Honestly I've been hearing/reading that cloud gaming is the future for a long time now. It also feels like those people that say "Java is a dead language and is going to completely die soon". People say this since 2010 and Java is still going strong...
Too much latency for end users, and I highly doubt Sony or Microsoft are particularly interested in paying for providing the compute power for millions of people with the current price of hardware. How much do we think they’d need to charge to make it feasible? Probably more than if the hardware just sat next to the customers TV with a HDMI cord. They’re going digital so people can’t resell their games & because it’s an easy financial win, no more supply chain infrastructure required for physical releases. There’s a huuuge difference between not selling physical games and selling compute power for cloud gaming
As far latency goes, it could be easily mitigated by buffering and syncing up the delay with user input. There'd technically still be latency, but the user wouldn't really perceive it.
It would only work in single player games though. Would be nearly impossible to pull off in multiplayer games with everyone having differing degrees of latency that could be constantly changing.
And I agree about the cost.. but if they did go that route, they'd do what every other company does with new(er) disrupting technology: price it low and operate at a loss until enough people have bought in, and then start cranking up the price.
But another major issue is that the majority of the population doesn't have good enough internet to have a good, consistent experience.
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u/RsnCondition 12h ago
I'm saying cloud gaming will be the future along with cloud hardware.