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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]
Cloud gaming platforms operate in a similar manner to remote desktops and video 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 mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, 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]
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 first-person shooters and 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 resolutions and frame rates for the rendering and streams. [7] The 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]
The first demonstrated approach of cloud gaming technology was by startup G-cluster (short for Game Cluster), which introduced its product at the 2000 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 Infinium Labs, which intended to revolutionize the market of home entertainment with their Phantom video game console, a device that was envisioned to be capable of providing an on-demand video game delivery service via monthly online subscription. The Phantom was designed to run PC games, thus making it compatible with hundreds of titles from the start, and was to be sold at a much lower price than high-end PC gaming rigs. A functioning prototype was first presented at the E3 2004, running Unreal Tournament 2004, and then again at QuakeCon, where it was shown to be capable of perfectly operating 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]
Entrepreneur Steve Perlman revealed OnLive at the March 2009 Game Developers Conference. Perlman stated that with improvements in data and video compression as well as capabilities of smartphones, the potential for cloud gaming was now timely. [21] OnLive was officially launched in June 2010, alongside sale of its OnLive microconsole. [22] [23] While OnLive had acquired some support from large publishers like Ubisoft, 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 Gaikai was announced by David Perry in 2010. Gaikai opted to approach streaming of game demos rather than full games, making the service a form of online advertising for games. Gaikai gained far more publisher support, including Electronic Arts which OnLive had been trying to bring back to their service. [21] [24] [25] Gaikai was acquired by 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 HP Inc. fell through, OnLive's assets were acquired by a newly formed entity named "OL2", which was capitalized by Gary Lauder of Lauder Partners in 2012 at $4.8 million, a fraction of OnLive's valuation from 2010. A mass layoff (2/3 of staff) was conducted to reduce operating costs. [27] Under Lauder Partners, the new OL2 attempted to pivot its business model to allow streaming of games already owned by the user, but this failed to be profitable. OnLive and OL2's intellectual property was acquired 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]
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 Nvidia Shield Android TV device during the 2013 International 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 Windows 10 instance on a datacenter, with allocated access to an Intel Xeon processor and 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, Electronic Arts acquired cloud gaming assets and talent from GameFly for an undisclosed amount. [38] EA subsequently announced "Project Atlas", a project to explore the integration of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and Frostbite engine technology to create a "unified" platform to "remotely process and stream blockbuster, multiplayer HD games with the lowest possible latency, and also to unlock even more possibilities for dynamic social and cross-platform play." [39] [40] That month, Google and Microsoft also announced cloud gaming initiatives, with Google beginning to pilot "Project Stream" (including a closed beta featuring Assassin's Creed Odyssey running via a client in the Google Chrome web browser, [41] [42] and Microsoft announced the upcoming 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]
Apple Inc., which makes the iOS platform for iPhones and iPads, had looked to block cloud gaming apps on its service in mid-2020. They argued that cloud gaming services allowed developers to add games onto the iOS system that bypassed the normal checks they perform on any app before it is added to the App Store, and thus violated their terms of service. [47] However, in September 2020, Apple altered its rules that allowed cloud gaming apps to work on iOS, with restrictions that each game must be offered as an individual download on the iOS store which the user must use before playing, though catalog apps as part of the service can list and link to these games. [48] Both GeForce Now and Stadia announced plans in November 2020 to release iOS versions of their streaming services as 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]
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]
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]
Nvidia Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It is a software and fabless company which designs and supplies graphics processing units (GPUs), application programming interfaces (APIs) for data science and high-performance computing, as well as system on a chip units (SoCs) for the mobile computing and automotive market. Nvidia is also a dominant supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and software.
GeForce is a brand of graphics processing units (GPUs) designed by Nvidia and marketed for the performance market. As of the GeForce 40 series, there have been eighteen iterations of the design. The first GeForce products were discrete GPUs designed for add-on graphics boards, intended for the high-margin PC gaming market, and later diversification of the product line covered all tiers of the PC graphics market, ranging from cost-sensitive GPUs integrated on motherboards, to mainstream add-in retail boards. Most recently, GeForce technology has been introduced into Nvidia's line of embedded application processors, designed for electronic handhelds and mobile handsets.
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit initially designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. After their initial design, GPUs were found to be useful for non-graphic calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems due to their parallel structure. Other non-graphical uses include the training of neural networks and cryptocurrency mining.
OnLive was a provider of cloud virtualization technologies based in Mountain View, California. OnLive's flagship product was its cloud gaming service, which allowed subscribers to rent or demo computer games without installing them. Games were delivered as streaming video rendered by the service's servers, rather than running on the local device. This setup allowed the games to run on computers and devices that would normally be unable to run them due to insufficient hardware. OnLive also enabled other features such as the ability for players to record game-play and to spectate.
Gaikai is an American company which provides technology for the streaming of high-end video games. Its technology has multiple applications, including in-home streaming over a local wired or wireless network, as well as cloud-based gaming where video games are rendered on remote servers and delivered to end users via internet streaming
The Xbox app is an app for Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11, Android, iOS and Tizen. It acts as a companion app for Xbox video game consoles, providing access to Xbox network community features, remote control, as well as second screen functionality with selected games, applications, and content.
Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox network and Xbox Game Pass. The brand is produced by Microsoft Gaming, a division of Microsoft.
The Nvidia Shield TV is an Android TV-based digital media player produced by Nvidia as part of its Shield brand of Android devices. First released in May 2015, the Shield was initially marketed by Nvidia as a microconsole, emphasizing its ability to play downloaded games and stream games from a compatible PC on a local network, or via the GeForce Now subscription service. As with all other Android TV devices, it can also stream content from various sources using apps, and also supports 4K resolution video. It is produced in two models, with the second Shield TV Pro model distinguished primarily by increased internal storage.
GeForce Now is the brand used by Nvidia for its cloud gaming service. The Nvidia Shield version of GeForce Now, formerly known as Nvidia Grid, launched in beta in 2013, with Nvidia officially unveiling its name on September 30, 2015. The subscription service provided users with unlimited access to a library of games hosted on Nvidia servers for the life of the subscription, being delivered to subscribers through streaming video. Certain titles were also available via a "Buy & Play" model. This version was discontinued in 2019, and transitioned to a new version of the service that enabled Shield users to play their own games.
Game Pass is a subscription service as part of Xbox and offered by Microsoft Gaming. Launched on June 1, 2017, the service allows users to download and play video games via video game consoles, Microsoft Windows, Android, iOS, iPadOS, web browsers, smart televisions, and cloud. Game Pass contains a rotating library of games, with the games remaining accessible as long as the user has an active subscription. Game Pass subscribers also receive discounts on purchases of games from the service's library and their respective downloadable content (DLC).
LiquidSky was a New York City–based provider of cloud visualization, acquired by Walmart in 2018. The company's flagship product was a cloud gaming service of the same name, launched on March 24, 2017, and shut down in 2018. Announced at Consumer Electronics Show 2017, the service aimed to tackle issues that other providers struggle with, including latency and input lag. Its major competitors include Sony's PlayStation Now and NVIDIA's GeForce Now for PC and Mac.
Anbox is a free and open-source compatibility layer that allows Android applications to run on Linux distributions by using containerization techniques. Originally introduced by Canonical, Anbox executes Android applications in a lightweight system container, isolated from the host system for security and efficiency.
Rainway was a remote desktop video game streaming service for Microsoft Windows. It allowed users to stream locally installed applications to other devices over a WLAN or internet connection. The initial beta version launched on January 20, 2018. Version 1.0 of the software launched on January 31, 2019. In April 2021, the company announced a partnership with Microsoft to implement their streaming technology into Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Nvidia GRID is a family of graphics processing units (GPUs) made by Nvidia, introduced in 2008, that is targeted specifically towards cloud gaming. The Nvidia GRID includes both graphics processing and video encoding into a single device which is able to decrease the input to display latency of cloud based video game streaming. Nvidia offer their own game streaming service that makes use of the Nvidia Grid that supports full 1080p at 60 frames per second over the Internet.
Stadia was a cloud gaming service developed and operated by Google. Known in development as Project Stream, the service debuted through a closed beta in October 2018, and publicly launched in November 2019. Stadia was accessible through Chromecast Ultra and Android TV devices, on personal computers via the Google Chrome web browser and other Chromium-based browsers, Chromebooks and tablets running ChromeOS, and the Stadia mobile app on supported Android devices. There was also an experimental mode with support for all Android devices that were capable of installing the Stadia mobile app. In December 2020, Google released an iOS browser-based progressive web application for Stadia, enabling gameplay in the Safari browser.
Xbox Cloud Gaming is a cloud gaming service as part of Xbox offered by Microsoft Gaming. Initially released in beta testing in November 2019, the service later launched for subscribers of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on September 15, 2020. Xbox Game Pass cloud gaming is provided to subscribers of Ultimate at no additional cost. Xbox Cloud Gaming operates by linking the device to a remote server in the cloud.
The ninth generation of video game consoles began in November 2020 with the releases of Microsoft's Xbox Series X and Series S console family and Sony's PlayStation 5.
Amazon Luna is a cloud gaming platform developed and operated by Amazon. The platform has integration with Twitch and is available on Windows, Mac, Amazon Fire TV, iOS as well as Android. Games and channels from brands such as Ubisoft+ and Jackbox Games are accessed via the Luna+ paid subscription.
The Backbone One is an attachable game controller for iOS devices. Both the controller and the Backbone iOS app are created by Backbone. The app acts as a social hub and allows for editing and sharing recorded gameplay through social media platforms.
Backbone is an American technology company located in with offices in Atherton, California and Seattle, Washington. The company is known for consumer electronics and computer software products for gaming on Apple's iOS and Google's Android devices. Backbone operates the Backbone app, a social and content creation hub for mobile devices.
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