Cloud gaming has a HUGE potential for the future, but too many gaming companies it is simply another way to monetize their customer base. When Stadia was announced there was a lot of criticism about how you couldn’t just buy a game, and have it be yours to load and use whenever you wanted. Good criticism, but I don’t know that it was aimed at the right place when saying it was all a stadia issue.
Next i tried the new nvidia cloud gaming, where I could run any games I already owned. So I finally got to play Fallout 3 because the server time I was renting could automatically set it up so it would run. Something I couldn’t do with my windows 10 system because the game just didn’t like modern systems. Great time, fun times. Wohoo. 48 hours in with the main quest complete , having fun exploring. Then BOOM, all gone and the 48 hours I put in not saved.
Why? Because bethesda has decided I DON’T really own the game, that I can’t rent space on a server so I can actually play the game I bought a license to use. Supposedly Bethesda has decided that nvidia, and presumably any other cloud gaming service, like stadia, is a new Game platform, therefore it requires a new license, meaning I have to BUY the game again, even though the company did absolutely no work to get it to run on nvidia’s service. Bethesda is not the only game studio pulling their games from nvidia.
So for those who want to blame the cloud gaming companies, think again, your disdain and wrath should be directed at the gaming studios who look at cloud gaming as just another way to sell multiple copies of the same game to the same customer. The days of “Owning” a video game are long gone, and its NOT the fault of the cloud computer services. Its the same money hungry gaming studios that brought us “pay to win”, that are creating the problem.
Most games these days, console or otherwise, are bought using a digital code, with no physical media - what happens when a gaming company decides that the best way to increase revenue, is to delete older games, because they’re “outdated” forcing consumers to buy the newer version, using the excuse that they want to make sure consumers have the “Best Experience”.
If you think that won’t happen-anyone remember when Amazon started deleting digital copies of books, and then explained that consumers didnt buy the book, just the right to read it, and therefore didnt actually own the digital book?
Comments, counter arguments, your take on the future of cloud gaming?