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> It’s not hard to imagine this feature eventually evolving to the point where you don’t run your own games on your PC and stream to your device. nVidia alread

> It’s not hard to imagine this feature eventually evolving to the point where you don’t run your own games on your PC and stream to your device. nVidia already runs such a service, GeForce NOW. I've been trying the Mac beta for a few months and... it's not great. Some games just need 1:1, perfect streaming (twitch shooters, 2D platformers, etc.), and their service at best (when on wired ethernet and a datacenter nearby) delivers a lag of 2-3 frames. Valve's product, since you're running it on your local network, can get that down to a single frame, but that can still be too much at times.

giobox 8y ago
What you say is true of today. I'm talking about the future. I think it's foolish to bet against cloud game streaming technology reaching the point where it is good enough for _most_ people, and when it does I'd be even further surprised if Valve aren't at least trying to be a major player. LAN based game streaming is always going to be a relatively niche feature, as gaming PCs are increasingly niche. Cheap tablets/phones/laptops that could use a cloud based service number well into the billions at this point. As for your point about lag - sure it's not going to be as low latency as a local LAN system, but honestly I don't think a lot of customers will notice this too much or care - people are already happy with 30FPS consoles with often terrible controller latency on some titles. Sure there will be those who still want the best, and they will continue to build expensive gaming towers. The Playstation Now game streaming service has been relatively successful despite having all of these problems and more. I recently finished The Last Of Us on playstation now. Again, it wasn't the best, but it was very close to "good enough". Many kids today are happy playing "Fortnite" on a phone. A phone, playing an online FPS with touch controls... It's clear that perfect playing conditions are not the primary driver for a lot of people.

giobox 8y ago

What you say is true of today. I'm talking about the future. I think it's foolish to bet against cloud game streaming technology reaching the point where it is good enough for _most_ people, and when it does I'd be even further surprised if Valve aren't at least trying to be a major player. LAN based game streaming is always going to be a relatively niche feature, as gaming PCs are increasingly niche. Cheap tablets/phones/laptops that could use a cloud based service number well into the billions at this point. As for your point about lag - sure it's not going to be as low latency as a local LAN system, but honestly I don't think a lot of customers will notice this too much or care - people are already happy with 30FPS consoles with often terrible controller latency on some titles. Sure there will be those who still want the best, and they will continue to build expensive gaming towers. The Playstation Now game streaming service has been relatively successful despite having all of these problems and more. I recently finished The Last Of Us on playstation now. Again, it wasn't the best, but it was very close to "good enough". Many kids today are happy playing "Fortnite" on a phone. A phone, playing an online FPS with touch controls... It's clear that perfect playing conditions are not the primary driver for a lot of people.