Options are great, but generally speaking companies tend to sunset options that are less profitable, regardless if it provides a better experience.
Case in point, once movie and TV streaming got popular, selling that content in physical or even digital form died off but it didn’t die completely. Plenty of people still like to own the media they pay for, plenty of people still like physical media collections that can never, ever be taken away when a server gets shut down. Having that option is great, too.
But it’s a less profitable option. So, to spite what some want, certain content is just streaming only now, while the prices rise. And that’s the new world we allowed ourselves to be shepherded into. While we were blinded by convenience, they discreetly shut the door behind us, and now there’s no going back (without piracy).
So yes, game streaming itself is a great option to have for many. That’s not the problem.
The trajectory is the problem.
It’s also worth pointing out any direction that furthers our dependence on the ISPs not being awful is asking for trouble. For example, remember when Charter was allowed to acquire Time Warner Cable and become Spectrum? They promised regulators they would not impose bandwidth caps for 7 years, and as of today it’s been 7 years and 30, days.
Going from dumb terminals to beefy individual networked computers and back a few times was a thing for a while and eventually it has settled into a use case specific balance because it is a balance between costs of centralizing the computing, networking, and people managing both. Throw networking connection issues for many locations and it is clear that everything cloud doesn’t work for everything.
Centralized gaming has already shown the same complexities and can never be fully put into the cloud even if that will work for a large portion of games and uses.
If you only use beefy computers for gaming the subscription seems very reasonable actually.
You pay for the internet anyway. Geforce now monthly sub costing 9$ a month it will take 16 years for you to spend a total of 1800$ the price of a good gaming computer. It is enough years for tech to improve significantly that the computer if you had brought it would have been obsolete by then
It’s a good option for people who don’t want to maintain a pc or want their game installs and updates to be instantaneous. You can play anywhere you have decent wifi so it’s kind of like having both a steam deck and a desktop pc, and probably cheaper than maintaining and upgrading both
Do we need cloud streaming? Honestly.
Do we need gaming?
It’s not a need thing, it’s just more options for people that want it.
Options are great, but generally speaking companies tend to sunset options that are less profitable, regardless if it provides a better experience.
Case in point, once movie and TV streaming got popular, selling that content in physical or even digital form died off but it didn’t die completely. Plenty of people still like to own the media they pay for, plenty of people still like physical media collections that can never, ever be taken away when a server gets shut down. Having that option is great, too.
But it’s a less profitable option. So, to spite what some want, certain content is just streaming only now, while the prices rise. And that’s the new world we allowed ourselves to be shepherded into. While we were blinded by convenience, they discreetly shut the door behind us, and now there’s no going back (without piracy).
So yes, game streaming itself is a great option to have for many. That’s not the problem.
The trajectory is the problem.
It’s also worth pointing out any direction that furthers our dependence on the ISPs not being awful is asking for trouble. For example, remember when Charter was allowed to acquire Time Warner Cable and become Spectrum? They promised regulators they would not impose bandwidth caps for 7 years, and as of today it’s been 7 years and 30, days.
Do we need it? I’m not sure, but I am sure that all things cloud is an inevitability.
10 years from now, at an Applzonooglsoft Developers Conference: the new cloud… is YOU!
crowd gasps and then immediately is turned into fluffy little floating data center server racks
You: I FORETOLD THIS DAY!
Going from dumb terminals to beefy individual networked computers and back a few times was a thing for a while and eventually it has settled into a use case specific balance because it is a balance between costs of centralizing the computing, networking, and people managing both. Throw networking connection issues for many locations and it is clear that everything cloud doesn’t work for everything.
Centralized gaming has already shown the same complexities and can never be fully put into the cloud even if that will work for a large portion of games and uses.
And they told in communism you will not have anything
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If you only use beefy computers for gaming the subscription seems very reasonable actually.
You pay for the internet anyway. Geforce now monthly sub costing 9$ a month it will take 16 years for you to spend a total of 1800$ the price of a good gaming computer. It is enough years for tech to improve significantly that the computer if you had brought it would have been obsolete by then
It’s a good option for people who don’t want to maintain a pc or want their game installs and updates to be instantaneous. You can play anywhere you have decent wifi so it’s kind of like having both a steam deck and a desktop pc, and probably cheaper than maintaining and upgrading both