see.
Then January 18, 2023.
The signal cut.
The light went out for good.

I press the button. The Stadia button.
Nothing.
Not a flicker. Not a sound.
Just a monument.
To a future that never loaded.