In Canada, so have had some games for awhile (I was like how is this news... We already got Netflix gaming, then realised US didn't have it).
The games are fairly simplistic, I dunno if it's limitation, initial scope, but Netflix version of "cloud gaming" so far is not trying to replace console/PC/handheld gaming at all.
Really it's just some minigames that don't require install for the most part.
I think this might be different. I've seen those mini games too and have been seeing those since after their interactive content started when Bandersnatch released.
It is costly - you need to host a NVidia GPU cluster close to the clients - for the games Netflix and it's target audience they are aiming at mobile like casual games like Angry Birds or Oxygen and definitely not Starfield or Cyberpunk 2077
Stadia would have worked out if it wasn't Google with their tradition to kill products, and thinking developers would trust such a company to rewrite their Windows/DirectX games into GNU/Linux / Vulkan.
One of the last actions to try to rescue Stadia was to finally accept game development starts on Windows.
I suspect they are trying to do for gaming what they did for videos. Saying it's not going to happen is like saying video streaming just isn't going to happen. The tech was far behind but it caught up.
Networked games can do client side prediction and make basic interactions such as panning camera and selecting menu feel interactive and nice, even under severe lag.
For cloud games by definition you can't do that, as soon as you try to do client side prediction might as well you run the whole game client side.
Does this matter? Depends on the game and the player
It already is. And it’s actually pretty good. It’s not there for multiplayer (least to me) but single player games are absolutely fine now. Xcloud is pretty good and people say GeForce now is even better.
This horse has been beaten to a fine pulp, cloud gaming just isn't going to happen.