Games Could Be Accessible To All Via Cloud Streaming, Claims Final Fantasy 16 Director Naoki Yoshida

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Games Could Be Accessible To All Via Cloud Streaming, Claims Final Fantasy 16 Director Naoki Yoshida  | MMORPG.com

If Final Fantasy 14 and 16's director had any say in the future, he'd knock down the barriers of gaming--with cloud gaming.  

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Quizzical

Streaming games from the cloud is the future and always will be--always the future and never the present.

I've talked in the past about the problem of latency. That hasn't gone away, and for games that are at all twitchy, remains as intractable as ever.

But this time, I want to talk about the very limited libraries that game streaming services offer. I don't think that Google Stadia ever had a single game that I was interested in. Nvidia GeForce Now at least has several, but not very many.

Remember how twenty years ago, people thought that streaming was the future of movies? You would sign up for one streaming service and all the shows that you wanted would be there. How did that work out?

Now that streaming television and movies is more or less the present, you don't just sign up for one streaming service and get everything you want. You either sign up for a whole bunch of them or accept that most of what you want to watch isn't on the streaming service that you have. What makes you think that games will be any different?

Indeed, streaming computer games is much, much harder than streaming videos. It's not just about latency. It's also about having powerful servers to run the game, and having all the games installed and ready to go on all the servers. And not just installed, but patched with the latest version, which games do often. Or a bunch of old versions, for when newer patches break games. Movies and television shows don't need patches like that. That's why streaming services don't offer very many games.

There is some cloud streaming service that I forget the name of that gives you space to download and install whatever games you want on their servers. That does get rid of the problem of a limited game selection, but at the expense of also losing nearly all of the touted benefits of game streaming.

Game streaming over a LAN, such as from a gaming desktop or a game console to whatever mobile device you like, is far more technically feasible than game streaming from the cloud. But for the most part, the companies pushing streaming are not interested in this at all.

maskedweasel

I stream games all the time. It's my preferred way to play a lot of games. 

• You never have to worry about updating the game. 

• You never have to wait hours for it to download. 

• The games launch quickly and I never have to troubleshoot issues

Services vary. I've used pretty much all of them. I think the one that still bothers me the most is Xbox cloud. It's the only one where I still notice really bad input issues for some games.

Geforce now I use everyday. It's the best out there. I can stream games to any device and they perform very well, without noticeable input lag. Shadow cloud I used for a while too because you can install almost any game, but there are some games that can't be installed on a virtual machine... not any games I play but the performance was pretty good there too it just happens to be the most expensive option and not worth it long term. 

All good options

But there are also games going cloud native too which will probably become more common in the future too. There are way too many benefits to doing that, and with the kind of advanced compression these days, visuals aren't bad at all. 

Nanfoodle

I find Straming games comes down to one thing. Testing a game before you download it, just to see if you like it. The tech is just not there yet. Sum it up in one word, latency. 

ValdemarJ

I've started playing some games through cloud streaming via Xbox GamePass. It works great, better than Stadia ever did for me. The biggest downside is if the demand is high then there is a wait queue.

I have a lot of drive space on the console and PC so if I play a game long term, then I install it, but I don't have to. One of the best uses of cloud gaming for me at the moment is to play long enough to decide whether I feel like installing it locally or not.

There is still a lot of room for improvement, but the tech is maturing at a noticeable pace.

Quizzical

maskedweasel said:

I stream games all the time. It's my preferred way to play a lot of games. 

There's an enormous difference between playing some games via streaming and playing all games via streaming.  The former doesn't prevent you from needing hardware that can run games yourself, which is supposedly a major benefit of streaming, as you'll still need it for the games that you don't play via streaming.

Also, I'm skeptical that you simultaneously have an Internet connection fast enough to make streaming work well, but also slow enough that game downloads take hours.  My game patches and downloads rarely take more than a few minutes.

But if you have a lot of experience with this, then I have a couple of questions for you.

1)  How does modding work with game streaming?

2)  What happens if a new patch breaks the game?  If you installed it on your local box, you can often decline to install the new patch, or even revert back to an old version.  Can you do that with game streaming?

Sovrath

Quizzical said:

maskedweasel said:

I stream games all the time. It's my preferred way to play a lot of games. 

There's an enormous difference between playing some games via streaming and playing all games via streaming.  The former doesn't prevent you from needing hardware that can run games yourself, which is supposedly a major benefit of streaming, as you'll still need it for the games that you don't play via streaming.

Also, I'm skeptical that you simultaneously have an Internet connection fast enough to make streaming work well, but also slow enough that game downloads take hours.  My game patches and downloads rarely take more than a few minutes.

But if you have a lot of experience with this, then I have a couple of questions for you.

1)  How does modding work with game streaming?

2)  What happens if a new patch breaks the game?  If you installed it on your local box, you can often decline to install the new patch, or even revert back to an old version.  Can you do that with game streaming?

I think the average person doesn't concern themselves with those thing. They certainly don't scrutinize different patches.

Most likely don't mod their games either.

Still, the portion that mod games won't be able to do that unless there is a way to have an account on the streaming company's site and mods are added to the client before streaming. That could be possible.

maskedweasel

Quizzical said:

maskedweasel said:

I stream games all the time. It's my preferred way to play a lot of games. 

There's an enormous difference between playing some games via streaming and playing all games via streaming.  The former doesn't prevent you from needing hardware that can run games yourself, which is supposedly a major benefit of streaming, as you'll still need it for the games that you don't play via streaming.

Also, I'm skeptical that you simultaneously have an Internet connection fast enough to make streaming work well, but also slow enough that game downloads take hours.  My game patches and downloads rarely take more than a few minutes.

But if you have a lot of experience with this, then I have a couple of questions for you.

1)  How does modding work with game streaming?

2)  What happens if a new patch breaks the game?  If you installed it on your local box, you can often decline to install the new patch, or even revert back to an old version.  Can you do that with game streaming?

Think of game streaming like a console game. You can't really mod unless the mods are available through the game somehow. 

If a patch breaks the game somehow then it's up to the cloud system to handle it. 

I've experienced problems where the cloud was down while the game was going through some updates. Usually Nvidia gets updates patched in quickly but they optimize the game for their system. 

You can modify the in game graphics too, but there are obvious limitations. 

I would play 90% of my games through the cloud if I could. My connection is a 1gbps fiber connection. But I have played over a 5g connection too. 

At best it's indistinguishable from playing locally, even the compression of the video is so slight that you wouldn't notice unless you know what to look for. At worst the controls stick and the latency is poor. 

If the latency is too poor or the connection is too spotty most services automatically adjust visuals and in those cases the visuals are horrible. 

GeForce now has their lowest tier free for an hour. I'd recommend trying it. You won't get the high def streaming experience but I'd be surprised if you came back and said the game was unplayable even if your connection speed is slow. You can check how much GeForce now uses in their menu. It's really not that much bandwidth 

Asm0deus

I tried geforce now and the wait queue for new world was sucky AND the game took much, much longer to start than just starting from the client already on my PC.

Its a semi okay solution if you can't have a real gaming desktop PC or stuck with a non gaming laptop perhaps.

The real reason to push to "streaming" games is to do away with this pesky idea that when you buy a game its yours to play with how and when you want kind of like how you can sub to amazon prime video or netflix and as such have access to certain movies but may lose that access depending on licensing conflicts etc etc.

It seem to be the new push to want to ditch a physical medium so companies can fork you over more with a digital on you don't "own".

Companies would love it if everything was bought as a service that can be lost or taken away from you or upped in price to keep access to etc.

Quizzical

Sovrath said:

Quizzical said:

maskedweasel said:

I stream games all the time. It's my preferred way to play a lot of games. 

There's an enormous difference between playing some games via streaming and playing all games via streaming.  The former doesn't prevent you from needing hardware that can run games yourself, which is supposedly a major benefit of streaming, as you'll still need it for the games that you don't play via streaming.

Also, I'm skeptical that you simultaneously have an Internet connection fast enough to make streaming work well, but also slow enough that game downloads take hours.  My game patches and downloads rarely take more than a few minutes.

But if you have a lot of experience with this, then I have a couple of questions for you.

1)  How does modding work with game streaming?

2)  What happens if a new patch breaks the game?  If you installed it on your local box, you can often decline to install the new patch, or even revert back to an old version.  Can you do that with game streaming?

I think the average person doesn't concern themselves with those thing. They certainly don't scrutinize different patches.

Most likely don't mod their games either.

Still, the portion that mod games won't be able to do that unless there is a way to have an account on the streaming company's site and mods are added to the client before streaming. That could be possible.

People don't worry about patching until suddenly they do.  Gloomhaven pushed a new patch a while ago that broke the game, to the extent that for many people, the only way to play the game is to revert to the old version.  If you can't do that, then the cloud service might as well just say, we no longer support that game.

Quizzical

maskedweasel said:

GeForce now has their lowest tier free for an hour. I'd recommend trying it. You won't get the high def streaming experience but I'd be surprised if you came back and said the game was unplayable even if your connection speed is slow. You can check how much GeForce now uses in their menu. It's really not that much bandwidth 

I can't test GeForce Now without it being a case of "I don't like it because I don't want to play that game".  They don't support any game at all that I've played for a significant amount of time within the last year.  I dug through my Steam purchase records further back, and my only purchase within the last 21 months that is on GeForce Now is Gloomhaven, and I rely heavily on modding to play that game the way I want.

Going further back than that, I did find a number of games that I had bought, played briefly, and didn't like, but could play again on GeForce Now.  The game that I most recently played a lot and is on GeForce Now is Wargroove, which I probably haven't played in more than two years.

GeForce Now probably could run Wargroove quite well.  But a turn-based game with low-res pixel graphics is basically the easiest case possible.  With only minor modifications, the game could have been made for SNES--and indeed, it's something close to being a fantasy knock-off of Super Conflict, which actually was made for SNES.

Nanfoodle

I can't count how many times with Gamepass I have gone to stream a game from my Xbox Series X and I had a 15 to 20 min wait. So I just downloaded the game in a few min... And played. 

ValdemarJ

Nanfoodle said:

I can't count how many times with Gamepass I have gone to stream a game from my Xbox Series X and I had a 15 to 20 min wait. So I just downloaded the game in a few min... And played. 

I've done that too when I have to wait too long, but some stuff I rarely play, like Forza, I don't want to install. If that happens I just skip it, but it isn't common for me in my area. I play something else or try again in 15 - 20 minutes.

Right now, that's mostly how I'm approaching cloud gaming. If I play it a lot, it gets installed. If not, then cloud gaming. Also, trying stuff on cloud is nice. If I I don't click with it, I don't install it at all.

Nanfoodle

ValdemarJ said:

Nanfoodle said:

I can't count how many times with Gamepass I have gone to stream a game from my Xbox Series X and I had a 15 to 20 min wait. So I just downloaded the game in a few min... And played. 

I've done that too when I have to wait too long, but some stuff I rarely play, like Forza, I don't want to install. If that happens I just skip it, but it isn't common for me in my area. I play something else or try again in 15 - 20 minutes.

Right now, that's mostly how I'm approaching cloud gaming. If I play it a lot, it gets installed. If not, then cloud gaming. Also, trying stuff on cloud is nice. If I I don't click with it, I don't install it at all.

That's 100% how I'm using it. I'm sure it will get better but we are just not there yet. I think next gen consoles maybe the real start of steaming. 

ObligatoryF

It'll never truly be a solution. For starters, the people who actually want a streaming future would rather sign away any rights and basic level of ownership, but not everyone would like that. Without a physical OR digital option, you're paying for access. In Stadia's case, you were paying high prices for games that would normally be cheaper by simply downloading. You'll have games you get for free as part of a package, and then you'll have newer titles being sold as standalones at higher/full prices.

Then there's that problem; Stadia shut down. Any service can shut down. Perhaps because games, as a service, should not be. How come games as a service isn't acceptable, but a specific games, as a service, is okay?

What happens if everyone uses the same service at the same point? Every "good" MMO has had that period. If users are somehow magically so stupid that they can't patch a game, gaming isn't for them. If users are somehow magically so pathetic that they can't wait 10 minutes to play a game (even though they'd willingly use that 10 minutes as a throwaway elsewhere), then gaming isn't for them.

Most games can still be played regardless of updates. Updates can also be toggled to be done automatically. Management and control options exist. So, why the excuses? Because a person should have inability natively? What next, streaming the human brain, because apparently critical thinking is tanking and it may as well be that these people aren't fully connected to reality.

Not to mention... Certain people still try pushing console wars. Guess what? Gaming isn't for them.

There are thousands of 2D people out there. Defined by facets of basic internet society. Unable to disconnect and living in a perpetual "me" space. Their one truth is "the" truth, while everyone else is untruths.

Yes, accessibility is nice, but accessibility doesn't mean affordability; it never did. Game streaming is peak entitlement. Games were originally a high-end luxury; it was never fair on consumers.

Consumerism, it's the worst. Buy into what they want you to buy into. It's a service because it aims for profits. There is no good intent behind cloud gaming, and never will be. No one's going to throw away money in an attempt to per-fect technology to reach the everyman, nor will it be a low price entry barrier.

vonryan123

I don't like it. I am sick of gaming as a service...the whole "You will own nothing and be happier for it" is going to come true if people keep letting themselves be steered to it. Add to that more people playing games that aren't gamers which imho is one of the bigger issues with such a mess of an industry right now.

Scot

Hasn't someone said gaming is a human right yet?

IceAge

Sovrath said:

Quizzical said:

maskedweasel said:

I stream games all the time. It's my preferred way to play a lot of games. 

There's an enormous difference between playing some games via streaming and playing all games via streaming.  The former doesn't prevent you from needing hardware that can run games yourself, which is supposedly a major benefit of streaming, as you'll still need it for the games that you don't play via streaming.

Also, I'm skeptical that you simultaneously have an Internet connection fast enough to make streaming work well, but also slow enough that game downloads take hours.  My game patches and downloads rarely take more than a few minutes.

But if you have a lot of experience with this, then I have a couple of questions for you.

1)  How does modding work with game streaming?

2)  What happens if a new patch breaks the game?  If you installed it on your local box, you can often decline to install the new patch, or even revert back to an old version.  Can you do that with game streaming?

I think the average person doesn't concern themselves with those thing. They certainly don't scrutinize different patches.

Most likely don't mod their games either.

Still, the portion that mod games won't be able to do that unless there is a way to have an account on the streaming company's site and mods are added to the client before streaming. That could be possible.

Don't mind the guy. He was and still is a very vocal anti streaming services for...whatever reason(s) he might have.

And then here comes a guy and says he plays his games via streaming service and ...what does Quizzical do? He just start to ignore common sense and start "bashing" the guy...with pathetic reasons.

Streaming gaming will be the norm in the future. Not in his future or mine maybe, but it will.

I'm sure the guy also said in 1990s that internet speed could never reach 1 MBs because "reasons".

Oh well...

Angrakhan

So... Ok... I feel like I need to point this out to the whole "you don't own anything" crowd. You don't own anything now. Not really. You ever read your end user license agreement? My guess is no. You don't own the game. You own a license to run the game. That license can be revoked for a number of reasons. If they revoke your license they haven't stolen from you. Have you ever once heard of a developer going to jail for theft because they banned a person from playing their game? No. Why? Because: You. Don't. Own. The. Software.

So... You all can just step off that high horse because it only exists in your imagination. Legally you don't own shit in the software world unless you're the one that actually wrote the code and built the assets it uses.

That all being said I'm still dubious on the whole streaming thing due to the fact no matter how fat your pipe is, light speed is still the same. As fast as light is, it still takes a measurable amount of time to circle something as big as a planet. Add in the little delays for each router hop and you will forever have latency at some level. What's worse is it's unpredictable in that at any moment latency can vary widely based on all the various factors that go into making the Internet work.

Quizzical

IceAge said:

Sovrath said:

Quizzical said:

maskedweasel said:

I stream games all the time. It's my preferred way to play a lot of games. 

There's an enormous difference between playing some games via streaming and playing all games via streaming.  The former doesn't prevent you from needing hardware that can run games yourself, which is supposedly a major benefit of streaming, as you'll still need it for the games that you don't play via streaming.

Also, I'm skeptical that you simultaneously have an Internet connection fast enough to make streaming work well, but also slow enough that game downloads take hours.  My game patches and downloads rarely take more than a few minutes.

But if you have a lot of experience with this, then I have a couple of questions for you.

1)  How does modding work with game streaming?

2)  What happens if a new patch breaks the game?  If you installed it on your local box, you can often decline to install the new patch, or even revert back to an old version.  Can you do that with game streaming?

I think the average person doesn't concern themselves with those thing. They certainly don't scrutinize different patches.

Most likely don't mod their games either.

Still, the portion that mod games won't be able to do that unless there is a way to have an account on the streaming company's site and mods are added to the client before streaming. That could be possible.

Don't mind the guy. He was and still is a very vocal anti streaming services for...whatever reason(s) he might have.

And then here comes a guy and says he plays his games via streaming service and ...what does Quizzical do? He just start to ignore common sense and start "bashing" the guy...with pathetic reasons.

Streaming gaming will be the norm in the future. Not in his future or mine maybe, but it will.

I'm sure the guy also said in 1990s that internet speed could never reach 1 MBs because "reasons".

Oh well...

Enough with the ad hominem, all right?

The fundamental problem with game streaming is not that streaming won't improve or even that there's some threshold of goodness that it will never meet.  Quite the opposite:  it's probable that game streaming 20 years from now will work better than rendering games locally does today.

The problem is that game streaming in year X will never catch up to rendering a game locally in year X.  For reasons of physics, it's inherently cheaper to do a given quality of gameplay by rendering locally than it is to match that quality via streaming.  That's what is never going to change.

Recent generations of even integrated GPUs from AMD and Intel are far more capable than they used to be.  The days of Intel GPUs being a joke are over, and even the recent integrated GPUs are capable of running most games better than the same hardware would via streaming.

I look forward to a future in which you can choose what game you want to play, start the game almost immediately via streaming, and download the game in the background as you play.  Once the game is done downloading, it flips to rendering the game locally at the next loading screen, all seamlessly in the background.  That way, you get the best of both worlds.  And that's also technologically feasible, which making a 100% streaming solution be competitive with local rendering never will be.

When game companies start talking about making such a hybrid streaming solution, we'll know that game streaming will finally be ready to expand beyond its current niches.  But that may well be a ways off.

maskedweasel

Quizzical said:

IceAge said:

Sovrath said:

Quizzical said:

maskedweasel said:

I stream games all the time. It's my preferred way to play a lot of games. 

There's an enormous difference between playing some games via streaming and playing all games via streaming.  The former doesn't prevent you from needing hardware that can run games yourself, which is supposedly a major benefit of streaming, as you'll still need it for the games that you don't play via streaming.

Also, I'm skeptical that you simultaneously have an Internet connection fast enough to make streaming work well, but also slow enough that game downloads take hours.  My game patches and downloads rarely take more than a few minutes.

But if you have a lot of experience with this, then I have a couple of questions for you.

1)  How does modding work with game streaming?

2)  What happens if a new patch breaks the game?  If you installed it on your local box, you can often decline to install the new patch, or even revert back to an old version.  Can you do that with game streaming?

I think the average person doesn't concern themselves with those thing. They certainly don't scrutinize different patches.

Most likely don't mod their games either.

Still, the portion that mod games won't be able to do that unless there is a way to have an account on the streaming company's site and mods are added to the client before streaming. That could be possible.

Don't mind the guy. He was and still is a very vocal anti streaming services for...whatever reason(s) he might have.

And then here comes a guy and says he plays his games via streaming service and ...what does Quizzical do? He just start to ignore common sense and start "bashing" the guy...with pathetic reasons.

Streaming gaming will be the norm in the future. Not in his future or mine maybe, but it will.

I'm sure the guy also said in 1990s that internet speed could never reach 1 MBs because "reasons".

Oh well...

Enough with the ad hominem, all right?

The fundamental problem with game streaming is not that streaming won't improve or even that there's some threshold of goodness that it will never meet.  Quite the opposite:  it's probable that game streaming 20 years from now will work better than rendering games locally does today.

The problem is that game streaming in year X will never catch up to rendering a game locally in year X.  For reasons of physics, it's inherently cheaper to do a given quality of gameplay by rendering locally than it is to match that quality via streaming.  That's what is never going to change.

Recent generations of even integrated GPUs from AMD and Intel are far more capable than they used to be.  The days of Intel GPUs being a joke are over, and even the recent integrated GPUs are capable of running most games better than the same hardware would via streaming.

I look forward to a future in which you can choose what game you want to play, start the game almost immediately via streaming, and download the game in the background as you play.  Once the game is done downloading, it flips to rendering the game locally at the next loading screen, all seamlessly in the background.  That way, you get the best of both worlds.  And that's also technologically feasible, which making a 100% streaming solution be competitive with local rendering never will be.

When game companies start talking about making such a hybrid streaming solution, we'll know that game streaming will finally be ready to expand beyond its current niches.  But that may well be a ways off.

  I think there's some qualifiers here. Asynchronous streaming or Asynchronous asset loading technically does both. Streaming services right now stream the video and input, and realistically the performance issues at this stage are minimal. Is there latency? Sure, but not as much as you would think unless your connection is poor 

But AAL streams compressed game assets the way you describe and it's something that we will see more of, but tbh for online games the benefits are minor. In any case where a game resides online whether you play through a local client or through streaming, the biggest performance issue would be dropped packets, then latency. 

You would think there's so many extra hops to servers here or there, but there really isn't, especially when you consider the number of overlapping data centers that are hosting streaming services and the games they are running. 

Those problems aren't going to be fixed by asynchronous streaming because they aren't fixed through local gameplay now. You may not notice the latency on the end of the client, but the server still responds to the input it receives when it receives it. Streaming makes these issues more pronounced because when the connection hiccups you don't have a local client running to keep going and the video stops immediately, but you also don't suffer from rubber banding due to connection problems either.

Game streaming is pretty good right now. A few years ago I would say it wasn't really ready for mass adoption but now, I think we're there. I wouldn't bet anything on competitive gaming through a stream session, but for most play sessions it's worth the use. Especially when you consider that you can play any game supported anywhere, without downloading it or wasting space. I can boot up any game in my streaming library even if I haven't played it in years and uninstalled. There are just too many benefits to streaming to ignore it. 

Neoyoshi

The technology has actually been where it's needed to be for at least since around 2018. (with multiple countries contributing to the tech since the mid-2000's)

France was the country that broke the code for 'reliable' and 'scalable' VM streaming with help from the creator of VLC; and it's quite brilliant in what it does and how it works.

The problem that has been keeping Cloud gaming from taking off like it was supposed to way back in 2018 is up for debate; as their shouldn't be any reason why it hasn't grown further then it has- except for the obvious; yet what cannot be proved- 'Corporate Greed'

There is alot of bureaucracy unfortunately surrounding Cloud gaming; because it's been designed as a service from the jump; and like anything that can make a lot of money; there are big name players with untold trillions attached to all of this- namely Nividia, Microsoft and many others.

Greed is why we can't have anything nice. Like being able to play any game, on any device, anywhere.

IceAge

maskedweasel said:

Quizzical said:

IceAge said:

Sovrath said:

Quizzical said:

maskedweasel said:

I stream games all the time. It's my preferred way to play a lot of games. 

There's an enormous difference between playing some games via streaming and playing all games via streaming.  The former doesn't prevent you from needing hardware that can run games yourself, which is supposedly a major benefit of streaming, as you'll still need it for the games that you don't play via streaming.

Also, I'm skeptical that you simultaneously have an Internet connection fast enough to make streaming work well, but also slow enough that game downloads take hours.  My game patches and downloads rarely take more than a few minutes.

But if you have a lot of experience with this, then I have a couple of questions for you.

1)  How does modding work with game streaming?

2)  What happens if a new patch breaks the game?  If you installed it on your local box, you can often decline to install the new patch, or even revert back to an old version.  Can you do that with game streaming?

I think the average person doesn't concern themselves with those thing. They certainly don't scrutinize different patches.

Most likely don't mod their games either.

Still, the portion that mod games won't be able to do that unless there is a way to have an account on the streaming company's site and mods are added to the client before streaming. That could be possible.

Don't mind the guy. He was and still is a very vocal anti streaming services for...whatever reason(s) he might have.

And then here comes a guy and says he plays his games via streaming service and ...what does Quizzical do? He just start to ignore common sense and start "bashing" the guy...with pathetic reasons.

Streaming gaming will be the norm in the future. Not in his future or mine maybe, but it will.

I'm sure the guy also said in 1990s that internet speed could never reach 1 MBs because "reasons".

Oh well...

Enough with the ad hominem, all right?

The fundamental problem with game streaming is not that streaming won't improve or even that there's some threshold of goodness that it will never meet.  Quite the opposite:  it's probable that game streaming 20 years from now will work better than rendering games locally does today.

The problem is that game streaming in year X will never catch up to rendering a game locally in year X.  For reasons of physics, it's inherently cheaper to do a given quality of gameplay by rendering locally than it is to match that quality via streaming.  That's what is never going to change.

Recent generations of even integrated GPUs from AMD and Intel are far more capable than they used to be.  The days of Intel GPUs being a joke are over, and even the recent integrated GPUs are capable of running most games better than the same hardware would via streaming.

I look forward to a future in which you can choose what game you want to play, start the game almost immediately via streaming, and download the game in the background as you play.  Once the game is done downloading, it flips to rendering the game locally at the next loading screen, all seamlessly in the background.  That way, you get the best of both worlds.  And that's also technologically feasible, which making a 100% streaming solution be competitive with local rendering never will be.

When game companies start talking about making such a hybrid streaming solution, we'll know that game streaming will finally be ready to expand beyond its current niches.  But that may well be a ways off.

  I think there's some qualifiers here. Asynchronous streaming or Asynchronous asset loading technically does both. Streaming services right now stream the video and input, and realistically the performance issues at this stage are minimal. Is there latency? Sure, but not as much as you would think unless your connection is poor 

But AAL streams compressed game assets the way you describe and it's something that we will see more of, but tbh for online games the benefits are minor. In any case where a game resides online whether you play through a local client or through streaming, the biggest performance issue would be dropped packets, then latency. 

You would think there's so many extra hops to servers here or there, but there really isn't, especially when you consider the number of overlapping data centers that are hosting streaming services and the games they are running. 

Those problems aren't going to be fixed by asynchronous streaming because they aren't fixed through local gameplay now. You may not notice the latency on the end of the client, but the server still responds to the input it receives when it receives it. Streaming makes these issues more pronounced because when the connection hiccups you don't have a local client running to keep going and the video stops immediately, but you also don't suffer from rubber banding due to connection problems either.

Game streaming is pretty good right now. A few years ago I would say it wasn't really ready for mass adoption but now, I think we're there. I wouldn't bet anything on competitive gaming through a stream session, but for most play sessions it's worth the use. Especially when you consider that you can play any game supported anywhere, without downloading it or wasting space. I can boot up any game in my streaming library even if I haven't played it in years and uninstalled. There are just too many benefits to streaming to ignore it. 

The difference between now and say .. 3 years ago its huge in terms of streaming services, yet I remember him from..few years ago babbling that people do not have enough internet bandwidth ( like internet bandwidth will stay hold - forever - ) and that Game Streaming will never be good, and this and that and it will never happen..

Bla bla bla, 3 years later, the service is in much better shape and more and more people are using it. Yet .. he's coming with the same mind set he had 3 years ago. "Lag input" , "bla bla bla" , "internet bandwidth"  , "bla bla bla" , "lag input" , "bla bla bla" , "no one can play games on gaming services" .. and so on.

I mean look at him. Now he's bringing modding and how patches work into discussion. I mean, wtf ?

"There are just too many benefits to streaming to ignore it. " - Exactly this. 

Scot

My main concerns are twofold, that eventually governments will prioritize bandwidth usage, when that happens gaming is not exactly going to be at the top of the list.

Secondly we are moving to being sold dumb terminals, that are slaves to live services rather than being able to run independently to do anything. Your PC and mobile phone are rather too smart for their liking. 

IceAge

Scot said:

My main concerns are twofold, that eventually governments will prioritize bandwidth usage, when that happens gaming is not exactly going to be at the top of the list.

Secondly we are moving to being sold dumb terminals, that are slaves to live services rather than being able to run independently to do anything. Your PC and mobile phone are rather too smart for their liking. 

.....why would Governments limit bandwidth usage? If that happens, then something really wrong have triggered that and the world is in a very bad..shape, which hopefully, will not happen. 

ValdemarJ

I don't need to "own" all the games I play. Most games with a single play through really aren't worth the box fee to me. I think they add value to a library service like GamePass, PlayStation Premium, Netflix, and such, but not for a box fee.

Some games that offer a lot of replay I'll buy a license for, but that list is getting much smaller.