These past few years have been big for cloud gaming, seeing both the launch of Nvidia Geforce Now and Google Stadia, but the lukewarm reception to both platforms has many thinking that maybe cloud gaming isn’t here to stay. For those who don’t know what it is, cloud gaming is a type of online gaming where the game itself runs on remote servers and is streamed to the user’s device. It works a lot like Netflix where you can just stream video from Netflix’s servers without having to download the whole video file onto your device. This technology makes it possible for you to play complex games on your smart TV, or even your tablet or phone screen, without having to hook up an Xbox or Playstation (or any other console). Also like Netflix, these two services have the same kind of business model where you subscribe to their service and you can play unlimited games for whatever price per month they have set up (Nvidia: 5.99/month, Google: 9.99/month). Although people have responded well to this model for video, it may not be the same for video games and there are a few reasons why.
When watching a movie or show on Netflix sometimes the video will buffer, and you have to wait a few seconds before the video starts playing again. Although it’s not a huge deal for many if a movie stops for a few seconds for games it can make the experience frustrating. Latency is also a huge issue with cloud gaming. If your controller inputs and the video are desynced even a little bit it can make the game unplayable, especially games where quick reactions are key. Also, the fact that you don’t own the games you are playing can lead to some bad scenarios. Imagine if you were playing through a game, and you take a break from it for a week, and then you come back online to find that the game was removed from the service without warning. This is totally possible with cloud gaming.
The fact that Activision and Blizzard have removed their games from Nvidia’s platform is not a good sign. These two developers offer hugely popular games, and if they don’t think that cloud gaming is the way to go, and won’t even offer their games on these services then it may not be long before other developers begin to follow. In my opinion cloud gaming may be a cool idea in theory, but I personally would not subscribe to a platform until the above problems are solved. What do you think? Does cloud gaming have a future?