I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about video game streaming services and cloud gaming recently and I am horrified. Sure, game streaming can have some benefits. Many game streaming services run around $10 to $35 a month. That’s obviously a lot more cost-effective than spending $700+ on a gaming PC or console then buying games? Well yes depending on where you live.
Huge waste of bandwidth
Bandwidth caps and data limits are a real problem for most of the world. Just check out this list of USA ISPs with data caps and see for yourself. S
I’d rather buy a physical copy and play it for as long as I want. I also transfer Steam games to my desktop after I’ve downloaded them on my laptop from a good internet connection. This way I can play the game on good hardware and not use up my bandwidth!
Update: According to Google, Stadia’s 4K quality stream uses 15.75 GB per hour and 9 GB per hour at 1080p. That’s even worse than my earlier estimation.
Stadia also has some minimum internet speed requirements that will knock a lot of people out of the service. But that’s to be expected I guess. You can not afford to be
Latency Issues
Latency is another issue. Depending on the game latency may not matter as much. But I find it kind of annoying when I push a key and I detect a small delay before the game responds. This gets even worse if you are also playing a multiplayer game. I don’t like the idea of needlessly adding latency to any game. It ruins immersion and the whole experience.
I do not get motion sick very easy but I’ve heard that others have experienced motion sickness because of latency in game streaming. So good luck ever being able to stream a VR game were motion sickness is a real issue
You can also forget about playing any games if you are having any internet issues or outages.
No Modding
Mods can extend the life of a game for decades and build huge fan bases. But based on the setups I’ve seen so far there are no modding options in games on streaming services. This is one of the things that could probably be fixed but for now, if you want to play with mods or build your own then you will need your own local copy of the game.
No Service Stays Online Forever
UPDATE 10-14-2022: I hate to say I told you so but: Google Stadia shutdown stuns indie developers
Perhaps the worst thing is that the plug can be pulled on you. The game industry is pushing very hard for “games as a service”. But nothing on the internet stays online forever. Based on history we can assume at some point authentication servers will be shut down, cloud gaming services will remove older games, or providers will go out of business.
For example, Google kills off online services they make so often that it has become a bit of a joke in the tech news world.
Then what happens if future games become cloud streaming exclusives? They could be gone forever… More games that are forever lost to time. Never to be enjoyed again.
Maybe I am old fashion, but I like to have control over things I have paid for. One thing I do know is that all the old games from my childhood still work. They did not need an internet connection to run and no server had to be online for them to work.
I can not say the same for a lot of games that have come out in the last 15 years.
Final Thoughts on Cloud Gaming
So while there are some benefits to cloud gaming it is my opinion that there are also lots of issues to work out. Because of those issues, I’ll not be doing any cloud gaming in the foreseeable future. And I hope and pray we always have a choice to buy offline copies of games.
What are your thoughts?
Based on tech news sites I do not think a lot of people share my opinion here? But I’d love to hear your thoughts! Please leave a comment and let me know if you agree or disagree. Maybe even add something you think I missed?
Thank you so much!!!
It is bad, because you don’t control the gaming experience
Another good point and I agree with you!
Tried it with a 200Mbs bandwidth but typically capped at 20Mbs. Lot of lag issue any FPS or PvP games are out of the question. Son couldn’t play a Lego game without it lagging sever. Until they unregulate the internet like in other country’s that have much faster and dependable internet then we do in the US. We will always have this problem. I say unregulate similar to energy lines and where it brought down the prices and phone services. Again ever time they do this, major innovation and competition ensues creating better a market as a whole. Its sad this tech giants have most politicians in their pockets otherwise USA would have outpaced Japan in internet technology.
It’s kind of sad that the country that invented the internet is not ranked higher in internet connection speeds.