Cloud gaming services are getting better and better. From Google Stadia to PS Now, the future of gaming is here. Having said that, there have been stumbling blocks that have tripped up certain services.
To this day, there are still several services that don't offer low-res streaming for unstable connections. Now that Amazon Luna has joined Stadia and GeForce Now in enabling low-res streaming, is it time the rest of the streaming services caught up?
Should Low-Resolution Cloud Gaming Be Commonplace?
Some game streaming services employ automatic quality adjustment while you're using the platform. While you're playing a game, any connection issues will cause the game to lose quality, supposedly helping with slowdown issues and stuttering.
The major problem with this is that even if you have a powerful internet connection, it isn't always reliable. Whether it's because of bugs on your chosen platform, heavy traffic slowing down your network, or others in your home ruining your connection, slowdowns and performance issues are sometimes inevitable.
It can be incredibly annoying to have your game stream jumping around in quality while you're trying to play. Even if you don't mind the random changes in quality, they don't always prevent frame rate drops or artifacting. Having the ability to choose quality for yourself can alleviate both issues.
An easy-to-understand example of this comes with services like YouTube. If you're having connection troubles, you can turn the quality of the video down to prevent buffering. The same principle applies to game streaming.
Services That Offer Low-Resolution Gaming
It's worth noting that various services actually allow you some level of control over your stream's quality. Both Google Stadia and GeForce Now allow you to limit your stream quality depending on how unstable your connection can be at times. Amazon Luna recently joined them in offering the feature as well.
However, there are still plenty of services that don't allow you to limit quality. Xbox Cloud Gaming, for instance, relies solely upon automatic quality adjustment. In cases such as PlayStation Now, 1080p wasn't even an option at all until April 2021, but even now, it's not possible to adjust quality manually.
Why Low-Resolution Gaming is Important
Part of the reason that low-resolution gaming is important is because of services' dependence on the internet. Say you sink a lot of money into a service like Stadia. If your internet connection takes a hit and the games become unplayable, you've effectively paid for games that you can no longer play.
Obviously for certain services, this is less of an issue. Both GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming rely either on games you own for yourself or on a monthly subscription model. If there's a stability problem, you're losing much less value than you are on the complete inability to play a game you paid full price for.
Of course, any inability to play games you've paid for is never a good thing. It's certainly true that giving players control over stream quality would help prevent those sorts of problems. However, should streaming services focus on providing these updates if it diverts attention away from other improvements?
Should Game Streaming Services Have Other Priorities?
If stability is the main issue plaguing game streaming, what else is there that services can do about it? Short of offering every customer a connection upgrade, allowing users to adjust their own quality certainly seems like the best option.
Having said that, there are certainly folks out there who would prefer game services would put their focus elsewhere. Services like Stadia promised 4K resolutions at 60fps with a 35Mbps internet connection. Many Stadia users can tell you, it's taken a long time since launch to get anywhere close to that.
Baring that in mind, should these services focus more on 4K resolutions and high frame rates to compete with modern gaming PCs and consoles? On the one hand, streaming services hardly seem ready to compete with next-gen gaming at all. High-speed internet connections aren't prevalent enough, and the technology is still evolving.
On the other hand, if the majority of customers are looking for a cutting-edge experience, these services need to go where the money is. The difficulty comes from trying to decide who platform owners aim these services at. Are they for newcomers to game without a huge initial investment, or as an alternative to expensive next-gen equipment?
Either way, these streaming services will need to decide where they're focusing on soon. Remaining too unfocused is a problem that could cause the death of many fledgling platforms.
The Future Of Game Streaming
While it's difficult to decide where game streaming needs to turn its focus, we can all agree that the concept will be around for the foreseeable future. At the rate new streaming services are cropping up, you might struggle to figure out which one you should use.