Is cloud gaming the future...?

I don't think this is going to be a good option for at least decades, or possibly even a century.

Bandwidth is still a problem for now, but even after solving that the concept has a major problem. The input latency is going to be terrible, unless these cloud machines are plentiful everywhere nearby, at which point it's quickly going to become prohibitively expensive. Many games are played at over 100 inputs per second, and even in the near optimal case of a 40ms round trip, you will be putting in 4 inputs before anything happens on your screen. People can tell the difference in responsiveness between 30 and 60 fps, and 40ms delay would be the responsiveness of 25 fps.

We're looking at the control feeling as unresponsive and sluggish as something running at 25 fps, only in roughly optimal conditions. 40ms roundtrip is 20 ping, and a more reasonable estimate would honestly be 70-150ms roundtrip, which would in turn range from a 14 fps response to a 7 fps response.

I don't think the technology has much of a benefit over spending the money on lower end hardware that allows hitting at least 30 fps. It could make games render a bit prettier, but I honestly doubt that people will forgive slightly prettier games having terrible control.

/r/truegaming Thread