Gaming for everyone: The advent of cloud gaming

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Now, anyone can game.

We've all experienced this feeling once in our lives, where can't play a game we want to because our graphics card could not support it. Fear not, with the advent of Cloud Gaming, that fear will just be a thing of the past.
 

Cloud gaming. Sounds very convenient, does it not? Or do you have a Mac and are longing to play video games? No longer do you have to leave your old hardware behind and keep shifting with the times. With advancement in this particular technology, you could play all your games even without the presence of a dedicated graphics card!
Cloud gaming basically works as any other streaming platform like Netflix or Spotify etc. Basically, the server hosting the cloud gaming service runs the game of your choice and streams the video of the gameplay to you. You simply use the keyboard,mouse/controller as input devices as you would with a remote and a TV. The remote server does all the dirty work, while your computer is just receives an on-going video stream and sends input commands. To wrap it up in a nutshell, Cloud gaming is a video streaming platform which is interactive.
While there are a few Cloud gaming service providers like LiquidSky, playkey, vortex etc. Nvidia, with it's cutting edge technology and at the same time, being the market leader in their particular segment, looks to take over the world of cloud gaming. While the service is only in it's Beta state, here are a few things Nvidia promises:

  • Any device Gaming: High-quality, low-latency, multi device gaming on any PC, Mac, tablet, smartphone or TV.
  • Click-to-play simplicity: Anytime access to a library of gaming titles and saved games in the cloud. Play or continue games from any device, anywhere.
  • Less hassle: No new hardware. No complicated setup. No game discs. No digital downloads. No game installations. No game patches.
However, there would be some hurdles in order to get  the perfect gaming experience:-
  • Resolution: The gameplay video which will be received in a resolution which won't be as sharp as that received from a high-end PC.
  • Bandwidth: Cloud gaming services will require a huge amount of bandwidth. Playing a game on this platform may use more than 3GB per hour in bandwidth. If you have bandwidth caps on your Internet, well Meh.
  • Ping: Playing games on cloud gaming services will require you to have a low ping as you are in contact with a server and the response time will be greatly affected by your ping.

Is Cloud gaming the future? We definitely think so. With more people getting access to the internet, and internet speeds improving constantly, gamers worldwide would love to try their hands at this new phenomenon.
 



About Aryan 'Ba3a' Kumar

Wannabe computer scientist. Ba3a covers everything tech.