Google Stadia, Amazon Luna, Nvidia GeForce Now, and more: none of these are cloud gaming’s final form. They had one spectacular window of opportunit

To succeed, cloud gaming needs to disappear

submited by
Style Pass
2021-06-25 14:30:04

Google Stadia, Amazon Luna, Nvidia GeForce Now, and more: none of these are cloud gaming’s final form. They had one spectacular window of opportunity to pitch themselves as the next generation of gaming ahead of the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but we’ve yet to see any sign that they’ve made a significant dent.

The reason these answers matter is because today’s companies are generally asking you to choose. Is this where I want to play my games? Should I invest my money in the cloud? It’s a little ridiculous, because the whole point of the cloud is that you can play anywhere at all. You don’t worry about where you’re going to watch your next Netflix movie or YouTube video, do you? You just tap and watch.

Someday, with the right business model, that may be how cloud gaming will work as well. You’ll be paying for the content, not the locale. You’ll simply sign up for a Netflix-like subscription filled with games that run on every platform under the sun, and their quality will dynamically adjust to the amount of horsepower you can access at any given moment — much like how the quality of your Netflix stream automatically adjusts when the rest of your household starts hogging the bandwidth.

Sure, games won’t feel quite as good on a phone as with the latest console or gaming PC, but you won’t have to think about whether “local” is better than “cloud.” You’ll get both, perhaps even simultaneously, once companies figure the economics out.

Leave a Comment