In recent years, there have been many news and technologies about cloud gaming, just look at the recent microsoft Xbox announced the establishment of a new cloud gaming organization, aiming to develop cloud-native games; Ubisoft announced a new cloud computing technology Scalar, the goal is not to be driven by current hardware limitations in the next decade of game development. With the shortage and price increase of PC hardware, online gaming using convenient cloud technology seems to have become another way to play games, but strangely, cloud games do not seem to have made any noise in the domestic player group.
Although cloud gaming provides portability to some extent, the price and latency of various domestic platforms have all reduced their cost performance. If you want to go out to play games, many players would rather choose to use the Accelerator to use the External Service Sony PlayStation Now, Microsoft Xbox Cloud Games and other ways, and even directly bring a Nintendo Switch is also much more fragrant. Whether the cloud gaming service on the cusp of the storm is "the future", or whether it is suitable for domestic players, we will talk about it together today.
>>> cloud games are not new, do you remember when you were a kid on demand?
Cloud games sound mysterious and profound at first glance, but in fact, to put it bluntly, it is a way to play games online. It runs games on a remote server and transmits them directly to the user's device, and adopts a subscription-based charging model, that is, after paying the membership fee, you can enjoy many works in the game library. Or to some extent, cloud games are a bit like when we were children using telephone landlines to dial ON-demand games for TV stations, and then using number keys to remotely operate and play.
(Speaking of when I was a child, the complete episode of "Slam Dunk Master" I was rubbing the local tycoon to watch on demand)
The first best-known product in the cloud gaming space was the G-cluster platform, which debuted at the E3 Game Show in the millennium and was officially launched on the market in 2003. Around 2005, the platform's original model was for players to run PC games on the portal through the G-cluster platform, regardless of the device used.
However, at that time, most of the game manufacturers' works did not have strict REQUIREMENTS for PC configuration, and the demand for cloud games on the network environment increased the threshold for playing games, and most of the online game works had their own independent clients, so G-cluster had to shift its business focus to Internet Protocol TELEVISION (IPTV) users around 2010. Thanks to the technical support of foreign local telecommunications companies, the potential number of users of the G-cluster platform exceeded 3 million in those years, and cooperation was reached with well-known manufacturers such as Ubisoft, Konami, EA and so on.
After the G-cluster platform was fermented in foreign countries, many manufacturers smelled the business opportunities in the field of cloud games, and more and more projects and products began to surface. At the 2009 Game Developers Conference, Steve Perlman, who led the development of Apple's QuickTime software, unveiled the OnLive project and launched a brick-and-mortar home console for the project in June 2010.
In addition, David Perry's startup, which developed Lone Gunner, also launched a cloud gaming platform called Gaikai in the same year. But these two projects have not been successful after several twists and turns, and although the game in the form of online streaming has begun to take shape around 2010, neither the technical power nor the recognition of the player community is far from successful. Specific to the game experience, the most obvious is the game latency problem, the network speed in many areas still can not match the cloud server, the game experience is not good, and the lack of exclusive masterpieces in the game library, compared to the normal play user group can not find a reason to choose cloud games.
Not to mention China's special network environment, at that time, players were in a state of only hearing the name of cloud games, even if a small number of players began to contact cloud games, this group of pioneers also gave a bad review of their game experience. Eventually, Both OnLive and Gaikai were acquired by Sony, which has since acquired more patents and technologies in the cloud gaming space, and in 2014 the PlayStation Now service was born.
While Sony is making efforts in the field of cloud games, other technology industry giants have not given up this "east wind". In the years that followed, Nvidia's GeForce Now in 2012, Google's Stadia in 2019, and Amazon's Luna service in 2020 also began to emerge. The overall implementation of these cloud gaming platforms is much the same, still running video games on remote servers and streaming them directly to the player's display device through cloud streaming. The specific technical details are not listed for the time being, let us pull our attention back to the remaining two Microsoft and Nintendo of the "Big Three in the game industry".
Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming Service came out relatively late, and was officially launched for XGPU users in September 2020, but thanks to Microsoft's technical strength and Xbox's huge game library, the overall maturity of the project belongs to the industry's first echelon level. When players subscribe to the XGPU service, they can play first-party masterpieces such as Forza Motorsport: Horizon and Halo on their mobile devices without paying anything else, and many works have designed virtual buttons and touch functions for touch screens, so that we no longer have to carry a gamepad larger than our mobile phone.
NS's cloud service is not to transfer the host game to other devices, but to make up for the lack of performance of its own machine through the cloud server. Since NS memory and hardware cannot support running large titles such as Resident Evil 7 and Kingdom Hearts 3, it is possible to run games with higher hardware requirements locally. When the network is in good condition, the image quality and latency performance can still show a good level.
>>> what about the current cloud gaming service experience in the domestic environment?
Although many cloud gaming platforms are described above, when we turn our attention back to China, we basically can't see the cloud gaming services that set up servers in the mainland region, even if it is Sony and Microsoft that launched the National Bank console, they can only log in to the external service through the accelerator connection to experience PlayStation Now and Xbox cloud gaming services.
Domestic mainstream game manufacturers have also launched their own products, such as Tencent's Start platform, NetEase's NetEase cloud game platform, China Telecom's Tianyi Cloud Games, etc., but the game lineup library is more for their own products and mobile games, and there are only a few 3A and independent games. Although the monthly rent of about 30 yuan is not expensive, compared to foreign platforms that require accelerators can not reduce latency, and the latency level maintained around 40 milliseconds is not bad, but it is still impossible to guarantee high quality and low latency, and for most players, the game lineup is really uninteresting. The simplest logic is that if I want to play mobile games, why should I "go to great lengths" to use the cloud gaming platform instead of pulling out my phone and playing it directly?
In addition, in addition to mainstream vendor products, there are many live broadcasting platforms and other companies that have also launched cloud gaming platforms. These platforms generally charge a little higher, and at the same time bring a richer game lineup library, including many AAA titles that have landed on Steam. However, it is worth noting that the user agreement of the Steam platform clearly states that the game content and services purchased by individuals are not authorized to sell, lease and transfer again, and it is doubtful whether these manufacturers have allowed the behavior of their upper cloud servers after a purchase. In fact, the answer to this question is self-evident, we can guess that this behavior is most likely a gray area that is not recognized, and the users who pay them subscription fees or rental fees are spending money to play piracy.
Therefore, it can be seen that although the development speed of domestic cloud game platforms cannot be described as slow, there is still a lot of room for improvement in latency, copyright, game library, network quality and other issues. And since there are relatively few players currently using cloud gaming platforms, we can also reasonably question whether the cloud servers of these manufacturers can bear the pressure when the user base reaches a multi-level day. In short, at present, I still can't calmly recommend any domestic cloud game platform to you, and there is still a long way to go...
will >>> cloud gaming services really become mainstream in the near future?
From the comprehensive perspective of the development of cloud game platforms at home and abroad, I personally believe that cloud game services may become a mainstream game mode in the future, especially in today's world where human entertainment time is gradually fragmented, and being able to play mainstream masterpieces anytime and anywhere is a unique innate advantage brought by cloud game services. And the advancement of AI technology and network environment can also benefit cloud games. Through algorithmic pre-judgment, GPU resource sharing and other technologies, preload user actions and game scenes in advance to improve the user experience, even now it is no longer a fantasy. Application-centric multi-tenant container cloud platforms such as Ridge (kubesphere) have a positive benefit to the difficulty of making games for developers, and through the advancement of joint data center construction and cloud processing, the development process is no longer limited by the location of physical servers, and players can also harvest higher image quality and lower latency game experience.
But at the same time, I think that even as the tide of the times rolls forward, cloud gaming still has no way to completely replace the traditional approach. Obviously, whether it is the increase in subscription costs brought about by the technological progress of cloud servers, or the limitation of network transmission quality in some regions, the popularity of cloud games is more difficult than that of traditional methods. Even the largest cloud gaming providers don't have the resources and money to guarantee that they can build data centers and infrastructure in all regions, making it difficult to fundamentally avoid the latency problems of cloud gaming. Especially when we talk about cloud gaming technology as Chinese players, various complex factors add a layer of threshold to its introduction to the general public.
So to this day, I personally don't see the potential for cloud gaming to disrupt forms of mass entertainment on par with the advent of television or computers. As a kind of communication medium, the selection of audiences obviously does not conform to the underlying logic of communication. Perhaps it is like tv video tapes are gradually eliminated by the times, and iteratively becomes a satellite digital TV with lower prices and more abundant supply. The day cloud gaming becomes the mainstream way of gaming, it may no longer be the "self it once was", but this day has not yet arrived. Now we can only stand in the clouds and wait for the wind to come.
Okay, that's it for today. What is your attitude toward cloud gaming services? Are you optimistic that cloud gaming will replace traditional gaming? Look forward to sharing your thoughts in the comments section. If you think we are doing a good job, you can like and pay attention, of course, welcome to put forward comments and suggestions, let us see you in the next article, meow ~
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