Anime Pulse

With the release of Google Stadia being a bit of a flop, is there any future for purely online distribution of games? And what can companies do to make the adoption of this technology easier and less painful?

~Idea submitted and written by Xahldera~

I'm back. Haven't been by in a while because I got a girlfriend then I got engaged and now I'm planning a wedding. I've kept listening to the show though.

I think the real question to answer is, "why?" Everyone either has access to a PC or console to play games so where would be the incentive to actually get a streaming service. Playstation has been dabbling with an online gaming subscription for their game library (granted, you have to pay a subscription on top of ps plus) but I dont see any real incentive....yet. Giving out game passes for games you already own could be a good step in the right direction for incentivizing the switch. I think, also, ISP's need to get internet to a higher standard before any real breakthrough can be done. If streaming music has surpassed buying music then gaming shouldn't be too far behind

First off, welcome back Link!!!
And as far as Online only distribution for games, I don't see thar happening. Steam and GOG make a lot of money sure, but physical will ALWAYS be important what with games being removed from store fronts like some of marvel capcom fighters, ducktales, scott pilgrim, and more recently, P.T. The fear of never owning your games is a very real thing these days.
As far as streaming goes, the U.S. has some of the worst Internet speed when compared to the rest of the world. Whether that be because of cultural issues, financially unfeasible, etc. We aren't there yet with streaming games being viable, ESPECIALLY WITH DATA CAPS. I'm looking at you Comcast.
Maybe in 5 to 10 years when gigabit speed is the norm and data caps are a thing of the past.
I feel the Stadia will go the way of the OUYA before long.

i think with could gaming its less about the service and more about the infrastructure even with a gigabit connection i was not able to play with low enough latency to enjoy titanfall 2. so if internet gets faster and there are much more servers around the world it may work but it would take a lot of financial investment to get it up to par with local play.

Until the ISPs get there acts together, the adoption of Streaming will be a hard sell, but Bundling a Subscription for download and install along with direct streaming like Microsoft has planned, would be a strong move. Physical Disc ownership is a dying thing, i wish it weren't but it is. even if you Have A Physical Copy with a lot of game publishers pushing Always online Drm in some form or another all games now have a limited lifespan, so i dont see that being a strong argument against streaming. another Thing a Streaming Service provider would need is regional Data Centers to reduce latency the lack luster internet provides. lastly Also as Microsoft already seems to be doing is to a set up the prioritizes Control over Graphics for data in the stream packets.

No. Just no. Consumers should not accept cloud-only gaming. What follows that would be subscription-only gaimg -- you own _nothing_ and pay a recurring fee for the privilege of playing a game. MMO's are one thing, with warts of their own as it is, but if all games go that route? Not no, but F no.

The only way a cloud service would be acceptable is if one could also download the game and play it offline as well. But even then, ISP's and game servers can't really handle that.

(We still doing forums in 2020? Oh well!)

Stadia is a poorly planned idea that is a bit before its time. I don't know who it's for, and I don't know how committed Google is to keeping this "console" going. I'm totally for digital and streaming games. I have a goddam ancient computer, and if I could just buy a decent computer and play the most resource intensive games on it, I would love that. Unfortunately, Stadia is not there yet. It's 2020. We WILL have a day when games on physical media is near extinction. It will absolutely happen in our lifetimes. All the failures that have happened are paving the way for the company that will finally do streaming games right.