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[DrAspirino]

Well... now that the 3 tech giants, such as Amazon launched Luna, Google launched Stadia last year, and Microsoft launched Xcloud, and projects like Starlink and 5G deployment are starting to come out of "testing phase", one can see the whole picture that CEOs from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Sony saw all the way back in 2018: the focus will be on services (cloud or otherwise).

It now makes all the sense that the "traditional 3" gaming companies (Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft) appeared "all united" on stage in 2018's Games Award ceremony to suspiciously give a brief shared speech about the importance of "coming together" to celebrate the medium: they saw the signs, they knew what is happening now was going to happen soon anyway, whether we like it as gamers or not.

Having that context as a ground for decission-making for these past 2 years, one can see that content and convenience is where the fight is now, so... will we see more studios acquisitions from Amazon, Google, Facebook or even Apple?

What will happen to indies, since now it's much more difficult to create games that fully utilizes the capabilities of today's consoles?

The 2020s decade will see the last remainings of gaming as we know it and will start to take another form. That, I can guarantee.

 

[Gamezone]

Of course it's here to stay, but it's never replacing local hardware.

 

[KingdomHeartsFan]

The only one that's here to stay is Xcloud. Stadia is dead af and Amazon can't even launch a game, their big title (I don't even remember the name) went from early access to full release to early access.

 

[JLB]

Of course it's here to stay, but it's never replacing local hardware.

Never say never.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Cloud streaming is awesome progress but I don’t want laggy gameplay when you play it it lags

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Wal Mart was here to stay when it destroyed local retailers. Doesn't mean I have to like what corporations want to do.

 

[JLB]

By the way, I'd suggest anyone interested in Cloud Gaming to take a look at https://shadow.tech/int/
Its simply a remote computer optimized for gaming. No proprietary shit Xcloud, psnow, luna, stadia, etc.

 

[DESTROYA]

You can’t guarantee anything when up till now all streaming services have failed badly,and what does that tell us?
No one wants that shit .

 

[Gamezone]

Never say never.

Phil Spencer even said it won't happen. Can they beat the speed of light somehow?

 

[Hendrick's]

Of course it's here to stay, but it's never replacing local hardware.

Of course it is. Just a matter of how quickly.

 

[DESTROYA]

By the way, I'd suggest anyone interested in Cloud Gaming to take a look at https://shadow.tech/int/
Its simply a remote computer optimized for gaming. No proprietary shit Xcloud, psnow, luna, stadia, etc.

Fuck that!

 

[JLB]

Phil Spencer even said never.

Congratz to Mr. Spencer, but I believe it will happen in the future. Not now, but eventually.

 

[Azurro]

Let's see the user base first. These services are more of a free server time and space looking for a new market rather than the market looking for a new games delivery mechanism.

I'm extremely skeptical that any of these will genuinely take off, as the videogame market is staunchly conservative. You can bend the business model a bit, but you can't totally turn it on its head, this isn't movies or TV where a bit of lag and lower bitrate isn't a big deal.

 

[IntentionalPun]

Yes it's a "threat."

This idea that it's some forgone conclusion it will be successful is a bit nonsense though. Especially relative to tech companies expectations.

 

[Gamezone]

Of course it is. Just a matter of how quickly.

Sure, but the experience then have to be on par with local hardware. No bullshit, latency or any sort of connectivity issues. And if that happens then we won't care if it's cloud or local based anyway.

 

[DrAspirino]

You can’t guarantee anything when up till now all streaming services have failed badly,and what does that tell us?
No one wants that shit .

You missed my point. The thing I can guarantee is that by the end of the decade, gaming as we know it will transform into something else. Could be cloud, could be local, but will be extremely focused on services.

 

[wvnative]

Xcloud is to complement, not replace traditional gaming

PS now is to complement, not replace traditional gaming

Stadia is already dead

Amazon Luna is unproven

...Where is this "serious threat"?

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

I would argue that PC and mobile phones are slowly replacing all the devices.

 

[Gamezone]

Xcloud is to complement, not replace traditional gaming

PS now is to complement, not replace traditional gaming

Stadia is already dead

Amazon Luna is unproven

...Where is this "serious threat"?

And the best service, GeForce Now is barely supported by publishers.

 

[Stuart360]

Everyone is in PS5/Xbox hype mode at the moment, Probably couldnt of picked a worse time to announce it.

 

[JLB]

Fuck that!

The amazing thing about shadow is that is just a remote computer, so you can buy your steam / windows store games, and play them remotely. What if Stadia shuts down tomorrow? what happen with your games there, in example?

 

[NickFire]

Maybe someday I'll have reason to change my mind, but even without cloud gaming and high speed internet in a well populated area, I still get too many instances of bandwidth / wifi overload to even consider it personally, and that's not even taking into account the inherent additional lag. Regardless of my lack of interest, for those of you keen on this newish option have fun with it.

 

[CeeJay]

What will happen to indies, since now it's much more difficult to create games that fully utilizes the capabilities of today's consoles?

Did the majority of indies ever fully utilise the hardware? A lot of the best indie games run on a potato and are rarely great because of their stunning cutting edge visuals. The best indies are great because they take risks and do things that wouldn't be feasible in the AAA space. If anything, the AAA developers look at what the indie devs are doing and copy the best ones. Look at the Battle Royale genre for a recent example.

 

[IntentionalPun]

Let's see the user base first. These services are more of a free server time and space looking for a new market rather than the market looking for a new games delivery mechanism.

I'm extremely skeptical that any of these will genuinely take off, as the videogame market is staunchly conservative. You can bend the business model a bit, but you can't totally turn it on its head, this isn't movies or TV where a bit of lag and lower bitrate isn't a big deal.

Yes, this.

People blindly saying "Well look at music and movies!" are completely ignoring how different they are on a number of levels.

And... nobody in the movie / TV industry is even really that happy about the change.. they were forced into it by consumers pirating en masse. Movie/TV industry was able to wait it out because of the file sizes whereas even the shittiest internet could download MP3s and the music industry was essentially forced to adopt digital. And they griped about the change for years.. and still gripe about giving up so much money to services they don't own.

There's no huge market force for game streaming.. it's tech companies dreaming up something they think consumers want.. that will grow a market. If it doesn't grow the market, even if it's "popular" it isn't replacing anything.. as the entire boondoggle only makes sense at massive scale..

 

[DESTROYA]

You missed my point. The thing I can guarantee is that by the end of the decade, gaming as we know it will transform into something else. Could be cloud, could be local, but will be extremely focused on services.

Maybe but up until now one of the services has been DOA.
I still doubt hardware based gaming will go away.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

Look at how much money some people are willing to throw at physical stuff and hardware. I'd say it's just like the whole vinyl craze in music. As long as the demand is there / enough whales to bring the cash, there will be companies providing what they want. Worst case is this will be a niche in the future, just like cassette tapes are now.

 

[oagboghi2]

All this next generation talk has been about so far is services, services, services.

How about showing some games that will compel me to give a shit?

 

[DESTROYA]

The amazing thing about shadow is that is just a remote computer, so you can buy your steam / windows store games, and play them remotely. What if Stadia shuts down tomorrow? what happen with your games there, in example?

No one gives a shit about Stadia and only idiots signed up for it ( heres looking at you V Voost Kain ) the pricing doomed it from the start and the lag and latency put the nails in the coffin.

 

[lastmessiah]

Can't come soon enough to be honest. Fixed architecture "black box" gaming has led to nothing but stagnation and poor development in the past decade.

 

[The Hamburglar]

it was dog shit until xbox decided to do it. all of a sudden its the future.

 

[reinking]

The only one that's here to stay is Xcloud. Stadia is dead af and Amazon can't even launch a game, their big title (I don't even remember the name) went from early access to full release to early access.

I would not bet my house against Amazon. Even if they can grab a portion of their base 34+ million Fire TV and 150+ million Prime users it is a big start. This is not like Stadia or OnLive. It does not require a hardware investment and you do not have to buy the games. Anyone will be able to just try it out. I am not a big Amazon fan but I believe they will give MS a run for their money in the streaming space. They can potentially corner the causal market without much effort.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

cloud gaming is not the future, it's the past. long before personal computing was even invented, cloud computing was the way of the world. people rented out hours of time on a machine. the early internet worked the same way.

people didn't like that. they wanted control. thus the personal computer industry was invented. if everyone stuck to timeshare computing, we wouldn't have Apple, we wouldn't have Microsoft.

people want to own their data, pure and simple. it was true 50 years ago, it'll be true 50 years from now.

People blindly saying "Well look at music and movies!" are completely ignoring how different they are on a number of levels.

plus, the disastrous effects it has had. i mean, it killed the music industry. absolutely destroyed it. does anyone think popular music is good now?

same with movies tbh. Netflix and streaming have had a terrible impact on the medium. both on the aesthetic/formal level and storytelling.

 

[DESTROYA]

Can't come soon enough to be honest. Fixed architecture "black box" gaming has led to nothing but stagnation and poor development in the past decade.

And how will cloud based gaming or services fix that stagnation?

 

[Andodalf]

Folks who say streaming has no future are probably the same that said no one would ever want to buy digital games. Lo and behold, in 2020 Sony and MS are both putting out all digital machines. Streaming has a clear future and in the long term view, most all consumer level computing will shift to the cloud.

 

[semicool]

Yeah but xCloud is 2 fold. 1 of the folds is that you can stream games you either physical or digitally own. So you can play it native or stream....ie....options. The game pass games streaming is nice too except those are temporary. But being able to stream games I own is just an option, it's nice. I don't care as much about game pass to be honest because I like owning my games.

 

[Self]

As long as the infrastructure is lacking (for many it is) nothing of interest is happening. See you in 20 years cloudgaming.

 

[lastmessiah]

And how will cloud based gaming or services fix that stagnation?

No more fixed architecture underpowered mass produced cheap boxes as the base standard for one.

 

[DrAspirino]

cloud gaming is not the future, it's the past. long before personal computing was even invented, cloud computing was the way of the world. people rented out hours of time on a machine. the early internet worked the same way.

people didn't like that. they wanted control. thus the personal computer industry was invented. if everyone stuck to timeshare computing, we wouldn't have Apple, we wouldn't have Microsoft.

people want to own their data, pure and simple. it was true 50 years ago, it'll be true 50 years from now.

plus, the disastrous effects it has had. i mean, it killed the music industry. absolutely destroyed it. does anyone think popular music is good now?

same with movies tbh. Netflix and streaming have had a terrible impact on the medium. both on the aesthetic/formal level and storytelling.

That's true, but you also have to consider that people today have a different mentality and are willing to trust and give their info and data to those big tech companies, in exchange of convenience and ubiquity. It's Facebook and Google entire raison d'être.

 

[Alebrije]

I guess most of big markets (countries) have grear internet connections for this kind of service but there are other big /medium markets like Mexico , Brasil that do not have infrastucture to support the service. I am talking about 10megabites connections on average with changes from 5 to 10.

Hope for next gen (PS6 / Series X2) we still have consoles and physical disks. Think both forms of gaming can continue since market for physical gaming is huge.

 

[Clear]

Its like mobile. Its here for the long term but its going to change the product on it by its very nature.

Its the natural successor to the whole f2p service model.

 

[DESTROYA]

No more fixed architecture underpowered mass produced cheap boxes as the base standard for one.

What console is underpowered and cheap ?
Next gen we’re going to get most games to play in 4k , how is that underpowered and cheap when consoles will be the most expensive they have ever been .

 

[lastmessiah]

What console is underpowered and cheap ?
Next gen we’re going to get most games to play in 4k , how is that underpowered and cheap when consoles will be the most expensive they have ever been .

You're missing the point. If cloud gaming becomes ubiquitous, the hardware behind the scenes can be upgraded every year or even month. Constant updates and improvements can be made. No more waiting 8-10 years for a new "generation".

 

[MiguelItUp]

The idea of cloud gaming is definitely appealing for when you're on the go, but honestly, the only one that seems to have any weight to it is Microsoft. It's also a brand that's been involved with gaming for quite some time. But Stadia, and Luna? Eh....

Stadia has already shown it's not doing so well, could it bounce back? Potentially, but they'd have to improve performance, change their pricing, and fight through the negative attention their brand received.

Luna is still incredibly new, and could be successful if they play their cards right. I feel like the Twitch integration could really get them somewhere. But it all depends on how it all pans out. Even then I don't think they're gonna be a #1 or some kind of miraculous platform.

Microsoft is in the best place and will continue to be unless they misstep or someone trumps them, but I don't know when that will be. I just highly doubt it'll be Stadia or Luna that does it. Not to mention I don't think we'll see a butt ton of attempts from other companies as it's a huge risk across the board.

 

[DESTROYA]

You're missing the point. If cloud gaming becomes ubiquitous, the hardware behind the scenes can be upgraded every year or even month. Constant updates and improvements can be made. No more waiting 8-10 years for a new "generation".

Not really , you think they are upgrading servers every year/month ? Lol
That would be extremely expensive to do and not economically viable when top tier GPU’s/CPU’s cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars . They would have to raise costs all around.

 

[Azurro]

I would not bet my house against Amazon. Even if they can grab a portion of their base 34+ million Fire TV and 150+ million Prime users it is a big start. This is not like Stadia or OnLive. It does not require a hardware investment and you do not have to buy the games. Anyone will be able to just try it out. I am not a big Amazon fan but I believe they will give MS a run for their money in the streaming space. They can potentially corner the causal market without much effort.

I'm very skeptical of the claim that "anybody can just try it out". First, because the biggest market, cell phone users, need to pair up a controller, as the control scheme is way too complicated for a touchscreen and we all know that not just getting a proper controller but also pairing it with a cellphone is too much to ask from the regular user.

Who carries around a Bluetooth controller anyway? A very similar situation would happen with a mainstream laptop, while anyone on PC with the proper equipment most likely already has good enough hardware to run games locally. You want to stream to your TV? No standard there to have it backed in, which means buying a dongle plus controller.

Now, you want to target the traditional demographic? The whole console business has technological advancements as part of its core identity. You can't get away with a kind of shitty stream and laggy controls, this demographic wants impressive visuals ever since the 16 bit machines arrived, with better visuals as a major selling point. We still argue over silly details and manage to find new things to argue about, even if only a tiny minority actually understand what those specs mean. Hell, spec reveals are a huge, huge part of the unveiling of a new machine.

I just don't see it. It's difficult to try, has unsatisfactory business models so far and provides a very noticeably inferior experience compared to locally running the games.

 

[Kuranghi]

I'm not worried, in fact:

 

[nush]

Amazon Luna is unproven

It's a "Me too" service, everyone else is doing it, maybe we should try and get in on the action.

 

[lastmessiah]

Not really , you think they are upgrading servers every year/month ? Lol
That would be extremely expensive to do and not economically viable when top tier GPU’s/CPU’s cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars . They would have to raise costs all around.

The fact that processing power is coming from a server farm is already a huge power advantage over a console and in most cases a PC. Network latency is the bottleneck right now. Big tech companies upgrade their servers on a 3-5 year cycle because it is often more expensive to keep older hardware that uses more electricity. And that's not even taking into account small component upgrades.

 

[wvnative]

And the best service, GeForce Now is barely supported by publishers.

And that sucks cause geforce now is lit

 

[mikefrails]

I remember when saying you believed in digital game libraries would get you laughed out the room.