Game Streaming Services Go Mainstream

In a year when there?s going to be a great deal of attention placed on new entrants to the video streaming market (Apple, Disney, Time Warner, etc.), the surprise breakout winner in cloud-based entertainment in 2019 could actually be game streaming services, such as Microsoft?s Project xCloud (based on its Xbox gaming platform) and other possible entrants.

The idea with game streaming is to enable people to play top-tier games across a wide range of both older and newer PCs, smartphones, and other devices. Given the tremendous growth in PC and mobile gaming, along with the rise in popularity of eSports, the consumer market is primed for a service (or two) that would allow gamers to play popular high-quality gaming titles across a wide range of different device types and platforms.

Of course, game streaming isn?t a new concept, and there have been several failed attempts in the past. The challenge is delivering a timely, engaging experience in the often-unpredictable world of cloud-driven connectivity. It?s an extraordinarily difficult technical task that requires lag-free responsiveness and high-quality visuals packaged together in an easy-to-use service that consumers would be willing to pay for.

Thankfully, a number of important technological advancements are coming together to make this now possible, including improvements in overall connectivity via WiFi (such as with WiFi6) and wide area cellular networks (and 5G should improve things even more). In addition, there?s been widespread adoption and optimization of GPUs in cloud-based servers. Most importantly, however, are software advancements that can enable technologies like split or collaborative rendering (where some work is done on the cloud and some on the local device), as well as AI-based predictions of actions that need to be taken or content that needs to be preloaded. Collectively, these and other related technologies seem poised to enable a compelling set of gaming services that could drive impressive levels of revenue for the companies that can successfully deploy them.

It?s also important to add that although strong growth in game streaming services that are less hardware dependent may imply a negative impact on gaming-specific PCs, GPUs and other game-focused hardware (because people would be able to use older, less powerful devices to run modern games); in fact, the opposite is likely to be true. Game streaming services will likely expose an even wider audience to the most compelling games and that, in turn, will likely inspire more people to purchase gaming-optimized PCs, smartphones, and other devices. The gaming service will give them the opportunity to play (or continue playing) those games in situations or locations where they don?t have access to their primary gaming devices.