Is cloud gaming the future for video games?

The burgeoning cloud gaming industry could be the next big thing for video games. Tech companies have been increasingly offering ways to offer streaming services that could untether gamers from hardware like consoles and PCs. Still, cloud gaming has had its share of setbacks, as evidenced by Google shutting down its game streaming service Stadia earlier this year.

Debate over whether cloud gaming is the industry's future was sparked when the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority attempted to block Microsoft's $69 billion bid for Activision Blizzard over fears that the company could monopolize the market. Is a future where most people get their video games from the cloud near?

Cloud gaming is the next stage for video game tech

If you follow the "smart money," then the next stage for the video game industry is cloud gaming, Dave Lee opines in Bloomberg. Building a catalog of premium games to be streamed, like Netflix, "is tipped to be the definitive way the vast majority of gamers will access top titles in the future," Lee added. "Subscription plans will likely form the bedrock of this model, rather than the purchase of individual games."

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Tech problems are keeping the industry from blossoming

Cloud gaming can bring gamers "an experience approaching that of a high-end gaming PC when everything lines up," Sean Hollister argued for The Verge. But a massive amount of interconnected technology is needed to make it work, which can sometimes cause friction that dampens the experience. For example, the service relies on "not just your internet speed but the Wi-Fi congestion in your neighborhood," Hollister added.

The nascent cloud gaming market "won't take off until the friction disappears," he asserted. There are more technical problems "standing in the way of a vibrant cloud gaming market," Hollister pointed out, "not least of which is how most big games require companies to have an entire graphics card waiting in a server room for every single player."

Video game hardware is 'here to stay'

Cloud gaming is not going to make contemporary platforms obsolete. "Video game consoles and PC gaming, and mobile gaming are all here to stay," Paul Tassi declared in Forbes. He's been hearing about the "death of video game hardware" for years, "and yet PS5 is about to break sales records and become one of the best-selling systems in history." Having the ability to stream games digitally could be a useful option for video game connoisseurs, "but it's mostly going to be an addition, not the core way people play games," Tassi said. Plus, the internet service in the U.S. especially, "is often so crappy that cloud gaming is barely going to be useful most places," he added, "and where it is, there is still enough micro latency to make games feel worse than playing them natively on hardware."

If industry vets are impressed, others should be too.

One of the most significant events that foreshadowed "a gaming future dominated by the Cloud" was an announcement of a collaboration between Xbox and PlayStation collaborator Hideo Kojima, Jake Selway wrote for Game Rant. The untitled project was "billed as a game that is crafted completely around the Xbox Cloud system," and Kojuma cited Microsoft's "cutting edge Cloud technology" as a leading reason for his decision to work with Xbox. "Considering that this level of praise is coming from an industry veteran who is renowned for pushing the boundaries of established gaming norms," Selway said, "Cloud gaming could very well be the future of the industry." With Microsoft's existing technology likely to improve over time, cloud gaming "is well poised to become more and more ingrained as other companies follow suit."