Think about a world where you can play cutting-edge video games on your smartphone. Sounds too good to be true, right? Even now, in 2019, you rely on PlayStations, Xbox, Nintendoes, and 8th generation Intel Chip Processors equipped PCs to run new games. (Mobile games are getting better, but their quality is still far from that of console games). But, is cloud gaming that faraway?
5G is the underlying technological infrastructure that will cement the pipe dream into reality. And according to many analysts, 5G will be widely implemented by most OECD countries by 2024 — that is 5 years from now.
Ready or not, here I come
This year XBOX will be running public testing of its cloud gaming service. This is also the year when Valve is testing its Steam Link Anywhere and publicizing its timeline of the project.
And formidable contenders hopping onto the hype train are Amazon and Google. Amazon’s Fire TV, Lumberyard graphic engine, and Twitch have all been small moves culminating into the ‘la Project Stream.’ Google’s Project Stream is likely to be revealed on March 19th this year as well.
Above media shows what’s already possible
The change will be huge
As aforementioned, if cloud gaming were a fire, 5G is the huge stack of woods, and both movements are bound to create tectonic shift in computer gaming industry. It’s likely to be a winner-takes-all game; the winners of the game streaming services will also be the winners of the game industry.
The wave will definitely be more impactful than the past waves of evolutions: (i) from boards and dice to arcades, (ii) from arcades to PCs and consoles, (iii) from offline to online, and (iv) from online to mobile. The coming wave will integrate many bits and pieces into one single cloud.
Content wins the day
Who will be the winner in the coming war of cloud gaming? The service that can provide most value to the gamers, of course.
Past is a good teacher. We may learn a thing or two from the Great Console Battle that started in 2001 and is still on-going. To much dismay to the Microsoft, Xbox couldn’t bring down PlayStation because Sony had better exclusive contents than Xbox did (and to be fair Xbox did okay in the western market.) The coming Cloud War will be a reminiscence of the old war. Technological differences will set some parties apart from another, but I highly doubt the differences will be significant. These companies are all tech giants capable of deploying billions of dollars for this war. They are capable of handling exceptional services, I’m sure.
When everything is equal at the hardware-level, what will matter is the software. Who creates better contents will really decide the leaders from the laggards. Network effect and loyalty may provide additional points of leverage for the company that most resonates with the gamer body.
References
Inside Xbox: Introducing Project xCloud
Who will be the next Netflix of the game industry?
Explanation of the Power of Cloud Gaming
Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash
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