Streaming Games. Is It Really the Future?

[NamelessTed]

I know that Linus seems to think is absolutely the future, but I haven't seen anything in particular to make be believe it will happen anytime remotely soon, if ever.

YES, a lot of people will play games via streaming. I absolutely agree that a lot of people will play games this way, but I think the market for streaming is much more similar to today's console market. There are a lot of people that are willing to trade off paying less to get a "good enough" experience. For these people, streaming will absolutely make sense. It will be accessible to anybody with essentially any computer,phone, tablet in existence with no problem. There will be a lot of games to play over streaming, and those games will be plenty of fun.

But, there is no reason for me to believe that streaming games will be anywhere near as good as running a game locally on a computer will be. The biggest issue is latency, which will absolutely be fixed within the next couple of years. The issue after that is running games at 1080p. From my experience with streaming services, their resolutions absolutely are not 1080p. Full resolution is going to take a lot more bandwidth, now image trying 1440p or higher? Is there any reason to think monitors are stopping at 1440p? Resolutions will continue to increase over time and it is going to take that much more bandwidth to keep up.

Then you have to consider that even at the highest resolution, compress video doesn't look that same as a game being rendered in real time. It should be possible, but it will have to require more bandwidth still. As it is now, colors are bland and washed out. Better video quality requires higher bitrate.

Then what about video settings. I already mention resolution, but what about texture detail? AA? AF? Tesselation? Ambient Occlusion? Plenty of other techniques currently in games, and i am sure there will be plenty more new rendering technologies down the road. Running games at max takes more power. Streaming games solutions don't currently come anywhere near running games at highest visual settings. I would say most compare to their console counterparts from my experience.

I get it, streaming games is going to happen. It is a great way to deliver games to a more "casual" market. And I hate using that word, but whatever. People that care about their gaming experience will continue to want the best gaming experience that they are able to afford. I also think that streaming games will also introduce even more people to gaming which a certain percentage of those people will become enthusiasts. The streaming games market is going to absolutely get huge. But, there will always be something better that won't be streamable whether that involves higher game details, or Virtual Reality, or whatever crazy fun technology might get invented anytime in the future. But then again, maybe I will be wrong and gaming in the future will be strictly prohibited to just streaming them over an internet service.

[Huskie]

This won't happen until we are all running waaaay better connections.

And to be honest, I would rather have my own rig and full control of it, than stream a game. But that's just me, and I haven't really experienced streaming games, so I'm naturally biased.

[MuZeVII]

I used OnLive for a while, which let me play games through Cloud computing. I just wanted to try it out. There was definitely some latency, but not as much as you might expect. I believe it is viable for non-competitive gaming, but for anything relying remotely on your reactions, the latency just screws you over. With fiber and very low pings, it come become a completely viable option. I'm sure the guys running Steam over at Valve will have some concern about it, and a plan for themselves to implement it in the future.

[Swoosh]

Its somewhat viable in the future, but truthfully I can't see it happening anytime soon. The Internet infrastructure just isnt in place in a lot of areas as of yet and I don't think we will see it to a reasonable standard until the latter part of this decade. Even then you have the delay to contend with which will likely play a massive effect in the uptake of cloud gaming on the semi casual gamer. Thats before mentioning the business problems associated with it.

[Donut417]

Wont happen till ISP's stop with Caps and overages. Plus connection's especially in Rural areas is crap. The problem is ISP's don't invest what they once did in to thier networks and after Verizon figured out that Copper had a higher profit margin, most ISP's don't want to do fiber to the house.

[Kilmer02]

My opinion is, we all need to be pressing our ISP's to go to fiber. Regardless of whether or not cloud gaming takes over, we NEED fiber... We're getting ripped off with copper, and the big companies are just hoarding all the money they get from us instead of investing in newer infrastructure, I am open to cloud gaming, but i'll always have my big clunky desktop PC.

[Prettyfinej]

I will use whatever is the best option, and if that becomes cloud gaming then that is how I will play. But if that ever happens, it is going to be quite awhile from now.

[That Norwegian Guy]

I'm sure that streaming will happen at one point. But just as with piracy in today's market, I think streaming will create entirely new types of criminal activity. Some people will see it as their right to have the offline product, law be damned, and if it's sitting on a server somewhere, well, they're going to hack into it or they're going to break into the physical location.

[Rekx]

tried online with my 30/30 fiber optic internet and didn't feal any lag, but still many people still have shit internet so i don't see it happend within 10 years

[MetalLobster]

I don't see it happening for a LONG time because there is not going to be a sudden "poof" all developers go into streaming games. I see too much of a risk that only really big companies can afford to take. Also, very fast internet needs to be more accessible, which will be difficult with places of sparse population densities since ISPs don't see a point in upgrading their infrastructure for a few people. As for us, there has to be some kind of advantage we will love to make switch, otherwise we will all stick with what we have now.

Another point I want to add about ISPs, which many Canadians will agree, get rid of the internet usage cap!

I've just watched a podcast that brought up a good point, being that you constantly need an internet connection. At the moment, it's not that big of a deal, but if a server goes down or gets hit with heavy traffic, you will either have no access to your games or experience so much lag that it's unplayable.

[Christicles]

Yeah, no body is streaming anything reliably unless the infrastructure gets caught up with this century. Two things need to happen for that:

1. The Telecom companies get their fingers out and start upgrading from copper to fiber.

2. ISP's start providing reasonable and reliable services.

[anexcreed]

Internet speeds are still suffering all around the world. And so it will be a long time before this becomes reality