> game streaming fad never really takes off
I am in the opposite camp. I want game developers to be freed from local hardware constraints, and indy developers to have access to the same graphical fidelities as AAA. Real, meaningful innovation in gaming is a possibility.
The bottleneck here isn't performance, it's the cost of producing high quality assets on a AAA scale. Streaming won't solve this.
As for "local hardware constraints", I've yet to see any streaming games that were not possible on local hardware. Personally, I'd rather upgrade my GPU or video game console every 5 years than lose all the very tangible benefits that come with running games on my own hardware (ownership, mods, preservation, etc.)
I will say that I think services like GeForce Now are the best use case for the technology. Since it is essentially a rentable high end gaming PC in the cloud, the user brings their own games. If GeForce now shuts down, you still have the option of downloading all the games you bought for on it to a PC. Nvidia is smart to position this as an additive experience, rather than a replacement like Stadia was.