Last week at Google I/O 2012, the Nexus Q was unveiled to a spellbound public. This interesting living-room device arrives with a price tag of $299 and boasts the capability of being extremely hackable with an Android OS and a micro-USB port to provide access to developers and Makers. No doubt, Google already has some ideas in what directions to they intend to take this device; but that’s no reason not to predict how Google and the horde of interested developers will take it.

No doubt, this is a Trojan horse sneak-attack against Microsoft and their Xbox—even the shape is designed to please and disarm; perhaps they think we haven’t noticed that the Nexus Q is a different platonic solid (a sphere) than the Xbox (a cube.) From years onward, Microsoft has been edging their gaming machine to become the dominant living-room cloud and entertainment device and they’re well entrenched; so only a direct leap into the spotlight can possibly steal it from them.

Google can do that; but first they need to provide a killer must-have in the living room app.

Let the “ball”-synonym predictions begin!

1. Social gaming sphere using services like OnLive

Google Android isn’t a bad mobile OS for gaming; but this isn’t a mobile device, it’s a living-room media streaming device. It’s not going to compete with the Xbox on sheer game-playing horse power, but it could face off by delivering a cloud streaming gaming experience to the TV by loading OnLive or some other service.

However, this is Google. Anything the Nexus Q does is going to have a serrated social edge and if it connects to a vast array of casual games or even streaming-games via OnLive will probably also hook into a gamer social service that will bring people together. We know that the Q should be able to connect to nearby Android devices via NFC or Bluetooth and with that it should be able to connect players together.

This also means that an Android phone (or other device) could be used as a game pad for playing games on the Nexus Q as well as a social interface.

2. In living room social streaming and communication ball

We’ve been thinking a while about how telecommications hasn’t quite-yet made its penetration into the living room—even with the cube getting its hands on Skype. Already there’s the Kinect with its camera and the capability of running things like Avatar Kinect but it really hasn’t made much of an impact yet, but making video calls cheap and bringing them into the living room might open up a new way for distant people to interact.

All the Nexus Q needs is a camera and microphone set up (and it’s already connected to a TV and Internet) and it’s ready to go.

3. Social entertainment Death Star with Netflix, keyboard

Streaming video is much more fun when you have people to share it with and movie-night in could take on a whole new meaning when synchronizing streams between people separated by geography and distance. I imagine that some developer will look at Netflix and see an opportunity to bring distant friends together by allowing them to watch the same show on their Nexus Q’s at the same time.

Include the Bluetooth/NFC connection with their Android phones and they could maintain contact via the service (through voice or text chat) and combine their experience.

4. Morning video globe “newspaper” custom cut for the family

We’ve seen it before in science fiction TV shows and movies, a person walks into the room, the TV screen nearby comes on and starts rolling up news items from the day in a “newspaper” fashion and starts rattling off stories. Since the Nexus Q is connected to the Internet and sits idle all night while people sleep, it could roll up an expert agent service to collect news all night to play back when people start moving around in the morning.

Since the Nexus Q has NFC/Bluetooth, it can tell when a particular phone has moved into proximity and which phone it is. From that, it can determine what to show in the news feed.

No more worrying about getting things booted, flicking through menus on a phone, TV turns on while walking through the living room on the way to pour cereal. Just mix the news if more phones come into proximity (although likely there might be fights over why a My Little Pony video played between news about tech market innovations.)

5. Google TV bubble on-tap tailored to remote from nearby Android phone

Google will probably roll this one out without prompting: since the Nexus Q has that NFC/Bluetooth connectivity people should be able to remote control it from any nearby Android device. No more losing your remote control for the TV—it’s in your phone all the time.

Even better is that with a Google TV subscription, it could push schedules and potential shows to the phone itself (and stream them if needed) allowing the users to select what they want from a menu while they’re wandering around the house or otherwise let them navigate and pick shows without having to interrupt the one currently showing.

Sphere vs. Cube

It’s hard to say where the Nexus Q is going. It has a rather high price tag for just-media-streaming and social and it will have to contend directly with the Xbox 360 in that Microsoft’s cube already does something that brings it into the living room of hundreds of thousands of households. Chances are anywhere dominated by the cube will be anathema to the sphere.

We’ll have to see what the future holds; but likelihood is that the killer app that emerges from the Nexus Q will be the market ecology of Android and its interoperability with Android devices.