Why do people react so negatively to cloud options? (Emphasis on that last word)
It’s dumb for a lot of cases, but there’s plenty of niche occasions it’s very cool. I had an extended period of time I was away from my gaming PC, and sad that I couldn’t play my home games - but GFN let me do so easily.
Nobody working on this tech (with any sense) is claiming ALL games will come from the cloud in 10-20 years. Nobody will accept that level of lost control. But having it as an extra way to access games, in a situation where you’d be reliant on the internet more than hardware anyway, is very useful. It was even how I recommended people play Cyberpunk on release if they had a mediocre PC.
I get that there’s constant worries about how close we are to the EA-managed dystopian control of their library, I just don’t see the logical sequence of events there when it’s an option on a generally open and consumer-friendly store.
You talked about console hardware, but then mentioned distribution. I’m going to guess you mostly mean servers - as these days people don’t really need any special local hardware aside from any controller.
The major cities generally already have those servers distributed and working. It’s true certain edges of the world don’t have a good experience, but that sort of just fits in the 70% of scenarios where you wouldn’t want a cloud game.
There’s still this weird expectation it would replace your home den where you have lots of space and disposable income for multiple consoles - it doesn’t. It’s really more for the convenience of getting your games from a web browser.
It’s really more for the convenience of getting your games from a web browser.
Exactly, it’s a niche service that only appeals to a fraction of the folks who play games, but it also requires the operator to purchase servers with graphics cards and set them up in datacenters near everyone who has an account in order to minimize latency. It’s not viable for people who have slow internet or live in a rural area, especially when so much of their income goes to licensing game titles for use in the service.
Why do people react so negatively to cloud options? (Emphasis on that last word)
It’s dumb for a lot of cases, but there’s plenty of niche occasions it’s very cool. I had an extended period of time I was away from my gaming PC, and sad that I couldn’t play my home games - but GFN let me do so easily.
Nobody working on this tech (with any sense) is claiming ALL games will come from the cloud in 10-20 years. Nobody will accept that level of lost control. But having it as an extra way to access games, in a situation where you’d be reliant on the internet more than hardware anyway, is very useful. It was even how I recommended people play Cyberpunk on release if they had a mediocre PC.
I get that there’s constant worries about how close we are to the EA-managed dystopian control of their library, I just don’t see the logical sequence of events there when it’s an option on a generally open and consumer-friendly store.
I still have an OnLive console from the second time they tried games-as-a-service.
The market isn’t big enough to justify the distribution at scale it’d take to make this tech profitable.
You talked about console hardware, but then mentioned distribution. I’m going to guess you mostly mean servers - as these days people don’t really need any special local hardware aside from any controller.
The major cities generally already have those servers distributed and working. It’s true certain edges of the world don’t have a good experience, but that sort of just fits in the 70% of scenarios where you wouldn’t want a cloud game.
There’s still this weird expectation it would replace your home den where you have lots of space and disposable income for multiple consoles - it doesn’t. It’s really more for the convenience of getting your games from a web browser.
Yep.
Exactly, it’s a niche service that only appeals to a fraction of the folks who play games, but it also requires the operator to purchase servers with graphics cards and set them up in datacenters near everyone who has an account in order to minimize latency. It’s not viable for people who have slow internet or live in a rural area, especially when so much of their income goes to licensing game titles for use in the service.