I was thinking about the media and analysts saying the future is a streaming console like a hypothetical psnow-only console, or basically what google is doing.
Besides the problematic rural areas without access to a low enough latency to datacenters, there's the impossibility of having a perfect residential internet latency/bandwidth. The way provisioning works with cable or dsl, it will cause occasional hiccups which hardcore gamers wouldn't accept. We'd rather buy the console. Solving this would require changing the way residential ISPs operate.
If the idea of a streaming-only platform is rejected by hardcore gamers, it will not displace the user base. And I'm not sure if there is a big potential to grow the user base if the internet connection required is an impediment to reaching the casual gamers.
If streaming remains a value added feature instead of a replacement, I think google will have to make a console.