Cloud Gaming

Although it has not had any substantial success as of yet, cloud gaming presents us with a potential of radically changing the massive global video game market, estimates of $91.5 billion dollar spending in 2015 (Grubb, 2015), by giving access to high end games to users who otherwise would not have the required hardware to run such games. 

What is Cloud Gaming?

A form of cloud computing, “Cloud gaming” deals with the access to video games that are located in the cloud using your personal PC, console or other platform. The main appeal to this form of gaming is that it eliminates the need for a powerful PC or console to operate the video game as the game is actually operated by the cloud gaming company server instead of the user’s device. Typically, the user would install a program on their device that allows them access to the cloud gaming company’s server where they can play the game. 

 
Think of it as a video streaming service such as Netflix, except that this one is interactive, it is actually streaming a video game that you can influence through your controller or Keyboard and mouse. How it works is that the video game is run by the cloud-gaming server, which then streams that game-play to your PC or console as video and audio.

Cloud Gaming Now Vs. the Future 


As I mentioned earlier, there has not been any substantial success of cloud-gaming, in fact the Onlive company, a pioneer in the cloud gaming niche (ad posted above), had a very difficult time surviving in the market and have recently shutdown and sold there patents to Sony. See video at the end of the blog about Onlive's demise. 

Cloud gaming growth according to Strategy Analytics

With that being said, I still believe that cloud gaming is definitely the future of gaming, evidenced by the recent launch by major companies such as Sony (PlayStation Now) and Nvidia (Grid) of game streaming services. These major companies realize that the future lies with cloud gaming and so we will be seeing intense competition for that market which is quiet small at the current time but will eventually grow as the services improve on what their predecessors tried to do and was unable to succeed. 

 

Final Thoughts  

The main limitation to cloud gaming seems to be internet bandwidths, as some games require a large amount of bandwidth reaching up to 3GB per hour. Most internet users have caps on their bandwidths and increasing the bandwidths would cost users more money which we must then attribute to the cost of using the cloud gaming service. There are other issues with video quality and latency that need improvement, but I believe that because internet usage is ever growing, internet bandwidth and cost will decrease allowing for a future cloud gaming experience that is far superior to the current one and definitely more convenient than the regular gaming system.



      

References

- Grubb, J. (2015, April 22). Games Beat . Retrieved from Venture Beat : http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/22/video-games-will-make-91-5b-this-year/