Cloud gaming

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Cloud gaming, sometimes called gaming on demand or game streaming, is a type of online gaming that runs video games on remote servers and streams the game's output (video, sound, etc) directly to a user's device, or more colloquially, playing a game remotely from a cloud. It contrasts with traditional means of gaming, wherein a game is run locally on a user's video game console, personal computer, or mobile device.[1][2]

Background

Cloud gaming platforms operate in a similar manner to remote desktops and Photo on demand services;[3] games are stored and executed remotely on a provider's dedicated hardware, and streamed as video to a player's device via client software. The client software handles the player's inputs, which are sent back to the server and executed in-game.[3] Some cloud gaming services are based on access to a virtualized Windows environment, allowing users to download and install games and software as they normally would on a local computer.[4][5][6]

Cloud gaming can be advantageous as it eliminates the need to purchase expensive computer hardware or install games directly onto a local game system. Cloud gaming can be made available on a wide range of computing devices, including

digital media players, or proprietary thin client-like devices.[7][3][8] Some services may offer additional features to take advantage of this model, including the ability for a viewer to join a player's session and temporarily take control of the game.[9]

Due to their dependency on high-quality streaming video, cloud gaming services typically require reliable, high-speed internet connections with low latency. Even with high-speed connections available, traffic congestion and other issues affecting network latency can affect the performance of cloud gaming, and the ability to use a service regularly may also be limited by data caps enforced by some internet service providers.[10][11]

Further, the costs of cloud gaming shift from traditional distribution through retail outlets and digital storefronts to the data servers that run the cloud gaming services. Novel cost structures are required to cover these operating costs compared to traditional distribution.[7]

Infrastructure considerations

Cloud gaming requires significant infrastructure for the services to work as intended, including data centers and server farms for running the games, and high-bandwidth internet connections with low latency for delivering the streams to users.[12] The network infrastructure required to make cloud gaming feasible was, for many years, not available in most geographic areas, or unavailable to consumer markets.[12][8]

A major factor in the quality of a cloud gaming service is latency, as the amount of delay between the user's inputs and when they take effect can affect gameplay — especially in fast-paced games dependent on precise inputs (such as

fighting games).[13][14] Attempts to reduce latency include the use of caching as the cached data can be "stored locally ... and can be retrieved when required."[15]

The provider's dedicated hardware can be upgraded over time in order to support higher

Quality of Experience (QoE) that measures the user's general level of satisfaction also needs to be brought into consideration during the development phase of cloud gaming.[16]

History

Early attempts

The first demonstrated approach of cloud gaming technology was by startup

E3, and released around 2003. In their initial model around 2005, G-cluster provided PC games that ran on their servers, using video-on-demand service providers, set-top box manufacturers, and middleware software providers to help provide their service to network operators, and then offered the games through portals to end users. By 2010, due to changes in the market, G-cluster changed their model to work through a large server manufacturer to provide their games to the network operators and directly to users. This refocusing was necessitated by the increased available of free-to-play games available for personal computers, drawing them away from G-cluster's service, so G-cluster opted to focus on Internet Protocol television (IPTV) users instead, which had a potential target of about three million users in 2010.[17] French telco SFR launched G-cluster gaming service in 2010 for its end users [18][19]
and Orange followed suit in 2012 offering the gaming service for its customers. Both services have been commercially operational ever since offering cloud gaming for their customers on TV and mobile.

In early 2003, another attempt was announced by American company

Quake 3 Arena on a dedicated server. After a couple years of setbacks, the company bankrupted in 2008, with the Phantom console never officially released to the market, becoming one of the most popular vaporware
of recent times.

Video game developer Crytek began the research on a cloud gaming system in 2005 for Crysis, but according to their CEO Cevat Yerli, they halted development in 2007 to wait until the infrastructure and cable Internet providers were able to complete the task and the cost of bandwidth to decline.[20]

OnLive and Gaikai

Entrepreneur

2K Games and THQ, they found it difficult to get other publishers onboard as they were wary of the subscription price model.[21]

Simultaneous to OnLive, another startup

Sony Computer Entertainment in July 2012 for $340 million, and by October 2012, was offering PlayStation games. Ultimately, the technology behind Gaikai was used as the foundation for PlayStation Now, first introduced in 2014.[21][26]

OnLive was never profitable, and after a possible acquisition by

Sony Computer Entertainment in April 2015, but then closed it down about a month later.[27][25] As stated by The Verge, the acquisition of both Gaikai and OnLive's intellectual property gave Sony access to a range of patents covering cloud gaming.[25]

Later advancements and adoption by industry

Nvidia first announced its cloud gaming service, Nvidia Grid (later rebranded as GeForce Now), as a combination of hardware using its graphics processing units and software in May 2012, initially intending to partner with Gaikai for games on the service.[28] Ubitus GameCloud was also introduced alongside Nvidia's Grid. GameCloud was designed as white-label service based on Nvidia's Grid that other providers could use to offer game streaming to their customers.[29]

Grid was formally introduced as part of its

Consumer Electronics Show. Grid/GeForce Now launched with services provided by several cloud gaming partners including Agawi, Cloudunion, Cyber Cloud, G-cluster, Playcast, and Ubitus.[30] The Grid service was first launched in North America in November 2014 where a limited number of games were made available,[31] and then later expanded to computers in 2017, including support for importing a user's Steam and Epic Games Store library to run on the remote instance.[32][33][34][35] This importing model was criticized by publishers including Activision Blizzard and Bethesda Softworks, as purchases were only intended for personal computers and not through cloud gaming. The publishers forced NVidia to pull these games from their service.[21]

In 2014, Dragon Quest X was brought to Nintendo 3DS in Japan using Ubitus for the streaming technology.[36]

In 2017, the French startup Blade launched a service known as Shadow, where users are able to rent a remote

Nvidia Quadro graphics. The service is geographically-limited based on proximity to one of its datacenters; it initially launched in France,[4] but began expanding into the United States in 2019.[37]

In May 2018,

Project xCloud, leveraging Microsoft Azure technology.[43]

At the Game Developers Conference in 2019, Google officially announced its cloud gaming service Stadia, which officially launched on November 19 of that year.[44][45] In May, Sony announced a partnership with Microsoft to co-develop cloud solutions between divisions, including gaming.[46]

progressive web applications that would be run through a Chrome or Safari browser on iOS devices, as allowed for by Apple, to support cloud gaming.[49][50] Microsoft has also announced plans to use a similar approach to bring the xCloud game streaming technology to iOS via the browser sometime in early 2021.[51]

Amazon introduced its own cloud gaming service Luna in September 2020. Games on the service will be offered via a channel-style subscription service, with Amazon's own games and those from Ubisoft available at the service's launch.[52][53]

Nintendo currently has games on Nintendo Switch that primarily run on cloud gaming such as Control, Hitman 3, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Kingdom Hearts franchise, using Ubitus.[54]

Future

GPU resource sharing

A proposed method to improve game streaming's scalability is adaptive graphics processing unit (GPU) resource scheduling.[55] Most cloud gaming providers are using dedicated GPUs to each person playing a game. This leads to the best performance but can waste resources.[55] With better GPU resource scheduling algorithms, if the game does not fully utilize that GPU it can be used to help run someone else’s game simultaneously.[55] In the past, “GPU virtualization was not used due to the inferior performance of the resource scheduling algorithm”.[55] However new resource management algorithms have been developed that can allow up to 90% of the GPUs original power to be utilized even while being split among many users.[55]

Predictive input

Algorithms could be used to help predict a player's next inputs, which could overcome the impact of latency in cloud gaming applications.[56] Stadia's head of engineering Majd Bakar foresaw the future possibility of using such a concept to "[reduce] latency to the point where it's basically nonexistent", referring to this concept as "negative latency".[57]

See also

References

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  2. ^ "Cloud gaming streaming services set to change your game - Latest News | Gadgets Now". Gadget Now. 2019-10-27. Archived from the original on 2019-10-28. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  3. ^ a b c Enderle, Rob (2019-10-11). "Is xCloud – the Xbox game streaming service – a glimpse at the future of the desktop?". Computerworld. Retrieved 2020-06-04.
  4. ^ a b "The Shadow Ghost turns cloud gaming into a seamless experience". TechCrunch. 27 February 2019. Retrieved 2020-06-04.
  5. ^ "Nvidia announces GeForce Now streaming service for PCs with pay-per-minute gaming". ExtremeTech. Retrieved 5 May 2017.
  6. ^ "Nvidia brings GeForce Now game streaming to any PC or Mac". Ars Technica. 5 January 2017. Retrieved 5 May 2017.
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  8. ^ a b Nelius, Joanna (2019-03-05). "What you need to know about the current state of cloud gaming". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2019-11-04.
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  28. ^ Hollister, Sean (May 15, 2012). "Nvidia announces GeForce Grid: cloud gaming direct from a GPU, with games by Gaikai". The Verge. Retrieved August 22, 2012.
  29. ^ Holister, Sean (May 16, 2012). "Ubitus GameCloud: the white-label cloud gaming service seeking a US audience". The Verge. Retrieved August 22, 2012.
  30. ^ Gilbert, Ben (January 6, 2013). "NVIDIA details the Grid, a card built for powering cloud computing". Engadget. Retrieved August 22, 2021.
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  39. ^ "EA embraces game streaming with its new 'Project Atlas' engine". Engadget. 30 October 2018. Retrieved 2020-06-04.
  40. ^ Lanier, Liz (2018-10-30). "More Than 1,000 Employees Working on EA's Project Atlas Cloud Gaming Service". Variety. Retrieved 2020-06-04.
  41. ^ Etienne, Stefan (2018-10-08). "Google's Project Stream is a working preview of the future of game streaming". The Verge. Retrieved 2020-06-04.
  42. ^ Singleton, Micah (2018-10-01). "Google announces Project Stream, will let testers play Assassin's Creed Odyssey for free". The Verge. Retrieved 2020-06-04.
  43. ^ Bankhurst, Adam (October 8, 2018). "Microsoft Announces Global Game Streaming Service, Project xCloud, Beta Next Year". IGN. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
  44. ^ Hollister, Sean (June 6, 2019). "Google's Stadia game service is officially coming November: Everything you need to know". The Verge. Retrieved June 6, 2019.
  45. ^ Hollister, Sean (October 15, 2019). "Google's Stadia cloud gaming service will launch on November 19th". The Verge. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
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  47. ^ Gilbert, Ben (August 6, 2020). "When Microsoft's ambitious 'Netflix of gaming' service launches in September, it won't arrive on Apple devices – here's why". Business Insider. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
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  51. ^ Statt, Nick (December 9, 2020). "Microsoft confirms the xCloud beta is coming to iOS and PC in spring 2021". The Verge. Retrieved December 9, 2020.
  52. ^ Browne, Ryan (September 24, 2020). "Cloud gaming battle heats up as Amazon enters the ring to take on Microsoft and Google". CNBC. Retrieved September 25, 2020.
  53. ^ Peters, Jay (September 24, 2020). "How Amazon's Luna cloud gaming service compares to Stadia, xCloud, and GeForce Now". The Verge. Retrieved September 24, 2020.
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