The Future of Gaming is Not a Box
Understanding cloud gaming, and why Google will lead the cloud gaming era
Most games today are downloaded and played on smartphones, gaming consoles, and PCs. Network connections support player accounts, in-game purchases, but the games themselves run on players’ devices. Game companies build services around AAA game titles, enabling them to deliver continuous updates that add new gameplay and respond to the publics’ feedback on social streaming services.
In this sense, gaming has been expanding into the cloud for some time. Outside of periodic game updates, though, games are still, by and large, downloaded to hard drives and played from those game files.
The full leap to cloud gaming could be on the horizon, however. But just what is cloud gaming, anyway?
Cloud gaming explained
Cloud gaming, sometimes called gaming on demand, is a type of online gaming that runs games on remote servers and streams them directly to the player’s device. In easy language, playing a game remotely from a cloud.
There are two major advantages of a cloud gaming service. The first is that users don’t have to buy new hardware every few years to run the latest games. The other is that it, theoretically, allows users to play any game on any device with a screen and a (very fast) internet connection.
How does cloud gaming work?
Many people stream their movies and TV shows these days, rather than buying Blu-ray discs and DVDs. I mean, most computers (and some gaming consoles) don’t even come with disk drives anymore (some don’t even have a charger nowadays — thanks to Apple). Anyway, game streaming works similarly; at least in principle. Rather than owning all the hardware necessary to run high-end games, game streaming lets users offload the processing demands to a company’s server. Basically, when you start running a game, rather than inserting a disc in your console or PC, a server acts as a high-powered PC somewhere and does that for you, streaming tons of games from tens or hundreds of miles away. For more in-depth details, click here.
How much does cloud gaming cost?
The most appealing part about cloud gaming is how much less someone needs to pay to enjoy the high-end gaming experience. Despite the similarities between streaming movies and streaming games, the business model varies greatly. Currently, the main cloud gaming services (PlayStation Now, Vortex, etc.) use subscription model where users pay a single fee to stream a library of games that change over time.
Apart from the direct costs of these services, there are other points to bear in mind, such as the bandwidth requirement of streaming games is comparatively higher than streaming videos. If you’ve got a bandwidth cap, slow speed internet, or both, odds are that you’ll need a new internet plan to play games in this manner. Google Stadia recommends minimum speeds of 20Mbps for 1080p gaming at 60fps, jumping up to 35Mbps for 4K 60fps. Comparatively, other cloud gaming services require slightly less, but the best results are typically found with a connection speed of around 100Mbps.
Apart from routers, certain cloud gaming services require extra purchases to work on certain devices. To play Stadia on a TV, you’ll need a Chromecast Ultra and a Stadia controller. Likewise with GeForce Now and an Nvidia Shield TV box. PlayStation Now is the most egregious, requiring a PlayStation 4 console to stream games on a TV.
People usually ask me — “Hey Manvendra, which one is better?” today I’m going to answer this question, HONESTLY.
Why Google will lead the cloud gaming era
In March 2019, Google announced that it’s entering the world of cloud gaming services, and would do so with a bang!
Google Stadia, launched by Google on November 19th, 2019 in 14 different territories for an initial price of $130 for a hardware starter kit and three months of premium service, with the service coming in at $10 a month afterward.
Google Stadia is no doubt the most exciting cloud gaming services released to date. After all, it’s funded by virtually limitless pockets of Google. The way I see it, out of all the cloud gaming services around, Google Stadia is the most likely to bring cloud gaming as a service into the mainstream.
There’s no doubt that Stadia brings along many benefits. You can play it on almost any screen and the ability to switch devices on the fly is fantastic, especially since you don’t need to own any high-end hardware. By the way, does your dentist’s office has a strong internet connection? If so, you can play GTA V on your Pixel device in the waiting room.
With that said, I hope I was able to render the points about what is cloud gaming and why Google will lead the cloud gaming era. If you think I lack knowledge (which I probably do) about cloud gaming, more knowledge is always welcome.