Streaming That Frees High-End Games From Requiring High-End Hardware Is The Next Big Thing

Top game industry execs are universally positive about the prospect of streaming services for games and believe they can expand the audience.

[Razzer]

"The games created for those 200 million machines will soon be accessible to the two billion."

Why does my gut tell me that the quality of gaming is going to take a major nosedive when this happens? Probably because those 2 billion currently believe games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush are the pinnacle of gaming.

[Muzikguy]

Quality will definitely take a nosedive. I’m not for this future of theirs at all. When it happens, they won’t be getting my money anymore

[fiveby9]

There will still be a market for high-end gaming. It's hard to believe a one size fits all strategy is what we are doomed to suffer. We don't have one size fits all automobiles. But still, I do see your concern. The catering to "filthy casuals" may be good to expand the market to nontraditional gamers could have a negative impact on companies wanting to invest in the high end. It feels like that is where EA is headed with the recent announcement of C&C Rivals. Mobile gaming or loot box ridden games are not what I care for.

[ImportGamer3004]

Due to the growing greed of many of these gaming companies i've gotten far pickier about what modern games i buy and as it is i've been buying more retro games nowadays instead. Instead of my list of anticipated releases being a big number it has gone down considerably in the past 6 months compared to last year with all the amazing games released on PS4.

[battlegrog]

Clearly you have not tried nvidas gforce now game streaming service. It shows the potential and the pure facts of how clear it is that gaming is indeed going to be main stream game streaming in the next few years. Just like movies and music. Ive been going on and on about it but some people just cant get over the past. Also MS is going to be the first company to build a cloud gaming structure in home service at a massive level.They have like the most amount of servers around the world and some of the best infrastructure. Any other company that has tried to do it was only simply using someone else servers.

[Razzer]

Clearly you didn’t read what I said. Didn’t say a thing about the validity of the technology. I’m talking about the transformation of the target audience for these publishers and a paradigm shift in the type of games that are made for this new, expanded or “mainstream”, as you say, group of gamers. Go on and on then. Let me when it comes around how you like playing a 4K version of Tiny Wings.

[rainslacker]

Next few years is being extremely generous.

Streaming videos are already clogging up the internet bandwidth, and ISP's are desperately trying to get it back, or make more money off it. You throw in a couple billion gamers, and there simply isn't enough bandwidth. The governments of the world decide how much of that bandwidth is allowed to be used for certain things....as in the total bandwidth of the internet. Doesn't matter if these ISP's upgrade their own lines, the backbone isn't ready, and won't be anytime soon.

And no, MS won't be the first to build a massive streaming service. Sony has already done that. The number of servers they have is irrelevant, because it's not like all those servers will be used for gaming. If they were, then they'd need a lot more servers to handle a couple billion people. They'd need more to even handle the 140 million gamers that exist on consoles now. Azure is certainly a capable server network, but consider the amount of information that is being processed in games. Constant and heavy calculations. It's not like business software that only runs in spurts.

[PhoenixUp]

I don’t see that happening. Gaming as it is now is more accessible for people who don’t always have the internet and unlimited data plans.

[Palitera]

Also permanent input lag.

[SierraGuy]

Just thinking about the input lag on these "high end" games with regards to online multiplayer makes me sick to my stomach.

Replace load times with buffering.

[crazyCoconuts]

If next big thing is 5 years or so away then maybe. Current mobile and public WiFi bandwidth and reliability will keep this from becoming mainstream for the time being.

[Sgt_Slaughter]

Please, stop. I don't like how people are starting to shove online only/streaming down everyone's throats when national/worldwide infrastructures aren't universally stable enough, let along the negative effect of digital and the input lag streaming creates.

[ImportGamer3004]

agreed, and i'm tired of the online only thing myself personally. IN reality i mainly play singleplayer games exclusively above all else. I don't give a damn about games like Overwatch which is overrated as hell.

[Kumakai]

As long as you have a blazing fast connection.... I have a 400mb/s line and I still have had streaming problems with game streaming services like psnow and even sometimes simpler things like Netflix or remoting into my work computer so... I’d be pretty concerned.

[SegaGamer]

Exactly. This future they have planned is all based on the assumption that the whole world will have this mythical perfect internet connection. These people are living in a fantasy world.

[rainslacker]

It's really more about lag than bandwidth.

Granted, for all the people who are so into the 4K hype right now, I can't see them being happy with streaming. 4K streaming is nowhere near as good as local 4K, even if that 4K is just some checkerboarded or upscaled thing.

The bandwidth in delivering that much 4K content across the internet would be prohibitive. Even at 1080 it would be. Couple millions of people playing 1080 content, with strained internet servers where you have other video streaming services battling with ISP's for bandwidth, and you have a recipe for a traffic jam of epic proportions for everyone to revel in.

We're probably a couple decades away from streaming being a viable, full time solution, and that's because it takes about that long for the governments of the world to get sh*t done, and it's going to be on them to build the infrastructure of the internet to the point to make it possible. Unless ISP are willing to make their own major international networks which cost in the hundreds of billions....which they don't have to, because the governments will do it for them.

When I see things like this, I'm made extremely aware of just how little people know about how the internet is structured. They know their ISP sucks, or its good. but don't have a clue on how all these different networks that make up the internet work together, and who actually has control over the internet.

[Fritzwochel]

Until we have some kind of quantum entanglement transfer protocol (which means instantaneous transfer between every distance) this is unacceptable for me. The current transfer protocols with fiber optical cables adds too much latency if you live a bit away from the data centers.

[Tross]

Not to mention we may be losing net neutrality.

[rainslacker]

Realistically, they just need transfer protocols that are faster than the current controller input methods allow....and they have to be fast enough to deliver back an image with enough speed to mimic how fast it could be rendered locally....which would be up to 60 times a second depending on how the game is coded.

Even a local machine has lag....but is significantly less than what online provides.

[Chaos_Order]

Yes, because when you want precision handling and tight controls it's best to play with a persistent and varying level of input lag.

[RSKnight]

I don't see that happening, ever.
"The games created for those 200 million machines will soon be accessible to the two billion."
And I ask: what hardware will be running those games for 2 billion? I think that most people are forgetting something when they talk about streaming games, that games need a hardware to run, games don't just be magically "streamed" like movies from Netflix servers. If 2 billion people will be streaming AAA quality games, there has to be somewhere the capable hardware running them. It's not just about having good internet to stream these games.
And that makes me ask why game developers will want to absorb the cost of that hardware, when cosumers have been happily and willingly paying for it for all these years.
This thing about streaming AAA quality games on any device will never happen, OR, these games will never compare in visual quality to actual games running on you own console/PC.

[Cobra951]

Amazing how no one ever seems to think of this. If a billion people are playing Fortnite through streaming, then a billion instances of the game are running on the streaming services. Virtual machines can only go so far, as each game instance will need the processing power of a competent game PC all to itself.

[rainslacker]

They're not likely to have all 2 billion playing at once. I mean, even with 100+ million users on consoles today, or 5 times that many on PC, not all of them are playing at once, and not all of them are playing demanding games.

However, you are correct. The amount of power used within gaming far outweighs business applications. Even assuming 50 million concurrent users, you're talking about a tremendous amount of computing power just to provide people with games. Someone has to pay for that. The servers aside, streaming games is not a cheap proposal on the large scale. It's something that will build over time, and take a while to be profitable.

In any case, I think assuming 2 billion people playing games is a bit optimistic of anyone. That's over 1/4 of the worlds population. Only half of the worlds population even has access to the internet, but not even 1/4 of that is fast enough for streaming games.

[RyanShutup]

...in 20 years maybe...

[Muzikguy]

If you want to free a high end machine up then you’re not going to get high end gaming in its place. I don’t understand the constant draw to get on every device possible. These people that only see numbers and nothing else don’t seem to be thinking about the future very well.

[rainslacker]

They're thinking like business people blinded by the sight of money. They see how they want people to play games...not how people actually play them. They've been doing that since last gen, where they decided that they wanted to push digital, and acted like it was going to be all the rage really soon. yet 10 years later now, and digital game sales still don't even make up half of the revenue from new games sales.

[Muzikguy]

It’s always about money. You can’t tell people how to enjoy games. What kind of games would they be? Surely not ones that many would find enjoyable. There’s always a disconnect with your base when all you care about is money. This entire thing would be a huge step backwards.

[Cmv38]

So we'll lose out on true ownership and quality gaming, simultaneously. Well crap.

[Tross]

Or we could just wave goodbye to those companies while we collectively agree to boycott their services.

[Fearmonkey]

Always amazes me how gaming journalists and companies proclaim their opinions as fact and it never works out, Single player is dead, PC's are dead, consoles are dead, streaming is the future then dies, now streaming is the future again.

[Kokyu]

Nope not for a few more decades anywayb

[Cobra951]

It also frees you of that pesky chore of owning your games. Now you don't get them anymore. All you get is a movie of your gameplay some (hopefully short) time after it happened in a remote system somewhere. You also don't need to worry about which games are available to you at any given time. Someone else will decide what list of games are available to you, and how long each of those will be available. They will also decide how much you will pay forever monthly, or at least as long as you want to continue gaming. What a wonderful future that would be, if only we allowed it to happen.

[SegaGamer]

Yep. Streaming, the dictatorship of gaming.

[Vizigoth04]

Luckily, PlayStation already has their hands about 600+ games deep with experience in game streaming. They have it on PS4 And PC. Not sure about Mac. They had it for PS3 and and select Samsung and Sony blu-ray players but I think the quality of the stream wasnt that good. But evidently if the world is now looking at streaming as a thing now Sony can reestablish partnerships. They have smart TVs with Netflix and Vudu. It the games that will need need good internet and possibly TVs with the best builds to stream a game effortlessly without lag. But nonetheless PlayStation has great experience in this area but also in quality unique exclusives.

[rainslacker]

And as long as Sony continues to just offer it as an option, and not as their primary business model....even if it some day surpasses their current one, then I'm good with them having PSNow. I probably won't use it outside free trials, but they're free to go that route.

Other companies are as well. I'm looking forward to the day that every publisher and console maker has some sort of service to provide streaming, or "free monthly games", or whatever, and people get tired of it. People are giving up paying for cable in droves because they're tired of paying for stuff they don't use. How can a bunch of streaming services be better for gaming? People will pick and choose, and they're going to choose who offers the most at a reasonable price, and they're unlikely to pay for a service where they only get one or two games they may want to play. I don't see how that's good, because it means only the big players really get ahead in the industry. As it is now, one can just buy the games they want, and play them. That seems so much simpler.

The industry is going to be crushed under it's own weight and hubris, leaving only a few making it a virtual monopoly.

[CyberRekkr]

I'll be picking up a new hobby for Sure if this happens. I llive outside the city, So I'm using my T-Mibile unlimited hotspot to game online. It does okay most of the time, But constant streaming may suck. My Xbox One X is a broadband whore and eats it up. My Ps4 Pro works much better on it, Because of how it's Os runs. Switch does okay too. Xbox sucks on it. You can feel the Damn lag in the controller because of it's proprietary Wi-Fi connection which sucks when compared to PlayStation & Switch Bluetooth controllers.. Xbox is dodoo!

[Tross]

I will no longer support any company who tries to shove game streaming down my throat. If that means having to do without series like BF or AC then so be it. I'd rather make it clear to companies that they don't get to decide for me what gaming looks like for me. I get to decide that. I'll support companies like Sony's first party studios who aren't pushing for game streaming. If it comes to it, I suppose I'm willing to leave my longtime hobby behind, but that will only be if absolutely every company collectively decides to go the streaming GaaS route. Personally, I'll be laughing if companies like EA go bankrupt after they try to become a service.

[Acecalibur]

They better think again. Not happening without a fight. Im not having it bro. This is just a way for them to get that easy "netflix" type money and having iron fist control of gaming. They wont have to worry about piracy or used game sales. Im sure Nintendo is all over this. (RE7 rumors) Sony already testing with PS Now under our noses. If this becomes the new wave, it would be the end of gaming as WE know it. Younger generations will fall right in line. People have already given up entertainment ownership with Spotify and Apple Music and Tidal. Its time to wake up.

[rainslacker]

It will be a gradual change. They can't force this stuff. They'd lose too much money, and likely become irrelevant.

Case in point, despite it being a different thing, MS tried to force DRM and always online. If they didn't backpeddle, it would of ruined them completely this gen. Now, they're taking it slower, and doing it through games which get people accustomed to the things that their original policies offered. Other publishers have been doing this as well. Their hope is that the revenue from such things will be more than enough that they can abandon the less profitable and riskier SP market....or at least focus on it much less. Just look at the major publishers this gen compared to last. EA, Activision, and Ubisoft are making quite a few less big SP games this gen, while they're making quite a few more high profile MP, connected experiences.

[ImportGamer3004]

The day in the event this crap were to ever happen is the day i quit buying new modern videogames altogether. As it is i'm considering making this my last generation of buying modern videogames as the industry is and as usual looking for ways to psychologically trick customers into buying whatever craptastic schemes these people come up with. They say "Games are too expensive to make" yet feel they need to add in Microtransactions, and season passes. Did you know that these gaming companies don't pay taxes at all and make tens of billions of dollars far more than the movie industry yet they still feel the need to put in all these paywalls in $60 games.

I'm tired of it, and that's why i've been buying retro games most of the time nowadays as at least games of the past are great and don't have microtransactions, and season passes in their releases like modern games do these days.

[Nebaku]

It will be a big thing, but it's not the NEXT big thing. I'd check back in 50 years when the means to actually do it efficiently are there.

[iplay1up2]

Not going to happen.....Lag, from the servers will ruin some games. Also internet speeds. I have "50MPS" from ATT, even with my Xbox One X hard wired to the net, my speeds are all over the place. Lets face it, many people don't even have 20mps.....

[isarai]

no it's not, some things handeled serverside for online games like BFs water and ragdolls sure, but streaming? the infrastructure just isn't there yet to make this a viable option