Input lag will likely always be a differentiator between streaming and local. Most games are generally not designed to handle input lag at all, especially input

Input lag will likely always be a differentiator between streaming and local. Most games are generally not designed to handle input lag at all, especially input lag at network speeds. The streaming services today have put in extraordinary work into this by using things like input prediction and "input smoothing" and those tools make games more playable than not, but it's certainly not an exact match in play to how the games were designed to be played and sometimes it shows, even when you have performant internet and good quick ping to your nearest streaming server. Of course, it especially shows as network performance degrades. (I tried streaming a game the other week on cell tower tether from a hotel with bad wifi and the input prediction was a bit like trying to semi-blindly navigate a PowerPoint or HyperCard deck of the game. Felt like classic Myst nodes with a worse game play user experience.)