Fans playing the cloud-based game Doom at the 2019 Gamescom in Cologne, Germany.
Once hailed as the future, even the likes of Google, Sony and Microsoft have struggled to make streaming games fun, fast or affordable Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox?
Sign up here In August 2009, at the very first Gamescom expo, I sat in a small meeting room in Germany and played Mario Kart and World of Warcraft on a laptop, via technology that was then completely new: cloud gaming.
It was a demonstration for a yet-to-be-launched service called Gaikai that promised to let you play any game in a browser window, without a console. (Here is an ancient video of that demonstration, featuring a very young Keza.) With a single click I could launch into any game, hosted on servers hundreds of miles away.
It really did look like the future.
Since then, plenty of companies have tried to be the first to truly crack game streaming, vying to be the Netflix of games.
Sony ended up buying Gaikai for $380m (£242m) in 2012; its technology now powers the streamable classic games library on PlayStation, and the PS5’s advanced game streaming.
OnLive, Gaikai’s first competitor, launched in 2011 but shut down after less than a year, leaving Sony to acquire all its patents.
Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service also imploded, launching in 2019 and shutting down three years later.
Despite the fact that people simply don’t seem to want game streaming services – or at least not enough to pay a stand-alone monthly subscription for them – Sony and Microsoft have remained steadfastly committed to the idea, bundling game streaming into their PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass services.
I use both quite regularly when I want to check out a game quickly, mostly because modern download sizes are ridiculous (Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, say, takes up nearly 150GB of my PS5 space, almost a quarter of its usable storage).
Who wants to do 30 minutes of hard drive management every time they want to play something new?
Last week, however, Microsoft announced that it was introducing time limits for game streaming: you’re now allowed 5-15 hours a month, depending on your subscription tier.
And yes, you’re right: that is not enough time to play through even one single average-sized game.
This brings Microsoft’s previously unwavering commitment to cloud gaming into question – and when even Microsoft with its infinite resources can’t seem to make it work, is the writing on the wall for game streaming as a whole?
Data-hungry ... streaming games such as Mario Kart World requires a whole load of data.
Normally, when you’re playing a game this lag is imperceptible.
Via streaming, it would often be horribly obvious, your character taking maybe a full second to jump after you’d pressed the A button.
Not all games rely heavily on timing and finesse, but a lot of them do, and playing games on a minor time-delay felt nauseating.
This is much less of an issue now, but another problem has only gotten worse: game streaming requires the instantaneous transmission of a lot of data, making it taxing on your internet connection and expensive for the service provider.
Here’s a comparison: watching an hour of Netflix uses about 1GB of data.
An hour of game streaming via Xbox requires about 4GB.
Microsoft’s servers have to stream you the video of your live gameplay, and continually receive and interpret your controller inputs.
No wonder Microsoft suddenly wants to limit your hours.
The cloud gaming model has always been based on the idea that data infrastructure would become faster and cheaper in the future.
Its selling point is outsourcing computing power so that you can play whatever you want without upgrading your console or PC, or even without having one at all.
Unfortunately, thanks to AI companies and their chatbots’ bottomless demand for computing power and energy, the opposite has happened.
Data and computing power are now more expensive.
Ironically, this change has been driven by Microsoft itself as much as anything else: a huge chunk of the company’s spending went on data centres and AI infrastructure in the last fiscal year.
This suggests that Microsoft is choosing to prioritise data provision for users of Azure and Copilot over its gaming customers.
Will this affect you?
Probably not.
Only 4% of all Game Pass subscribers use it for more than 15 hours a month, Microsoft said in a blog post announcing the changes.
Which brings us right back to the question: if cloud gaming really is the future, why is nobody using it?
It’s been a long time since that 2009 demo, and this technology has still yet to meaningfully break through.
Is it time to give up on it?
Alongside Sony and Microsoft, there is one other player left in this death match: the US-based tech firm Nvidia, whose GeForce Now game-streaming service (launched in 2013 and revamped many times since) might just be the world’s most successful.
Nvidia has been riding high on the AI boom, becoming the most valuable company in the world.
Its computing hardware powers all the datacentres that the rest of the tech industry has been building, to satisfy imagined future AI demand.
Perhaps, when all of this shakes out, it will be the only company left that can afford to provide game streaming services at all.
What to play Unashamedly laborious … Kingdom Come Deliverance II.
Photograph: Warhorse Studios I have been variably unwell for most of the summer, and in need of something absorbing, so I dived into Kingdom Come Deliverance II – think Skyrim, but 15th-century historical fiction.
I was impressed immediately by the outstanding script, story and performances, all of which are much more humorous and entertaining than I was expecting from a hardcore medieval RPG.
And I also love how unashamedly laborious this game is: you must control each swipe of a drawn-out sword fight; you have to manually grind and mix herbs for health-restoring concoctions; and if you want anyone to speak to you, you must regularly wash your face (and grubby tunic) so you don’t stink.
Last night, I spent 20 minutes hammering out horseshoes in the forge.
The opening hours have you hauling sacks of flour around while a tavern landlady swears at you.
I can’t help but respect this naturalist commitment to grime and busywork; knight-life isn’t all horseplay, you know.
I have spent many, many hours with this game and I am still basically a stinking peasant.
I may well never finish it, but I am resolved to at least get to the point where I have my own steed and a pair of decent boots.
Available on: Xbox, PlayStation 5, PC Estimated playtime: 55+ hours skip past newsletter promotion after newsletter promotion What to read Looking beautiful … The remastered Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Photograph: Nintendo A Nintendo broadcast on Tuesday spilled a bunch of new details about the upcoming Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, which I’m relieved to say is looking beautiful.
Link looks doll-like in the updated style, and Hyrule Castle Town looks a bit like a living Playmobil village overlaid with a watercolour-ish filter that makes the whole game look like something half remembered. (I am somewhat less enthused by the addition of voice acting to the cutscenes; Navi was already annoying enough.) Check out the demo here.
For the Ringer, frequent Guardian games contributor Lewis Gordon has written this excellent long-read on Japanese publisher Capcom’s current streak of brilliance, talking to a host of executives and developers about exactly how the company has bucked the trend while the rest of the games industry is on fire.
Patrick Miller – better known as pattheflip – has published a thought-provoking reflection on how and why some players become overinvested – even dependent – on video games.
“I say this as someone who has loved video games his whole life; if games serve a load-bearing function in someone’s life, it’s the life that needs fixing, not the games.” At the end of last week, the White House released this horrible little propaganda arcade, featuring nasty riffs on popular games, such as a version of Tetris where you have to build a wall on the Mexican border to stave off “the coming horde”.
That particular game was later removed after The Tetris Company expressed its opposition.
What to click Grand Theft Auto VI: can playing a video game count as cheating on your partner?
Thieves target mail order sales as Pokémon card prices soar ‘Ruin and decay bring a chance of rebirth’: Hidetaka Miyazaki on uniting players in a damaged world Question Block No combat required … Eastshade, where you take on the role of a painter rather than a fighter.
Photograph: Eastshade Studios Reader Piero sent in this question (along with some super-nice feedback on the newsletter – thank you, Piero!): “I enjoy the occasional foray into story-driven RPGs, such as Kingdom Come Deliverance, Skyrim and the Baldur’s Gate series, but as I get older I’m finding the continual combat sections overwhelming and dull.
Could you recommend me some good RPGs that don’t rely on combat as the main game mechanic?” You’re not alone, Piero – for a surprising proportion of players, combat is just something you have to do in order to get to the bits of a game that you find more interesting.
Most RPGs these days have a “story mode” option that at least makes all the fighting trivially easy, if you’re not interested in engaging with it.
There is of course Disco Elysium, a complex role-playing game with no combat at all; like Citizen Sleeper, it is mostly text-based.
I have heard good things about Eastshade, an open-world game where you’re a painter rather than a fighter.
I’d also suggest Pentiment, though it’s a very different style from Skyrim.
And Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is worth a look if you don’t mind cutesy.
If you have a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us at pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.
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