The Sun Ray was ahead of its time. After Oracle bought and killed it, "the cloud" kicked up and is exactly what the Sun Rays were built for in the first place. Oops!
From the original NCD X-terminal to the current Citrix-based smart terminals there's definitely something compelling about putting the compute elsewhere and displaying graphics locally. Nvidia have to be very worried about Google's Project Stream because of the cloud model: someone aggregating compute and render resources means net selling less than when each person has their own. It also means far less opportunity t…
That's going to happen to Nvidia anyway. They must be blind if they can't see that. Even today a very small percentage of gamers are using Nvidia chips, as most games are played on mobile. This is why desktop gaming hardware is getting more expensive every year, as it's becoming more and more of a niche market.