I personally think that game-streaming is a dead-on-arrival idea, between the inherent latency and input delay (even with fiber optics, to say nothing of the shitty connections large swaths of the US population has, to say nothing of poorer countries the world over) and the compromises that will surely have to be made to fidelity and framerate in order to shove enough data down to the tube fast enough for a coherent experience.
But if we get even a single piece of new research or technology out of this, then I say go for it.
At the end of the day, it's not my money they're blowing on this.
All wars must end eventually
I think the real reason all these AAA studios/publishers tripping over themselves trying to make streaming games happen is because if they go the route of cloud gaming only it would present a temporary license that can't be sold again with an impossible to circumvent DRM and without any possibility of any kind of modding or content ripping.
All that with the caveat of always online, downgraded experience and inherent delay.
(Though it would prevent cheating to some extent, to be fair)
Zero control on the side of the customer with total control in hands of the devs or their publishers.
And now Nintendo has to join...
Who is Nintendo gonna join?
Resident Evil 7 on Switch is a cloud-only game and it sucks balls. I really hope this is not the future of gaming.
It only sucks because the servers are in Japan and nowhere near you
That makes it worse, but it wouldn't be as good as a game installed on the machine in any situation.
Nintendo has been very friendly with Microsoft lately, but they and Sony have been as hostile as they've ever been since the '90s. In fact, I'm kinda surprised that Microsoft and Sony are even doing this, and I can see tension between Nintendo and Sony making this rocky if Nintendo joins the fold.
It sucks even if you are in Japan.
Ah! This brings me flashbacks trying to play The Last Of Us at my friends house to experience the story together by me bringing the game and my PS3 over.
Now their TV isn't the best and we kinda fucked up and forgot to put the TV into Gaming Mode and the input lag made it just unbearable and it wasn't the controls as I once tried TLOU multiplayer at another friends house I topped the match. The input lag got so horrible that even my friends spectating on the couch could see it.
And that basis of experiencing input lag on a direct system makes clear that Content Streaming for games has no place, except for the Cage'an or TellTale-like interactive cinema games.
But I hope they go all in on trying to make Cloud Solutions and Content Streaming viable, because it'll fail horribly with all games requiring any sort of accuracy and good game-feel will be absolutely impossible to achieve.
Welp, might happen after all.
https://www.gonintendo.com/stories/335678-rumor-nintendo-working-with-microsoft-s-azure-cloud-computing
unless they come up with light speed internet with less tgan 20ms of delay this isnt going anywhere.
even if this becomes the only way to play console games, people will stick to the last generation or move to pc.
ok so why the heck do they need streaming content when they sell HARDWARE powerful enough to run games natively?
It could be possible they're working on a hybrid solution where the core of the game is played locally but a large chunk of taxing processing is handled server-side. That way the game wouldn't suffer so much from the latency issues and they still retain control over reselling and piracy as the game wouldn't be playable without the server-side processing.
Probably a response to Google's Stadia just in case it won't fail miserably.
Also they would love to completely lock you out of having physical copies and switch to indefinite rental model / monthly subscriptions model.
wowie that's actually ingenious if let's say all game objects are local and everything else is streamed like some sort of rotoscope.
Fuck this streaming shit. Its bad enough that games are pretty much fully digital now so you don't own them, and games as a service basically meaning a lot of games have always online DRM.
We don't need more games that just die and are completely unplayable after a few years.
For a moment I forgot I had a plugin "Cloud to Butt" plugin installed on my Chrome browser..
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/226392/66203188-26dd-4a26-a9f1-6b9d21c218b8/image.png
This seems like a good idea, but one that is ahead of its time. Streaming game content is different from streaming movies in that it requires a much better, more constant connection and more feedback between the server and where the content is being streamed. Right now, the wifi technology is not advanced enough for such a service to be globally viable. Stream-only game services are best left for PC.
We may be seeing the end of regular consoles as we know it. Consoles have always been made for mass martket appeal and physical releases. Having a stream-only console would change the whole point of a standard console. Today's consoles aren't just gaming anymore. They are also heavy on streaming apps and other sources of entertainment. People are using consoles for much more than gaming. They are using it like a gaming alternative/supplement for streaming devices like Roku and FireTv.
The way I see it. Depending on how the streaming industry goes, there won't be any dedicated consoles anymore. Instead, everything will be merged into smart devices. We now have SmartTvs that listen to our voice and have access to a multitude of streaming services like Netflix. I can see, instead of using a console to play games, the gaming service will instead be available on smart devices everywhere. You can just plug in a keyboard or controller to any compatible device and play instantly.
As for exclusives, developers might instead do what the streaming services are doing and make dedicated subscription services with exclusive content.
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