How is streaming taking the video games industry to the next level?

2019 is looking to be an interesting year for gaming streaming development. There are a lot of power players looking ahead to the future – reports surfacing about Microsoft’s xCloud streaming service, AMD bringing game streaming to phones with Radeon Adrenalin, and Google’s Project Stream (which is giving away copies of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey simply for testing the service).

What will streaming do for the industry?

There are numerous advantages of cloud-based game streaming over traditional installation methods. For starters, games have grown massively in size – AAA titles are hovering between 50 – 80 GB lately, just for initial installation.

Updates can increase that, or when huge game files need to be replaced, patch downloads can be the size of entire games from just a few years ago. Bethesda, for example, released a 47GB patch for Fallout 76.

Game streaming also addresses imbalance in the hardware market. Running the latest AAA titles at their full graphical glory can often require extremely powerful computers, which can exceed $1,000 easily for high-end hardware. Bitcoin mining sent GPU prices through the roof as miners bought up some of the best cards, creating unavailability in the market – thankfully, the market has recovered a bit from that particular fiasco.

In any case, game streaming allows gamers to save considerable hard drive space, not waste time downloading humongous game files and patches, and perhaps most importantly, it allows budget gamers to stream titles in the best graphics configuration possible.

Google’s Stream platform, for example, is reportedly able to stream Assassin’s Creed Odyssey at 60FPS in 1080p resolution, which is quite impressive.

Cross-platform compatibility in the works?

While we’re speculating, it’s also entirely possible that cloud-streaming will bridge the gap between console and PC gamers, allowing for cross-platform compatibility. It seems logical that if the cloud-services are delivering games through some kind of browser client, instead of a native desktop client, console users will be able to point their browsers to the cloud service.

That is pure speculation, of course, and will be highly dependent on the console developers. Currently, Google Stream is being developed for the Chrome browser, which is definitely not available on Sony’s PS4, and Microsoft’s Xbox One uses a version of the Edge browser. So, we probably won’t see cross-platform gaming over the cloud right out of the gate, but it’s certainly a possibility if certain agreements are made.

If game streaming clients are developed to work regardless of the browser being used, it could be feasible, similar to the browser game industry. In fact, numerous HTML5 games are already compatible with console browsers, and some of those games even have gamepad support. You could theoretically point your console browser to Tanki or Fireboy and Watergirl, or some other multiplayer browser game, alongside PC users.

How will streaming impact the gamers?

What does this bode for the consumers, and not just the industry? For starters, it might affect the hardware market, as less people will need to purchase high-end gaming machines. Of course, the cloud companies will still need to invest in extremely high-end server hardware – although Google has reportedly built theirs in-house, in connection to the Yeti project (reportedly a streaming-based console).

Cloud-based game streaming could also help the current problem of so many DRM-based services. Currently there exists Steam, EA’s Origin, Ubisoft’s UPlay, Battle.net, and others. While its doubtful that the DRM platforms will go away, at least gamers won’t have a handful of client platforms installed on their computers.

One current drawback is that the cloud-based providers are having difficulty finding a fair balance in subscription prices. Gamers are notorious for impulse-purchasing games, especially during Steam sales. It’s a popular joke that gamers spend more time purchasing games in Steam than playing the games. Thus, offering subscriptions to access particular titles may not be the best route.

Its possible that the cloud-based providers could allow downloading games (after purchase) to your account, and then have you pay a subscription for the cloud service itself – of course, this ramps the cost of gaming up a bit, even with the savings on hardware. Gamers would be paying a monthly service to stream games they’ve already purchased – which of course, is very similar to how subscription-based MMORPGs used to operate.

In any case, video game streaming is going to be a potentially immensely lucrative market, as evidence by the huge interest from companies like Google and Microsoft. 2019 is going to be the year that significant headway into making it a reality, so we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for development.

Written by: Katie Greene, who is a professional game developer with 5 years of experience in this field. VR obsessed and captured by an AI future.