True, but don’t sleep on the Mega Drive / Genesis, or the Neo Geo too!

There are legitimately so many incredible titles in the 4th (16bit) console generation, that it could keep most people playing for a decade or more.

..and that’s BEFORE gaming exploded in popularity with the 5th & 6th console generations.

Considering you probably could play rom hacks for these 3 games for the rest of your life - FF6, Zelda, and Mario

I got a PS5 a year ago after not having any console since the n64, and there is probably a lifetime of good games that I can pick up on deep sale without buying anything full price

I’m old and don’t play that often anymore

Hear hear. Fuck off take two.

Even if they're not greedy, I don't think the price that it would take to provide that service at cost is going to ever be a price people are willing to pay.

I don't see cloud gaming as a bad thing as a backup

I agree, I'd like to have the OPTION to stream cloud games in addition to the OPTION of playing games digitally and the OPTION of owning games physically.

The keyword here being OPTION.

Very much this.

I remember being so excited for cloud gaming as a kid, before the term was coined or the concept was widely there - I just kept thinking to myself how cool it would be to be able to play any games I want on my less-than-capable PC. Couldn't even imagine the tech actually arriving one day.

And by the time it did, I've become so disenchanted with technology that reaches mainstream, because you're just so right: it becomes a very aggressive money-making machine that treats you without any respect and only wants more.

I would rather pay more for less thanks to the rampocalypse, play with stutters and terrible FPS on lowest settings, than let a Take-Two CEO and others have us rent games and computing power.

It's only good for single player games, I tried multiplayer games on Stadia and it just didn't work

This.

Intention be damned if they don't provide the necessary infrastructure so people can access this at a minimum standard of quality.

I, unfortunately, live out in the boonies and streaming a game with this country bumpkin Internet is impossible.

I would never accept 100ms either, but what's funny is that twitch/reaction games are more popular than they've ever been. Fighting games, FPSes, Soulslikes, precision platformers are all extremely intolerant to any kind of latency.

They are implying that in three years, if they have their way, you'll have no choice. You'll own nothing and you'll be happy.

Yea please. I keep saying it too. Wake up you fucking sheeple. Many folks who become CEOs are some of the worst of the worst cause that is the only way you get there. A CEO only says things that make them money.

Clueless or not, zelnick is in the position to attempt to make this happen. Sony seems to be on board with them, and I bet microsoft is salivating at the thought as well.

And Indies are going strong right now! I used to play big titles but not anymore.

By the way, take a look at the indie game The Precinct.

If you read it, he says it's a way to reach those who don't have machines capable of running the games, therefore increasing the target audience size.

they don't care... they want people to pay for shit service to then upgrade to the less shit service to have its terms change without your consent or prior knowledge to the more expensive service that requires some other shit or specific hardware... which will also be shit.

Yeah. Take-Two CEO is a dumbass for the logistical reasons alone. Good-enough-to-stream-games internet is more rare than household VR headsets. There is not enough market to support this industry at the scale required to make it financially viable.

That's mainly because upload speed is capped much lower than download speed. That's reversed if you're streaming from a service though. Still a shit idea either way, hell the streaming services of several years went under in what a year or two.

The tech bros like him, Bezos, Huang, and all those other tech fascists are working extra hard to make sure we don't have the software or hardware to buy in order to play or do anything independently.

The trick is ensuring you have hardware that lasts

Microsoft can't even justify an online subsciption service for $30/month. They already bacled down that price. And I don't think we need to talk much about Stadia who tried the "pay $60 to stream a game" model.

No way in high hell this takes off. The economics aren't there and the competition is too strong. Not to mention I don't think the internet infrastructure is quite ready for that kind of mass streaming anyway.

Those AI datacenters are pretty much single use. If you want to use them for anything else, you need to strip out everything down to the concrete and power leads, and install a new set of equipment.

Who is “they”? Major game publishers? How will they convince 80 different indie publishers to stop publishing locally run games?

as soon as the AI bubble bursts

We've been saying that for a long time now. Still going strong, even though I would personally love to see it burst and we can get back to normal.

It can, should and hopefully will fail forever, but it only has to succeed once. Telecom companies unwillingness to invest in new infrastructure might actually be our saving grace, because I don’t see cloud gaming ever gaining critical mass without most people having reliable and cheap access to fiber internet.

And it will cost even more though.

Yeah, but now consoles are gonna cost $1,000 and lower-mid-rang PCs even more.

Streaming games sucks, but it'll be the only option for people who can spend that kind of cash on the hardware.

And all for what, too? Just so you don't have to spend 20 minutes downloading a game one time?

AAA gaming is full of execs who have not grasped how their industry has already begun imploding. The survivors in the all digital potato PC world will be the indie devs and Steam since Steam sells their games. The indie game devs write their games to run on anything. The other survivor will be the free to play studios who have already won every market they've entered. If they don't own a gaming market yet its because they haven't bothered winning it. Look at active player counts. Franchises like Battlefield and Call of Duty are way down the charts from the free to play shooter games.

The only one that I think stands a chance is the xbox one, and that's assuming they combine it with gamepass. Because that was the only thing that sounded even somewhat appealing to me about the idea of remote gaming: being able to try a bunch of different games legally without needing to buy them all. Like netflix but for games (and not just mobile games like the actual netflix games).

Having my own devices that can handle playing games, I have zero interest in paying full price for a game I own even less than most games these days (because at least with the files all being stored and run locally, it opens up other possibilities, like hacking it to still run without DRM if its DRM server goes out or modding it). That was deal breaker #1.

Dealbreaker #2 is of course the latency. I use an ETX via VPN for my work and just typing on that thing is annoying because of the latency.

The subscription cost is another big negative, though I guess I wouldn't call it a dealbreaker. Though I currently have 0 video game related subscriptions (I don't count netflix, assuming they haven't given up on their games).

On the pros side, the only things I can think of is that it limits cheating (though separate devices would still work) and it gives you an option to play if you don't have a device capable of playing it, though you do still need a device, a display and sound system, and a good internet connection.

Don't forget the great success of Google Stadia!

Yeah this is their goal. Subscription everything. Also they don’t want gpus in your hands and we will see them more regulated than assault weapons - or some sort of gentleman’s agreement where they are generally unavailable to the public. Writing is on the wall because if you can run quality ai locally the powers that be suddenly lose a trillion or two overnight.