What is Cloud Gaming and how will it revolutionize gaming?

Cloud Gaming: a cloud of data

The so-called Cloud is a network of servers that is made available to a user via his or her internet connection. This means that a good throughput is essential to receive the continuous data stream. In the context of gaming, there are many applications.

Cloud Gaming: a cloud of data

For example, the Shadow Pc initiative is a service that offers, in exchange for a monthly subscription, to have a configuration hosted on a server. This is also applicable to games themselves to be able to play even if your device is limited in storage space.

A revolution for computers and consoles

If Logitech has recently launched a Cloud Gaming console, it’s not for nothing. This console created in partnership with Tencent shows a clear trend in gaming, no one wants to buy Nvidia RTX at exorbitant prices to play and especially mobile gaming takes precedence over the rest.

Offering a Cloud Gaming console allows you to play anywhere and especially any game without having to worry about the quality of your graphics card, the available storage space or RAM bars. The goal is to make gaming more accessible to everyone, a major challenge when you know the consumption habits in the biggest markets. Indeed, the Asian market is much larger than the Western market, while a minority of the population still plays and most of them play on cell phones or in cybercafés.

Why 5G is essential for Cloud Gaming

The interest of Cloud Gaming, in addition to the savings in terms of hardware, is the portability. Thus, 5G will play a major role in the development of networked gaming. Indeed, if in the West, we are used to consider gaming as a sedentary activity, but this is absolutely not the case in emerging markets such as Asia and India.

Why 5G is essential for Cloud Gaming

There, the majority of gamers are on cell phones, so they need to be able to play without necessarily having access to a fiber network. For the moment, 5G allows a speed between 10 GB per second and 20 GB per second, while a fiber connection allows up to 100 GB per second. This is much lower, but given the most played games today, it is possible to run them using the cloud with a 5G network connection.

In France, the development of 5G takes time and the packages are not yet attractive enough, but this is changing. So it is possible that in the future instead of investing in a Playstation or a gamer PC, choosing a portable console like the Steam Deck will be more interesting for most gamers.

New possibilities for games

Apart from the system requirements to play, Cloud Gaming can also impact the games we play. Freed from the physical medium, developers can create titles without worrying about the limitations of players since everything will be hosted online. It will thus be possible to create more beautiful games, larger and especially to make the experience last to make the product profitable.

We can already see the beginnings of this with “Game as a service“, which is now the most profitable business model in the video game industry. Some deplore the fact that this model implies the loss of ownership of the games for the players, which is the source of many questions when we know the exorbitant prices of new games. Nevertheless, Cloud Gaming heralds a generalized drop in prices, since it is unthinkable to sell a game for €80 without a box, disc or files to download.

The future, the head in a digital cloud

Cloud Gaming is no longer a sweet euphoria, it starts to be implemented progressively in our video games and you surely feel the effects already if you use the Xbox Game Pass. Servers are going to become very important in the coming years, but it will also pose security risks and an ecological problem. However, it will also reduce the production of physical games and hardware, so it remains to be seen how the tech giants will implement the idea in their offerings.

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