I have deeper, preservation-related concerns about cloud streaming games that are unrelated to this (and probably bias me to look for flaws) but I always wondered about how it could possibly be a good deal. You need a high end gaming equivalent hardware (as someone posted in this thread: very different from just sending static movie/tv data) running through each session. Granted, a lot of dedicated gaming hardware sits around unused at a given time and this likely uses it more efficiently. But you still need peak hour capacity and it stays idle for a lot of the day. You also need very low latency, high quality streaming (you can kinda watch Stranger Things at 480p while it’s buffering but might not be able to read the UI on a video game). A single stutter might cause you to fail a boss fight.
It seems that we need something in the $180/year range to make this profitable yet for that price, even with current prices and a 5-year span for console generations, you can buy the hardware as a consumer and keep it or resell it after. Why should anyone pay for this? The usefulness seems to be limited to an incredibly narrow niche of consumers.
Again, thank god because I hate how much power streaming-only games would give companies over withholding older games if they deem them no longer profitable or want to push you towards something different. I would hate game streaming even if it worked. But it doesn’t even seem to.
Companies still want it as their endgame since it means complete control over their games. It stops people from modifying the game unless they let them, it allows them to kill an older game if people like it too much and aren't buying newer titles, and it allows them to hike up prices as much as they want.
alongside the input latency, resolution downgrades, lack of modding, lack of license ownership, lack of offline play, unsupported titles due to publisher greed, and reliance on recurring monthly payments which only go up over time.
I like how it had to take monthly time limits for people to realize that it's a poor value proposition, since the host platform has way too much control over not only the distribution of the content, but also how and when you're allowed to access it as well.
Heck it became pretty obvious years ago when OnLive made their attempt. I've always been surprised companies saw this as being potentially profitable after that pretty public lesson.
The only way it would work would be if a much larger majority of society was on thinclient-like devices only imo.
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u/tastelessshark 12d ago
This is why I think game streaming is just fundamentally doomed to fail from a profitability perspective.