Image Copyright Nvidia Corp. 2020
The very first gaming device I ever properly owned myself was a teal Gameboy Color (even in Europe we got the American spelling) and a copy of Pokemon Blue. I had previous gaming experience going to friends houses and playing PS1 games, but this was a new concept for me. Having a game, that was mine, that I could take anywhere with me without needing a tv was mind blowing for me. Fast-forward to 2020, and portable gaming has an entirely new meaning. Putting aside Nintendo’s offerings for this since they’re committed to portable gaming being a console that’s portable, we’re going to be looking at the newcomers to the portable gaming space as well as an established home console company trying to break into the market.
Of course, when I say “portable gaming” that’s just one part of what’s now called the Cloud Gaming experience. When cloud gaming first introduced itself to the home console market, it was more or less just used as a way to take your save games on the go, think along the lines of a virtual memory card. You save your game, upload that save to the cloud, then when you log in on a different console you can download that save and pick up where you left off. Seems like a good idea in theory right? Well, in execution it didn’t really take the world by storm. For starters the amount of cloud space you could use was extremely limited, so you really had to be sure what saves you wanted to take away with you. Then you needed a subscription to either PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live to take advantage of it. It’s fair to say the industry’s first attempt to integrate cloud gaming into the mainstream didn’t take off as intended.
Fast forward a few years, and it wasn’t Microsoft or Sony who decided to go all in on cloud gaming, it was Google. Announced at GDC 2019, Stadia was announced as Google’s entry into the games console market and would be a digital only console that played it’s games straight from the cloud. The Stadia console itself (or rather the controller) isn’t needed to access Stadia’s games library, you just need an Android device or Chrome on PC and a subscription to the Stadia or Stadia Pro service. Unlike Sony’s attempt at a cloud gaming service PlayStation Now, Stadia doesn’t require a download to play the games on it. However, unlike PS Now, you will need to purchase the games on Stadia before you can play, quite the opposite to PlayStation’s Netflix-style games library on Now. Since it’s launch, Stadia has done…..ok. The general consensus is that when it works, it works great, but you need a stable and fast internet connection at least times or else the performance drops dramatically. It doesn’t help that there isn’t a massive back catalog of games available for Stadia at the moment, although Google have said they plan to release up to 120 games over the course of 2020.
Before we move onto more recent endeavours, let me just explain what a true cloud gaming platform should do. In an ideal world, you shouldn’t need a powerful machine to play the best games, you just need to own the games, a stable internet connection and a device to play them on. No messing around with upgrades or settings or things like that, you just press play and it plays. It’s what gaming companies with Cloud ambitions have been trying to do for years but most haven’t quite got there yet.
Enter Nvidia. Yes, that Nvidia, the ones who primarily make graphics cards and drivers. Not who you’d expect to be leading the way in cloud gaming, but they are. Originally launched as a companion to their Shield console (a cloud based console), they opened it up to Windows, Mac and Android by 2019 in beta and in February 2020 it was fully launched to the public.
Similar to other cloud gaming platforms, GeForce Now is a subscription based service but unlike most others there is a free membership option. On the face of it, it looks like the free option is just a trial but it really isn’t and is perfect for people who don’t have a lot of time to play games but still want to. With the free membership, you get standard access to the Nvidia servers & 1 hour max sessions, but you have an unlimited number of sessions to use so if you want to keep playing you only need to reconnect and you’re back playing again. The paid tier comes in at £4.99 or €5.49 a month, and with it you get priority access to the Nvidia servers, so if there’s a lot of people on you go to the top of the queue, unlimited session length, and RTX On which basically means your games get the 4K treatment with ray-tracing and enhanced shading. Whichever tier you go for, all you need to do is link your Steam/Epic or whatever games store you use to your GeForce Now account, and the games you own are playable through GeForce Now (some games might not be compatible yet but Nvidia are updating the list of compatible games regularly).
In my opinion, this service is a game changer for PC gamers and those who want to play on PC but cant afford to shell out thousands of euro on a high end gaming PC. Knowing that all you need is a copy of the game and a stable internet connection to play the best games on whatever device you own, and that you don’t even need to pay for the service that lets you do it, there really is no downside to signing up.
Microsoft are never ones to let the industry overtake them though, and they too are working on their own cloud gaming platform right now known as Project xCloud. Still in it’s early days, it’s not as clear what the uses of xCloud for the consumer will be when compared to GeForce Now for example, but from various press releases and a very recent partnership with Samsung, Microsoft want to push the boat out with xCloud and make the Xbox brand the go-to brand for cloud gaming. With the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S20 & 5G, Xbox Game Pass subscribers will be able to stream their games to S20 devices over 5G through xCloud, in 4K on the go. From this early viewpoint of xCloud, it looks like Microsoft want Xbox Game Pass and xCloud to go hand-in-hand with each other in the future, which will make for some big competition for Stadia and GeForce Now.
So, in conclusion, is Cloud gaming just another innovation that will eventually be forgotten about or is it here to stay? In my opinion, this way of playing is the way forward for the gaming world. As internet speeds get faster and portable devices get more powerful, cloud gaming will only continue to get better and I think sooner rather than later you wont be able to tell the difference between playing on a console or streaming through the cloud. If things keep going the way they are, cloud gaming services could spell the end of the traditional gaming console as we know it, with some in the industry predicting that the Xbox Series X may be Microsoft’s exist from the console market altogether. Whether that’s true or not remains to be seen but if I were you I’d get used to hearing the term “cloud gaming”, and maybe look into signing up for one of them while they’re still cheap.
Sources:
GeForce Now – https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce-now/
Stadia – https://stadia.google.com
PlayStation Now – https://www.playstation.com/en-us/explore/playstation-now/games/
Project xCloud – https://www.xbox.com/en-IE/xbox-game-pass/cloud-gaming
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