The Rising of Cloud Gaming: My views
- Life, IT and Video Games - Part 1/6 ⇐ You are Here.
- The Boom of The Cloud - Part 2/6
- Game On and Heads Up! - Part 3/6
- From your Room to the Data Center - Part 4/6
- Google Stadia and Beyond - Part 5/6
- Cloudy Games - Part 6/6
My viewpoint
There's not much to say about the rising of Cloud Gaming that hasn’t been noted by any IT and Gaming magazines in the past months. This post series is intended to be informal, funny, and easy to understand. It is full quotes, rhetorical questions, and goofy jokes. Supporting nearly the idea of “how to explain *blank* to your mom,” I wrote it down for my non-IT folks.
Usually, I do troubleshooting and how-to posts, so bear with me. These are my thoughts and perspective from my current position. If you have any comments, drop it below. 😉
An Unneeded Introduction
If you do work for the IT industry, are a technology evangelist, or are very keen on high-tech, high are (also) the chances that you like video games, just like me. And if you happen to be video game enthusiastic or keep yourself well informed on general culture and technology trends, for sure, you have heard about cloud gaming, wrongly AKA for some, the Netflix of videogames.
Cloud gaming is a hot topic right now, and everyone has been talking about it this year. But cloud gaming is not a new thing; its services have been down this road for years. Nonetheless, only a few well-positioned vendors have a significant impact, such as PlayStation Now (Sony) and GeForce Now (Nvidia). Both services are available to those with the right hardware to support them.
Now, new players are emerging on the horizon. Early this year, Google has announced its offering, Google Stadia (at least they didn't call it 'Google Now'); and soon, Microsoft also will try to grab a piece of this billionaire-industry pie with the Xbox Project xCloud. There are many other already positioned players, and more others will follow the trend.
Fading Inner Child
I am myself an active gamer, but not a pro, a casual one, a “noob,” who is having a hard time getting over with the fun and addiction of video games. From consoles to PC and PCs back to consoles, I have been playing video games since I got my first (second-hand) Nintendo and a PC, back in the very early ’90s.
I remember playing my very first computer video game, Prince of Persia, (the classic version of 1989) on my dad’s company computer running MS-DOS. I’ll never forget having to manually access the game directory and type “cd prince” to start the game. I didn’t even know the meaning of that command line that I had written on a piece of paper, but it was fun. On this same computer, I spent some hours playing probably the first version of “Snake,” before it was even popular on Nokia’s phones.
I had own several computers now, of which some of them I had upgraded or built by myself, and if you ask me, my highest satisfaction at that time was having to choose these computers parts all by myself, built them up (of course), assemble them and test them. It wasn’t about playing the actual games, but all about curiosity and having fun during the process.
The last PC I build was about four years ago, and since then, I have been losing my gaming enthusiasm for several reasons. Maybe I am just getting old, I guess. This passion has become even more casual due to the day-by-day work and busy life.
Probably, when you have been stacking, troubleshooting, and working around with bulky enterprise storages, switches, and servers for some years now, when you arrive home after a tough day, you don’t even want to think about having to configure another single electronic device. It doesn’t matter how much I love tech, but I am not going to have an enthusiastic attitude when my wife asks me to fix her laptop’s WiFi. 😛
Honestly, this last part is not genuine all the time. I am always very keen on tech (and my wife) and still very curious about fixing and troubleshooting stuff (this is what I think makes me good at my job), but some days I am just not in the mood. These particulars days are when I (we all) rather choose the easy over curiosity, playability over graphics, practical over any additional configurations, and bear with me… a mobile game over a PC game.
I am sure I am not the only one having this struggle. People are looking for a simple, quick, and easy access with the near-zero hassle, just play.
The Mighty Industry of Video Games
Have you ever heard somebody saying that video games are a childish thing? Maybe your family thinks you are a loser because you keep talking about video games and playing video games on your ‘30s? (not my case, by the way). Check out these interesting facts below so you’ll have the perfect arguments to defend yourself.
Grand Theft Auto (GTA) 5 was released on 17 September 2013 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles, and only on its first 24 hours sold over 11 Million units, generating revenue of $800 million! Take into account that this worldwide broken record on sales didn't include the PC. This game only comes to see the light on the “PC master race” a year late. Btw, I manage to wait that whole year to play it on my computer. Basically, my last gaming computer was built just to play this game. [Source]
No surprise yet with the numbers? Last year (2018) was reported that only GTA 5 has sold over 100 million units and generated over $6 billion in revenue since its initial release. The entire GTA franchise held a lifetime revenue of $9.4 billion.
Full list of Grand Theft Auto 5 record-breaking achievements:
- Best-selling action-adventure video game in 24 hours
- Best-selling video game in 24 hours
- Fastest entertainment property to gross $1 billion
- Fastest video game to gross $1 billion
- Highest grossing video game in 24 hours
- Highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours
- Most viewed trailer for an action-adventure video game [Source]
GTA 5 is an example of breaking all (lots) records, but I could easily name hundreds of games and some companies having similar grossing numbers. So, you don’t like video games? That’s ok, fair enough. Do you still think that Videogames is a silly industry targeted only for geeks and kids? Think twice!
Games like GTA 5 are rated for players 18 years of age or older, due to its mature content. Like GTA, there are tons of video games intended for adults, with a solid (movie like) story, good narrative, sophisticated humor, and strong content in general.
Now you know, the next time people mention to you the Videogames (industry) is a childish thing, slap them on their faces with your “soon-legacy” physical copy of GTA (or FIFA, Call of Duty, Final Fantasy, etc.)
Also remember, the videogames industry had surpassed other industries such as Films and Music; years ago. (Considering that even mobile games are taking over the whole Video Game market). Even famous actors and actresses (from the Films industry) have been borrowing their voices for decades on top-rated game franchises. And the voice is not enough. Games have been using actors’ full facial expressions and body gestures to bring to life some masterpieces. [Source]
Credits: CD Projekt
Let me finish this part saying that the opinion about video games is not personal, I don’t mean to defend any video game, and it's not about my casual passion for them. It is just me, giving facts regarding this industry; and something necessary to understand and move ahead on this “cloudy” topic.
