In 2019, I published an article "Cloud services for playing on weak PCs, relevant in 2019" . It's time to turn our attention to cloud gaming services again, assessing the changes that have taken place over a year and a half.
And they are, and very significant. For example, if in the same article the volume of the cloud market was estimated at $ 140 billion, now it is already $ 585 billion . Of course, the systems for assessing the volume of the market can be different, but in any case, this indicator has grown by 2-3 times. And all why? When you sit at home, you involuntarily want to play. Console, PC, cloud gaming services are loyal friends of the contemporaries of the COVID-19 era. So what's new there?
I propose to first sort out the changes that have occurred in existing services, and then evaluate a couple of newcomers. We will evaluate those services where the changes are visible to the naked eye.
Veterans news
This section contains the most famous cloud gaming services that have been operating for over a year. Many of them have something to brag about.
Google Stadia
Despite the not very successful launch of the service and the negative predictions of some experts, now Stadia seems to be doing well.
There are two types of subscriptions - Pro and Basic. Pro lets you play cloud games for $ 9.99 per month. For this money, the user gets quality up to 4k and 5.1 surround sound. In addition, the games are offered both completely free (somewhat similar to the PS Plus scheme) and at a significant discount.
Subscribers to the basic service should buy games at full price, and the maximum quality is 1080p, which, in general, is also not bad.
What do you need to play?
As before, this is a laptop or PC with a Chrome browser, a phone or tablet, a TV with a Chromecast Ultra. And, of course, a stable connection from 10 Mb / s.
What's new?
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In general, the service seems to be no longer a newcomer to the market, it is actively developing and is clearly not going to stop there. Stadia representatives said they have already planned everything for 2021 and are now developing plans for 2022-2023.
Geforce now
As before, one of the main differences of this service from Stadia is the ability to connect Steam, Uplay, Epic Games Store accounts and play games that have already been purchased. The downside to Stadia is that games purchased on other platforms have to be bought again. In addition to cost savings, this solution has another plus - GeForce NOW has more games supported than many other services.
There are two subscriptions - basic and premium. In the first case, the game session is limited to 1 hour, the user has a low queue priority and no RTX. Premium subscriptions have no such restrictions. During
What do you need to play?
- Only one of the supported platforms:
- PC or laptop with Windows or Mac OS.
- NVIDIA SHIELD TV media player.
- Android phone or tablet.
The requirement for good connectivity is somewhat higher here than for Stadia. That's 15 Mbps for 720p and 25 Mbps for 1080p. 4K quality like the Stadia doesn't seem to be.
By the way, here's an interesting video comparing the launch times of games on Stadia and on GFN.
What's new?
- GFN is now available not only for residents of Moscow and the region. In the fall, the servers with GFN support were placed in the Ural data center, which significantly expanded the geography of the service availability.
- Since May this year, Steam has been supporting GeForce Now with the Steam Cloud Play feature. However, games are only available from those developers who made their products available for GeForce Now.
- Since November, GFN is available for iPad or iOS users. While it is in beta, the service is streaming on iOS Safari. But it looks like Apple device owners can now enjoy all the benefits of cloud gaming - Stadia, now GFN, in addition to the services that were already available.
- Cyberpunk 2077 seems to be still available on the GFN, so those who want this game can play it without any problems, including the RTX ON mode.
GFN, like Stadia, is also doing well, the service continues to evolve.
PlayStation Now
This veteran cloud gaming continues to evolve. Not as fast as some competitors - but simply because it has long been in a stable phase.
The price is good. Until recently, the service was one of the most expensive. So, the monthly subscription was $ 19.99. Now users can be happy - they will have to pay only $ 9.99 per month, and there is a trial week for new users. A three-month subscription costs about $ 24.99, for a year - $ 59.99.
What do you need to play?
- PS3, PS4, PS Vita consoles, now PS 5.
- PCs or laptops with Intel Core i3 3.5 GHz or AMD A10 3.8 GHz or higher.
The service library contains over 800 games for PS2, PS3 and PS4.
What's new?
Almost nothing. New games appear regularly, in general, everything is fine. The only thing is that recently the head of Sony Interactive Entertainment Jim Ryan told why the service has not yet been launched in Russia: “You know better than me what a huge country Russia is. These services are very difficult to launch. How to delineate launch reach? Launch only in Moscow? Only in Moscow and St. Petersburg? It is very difficult to make the decision to provide services to some parts of the PlayStation community and not to others. ”
Playkey
Another veteran of cloud gaming, a service that is available to all residents of Russia. In general, the cloud platform is available to everyone, but it is most actively used by players from 15-20 countries.
Payment for the service is hourly. There are special packages that include up to 100 hours. The cost of the minimum package is 160 rubles for 2 hours, the maximum - 6,000 rubles, this is 100 hours of play.
Main event 2020 - service returned subscriptions! Now, along with the time packages, you can buy a plan for a month of playing without time limits. The price is higher than that of competitors - 2,490 rubles. But it does include an EA Play Pro or Xbox Game Pass subscription with access to hundreds of games. That is, you pay once and many games no longer need to be purchased separately. By the new year, we also launched holiday monthly subscriptions for 1,990 rubles for 1 month and 4,990 rubles for 3 months. True, games are no longer included in them, but the price of the month is much lower.
The selection of games is one of the largest on the markets. Users have access to games purchased from PlayKey or those already purchased from Ubisoft / Uplay, Rockstar / Social Club, Steam, Battle.net.
What do you need to play?
- Any PC with specifications not lower than:
- 1.5 GHz processor.
- from 1GB of RAM.
- Windows XP, 7, 8, 10. MacOs from 10.8.
Internet from 10 Mbps. The higher the bandwidth of the channel, the better the image quality of the launched game.
What's new?
- We returned the subscription for a month without time limits.
- The number of platform users has grown significantly . In Germany - three times, in Italy - two times, in Russia - 1.5 times.
- The amount of time gamers spend on the platform has increased.
- MTS has included Playkey in the first cloud gaming marketplace in Russia. GFN, Loudplay, DROVA also got there.
- The service has deployed a distributed gaming network, which allows gaming PC owners to earn money by renting out the power of their machines. Several articles from network participants were published on Habré .
Hooray, newbies!
Yes, a few newcomers have entered the cloud gaming market this year. This is a positive trend, which suggests that the market is developing, not stagnating or shrinking.
xCloud
It is a cloud gaming service from Microsoft. The corporation, apparently, could not decide for a long time to create its own service, but now it realized that, yes, it needs to be launched. The service officially launched in September with 150 streaming games as part of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. Prior to that, xCloud had been tested for several months, and user reviews were quite good.
xCloud launched in 22 countries, including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the USA. But in Russia it is not yet.
You can play on any platform with Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS. Game Pass Ultimate is priced at $ 15 per month, giving the user access to a large library of games on Xbox, PC, and Android devices.
xCloud lets you start a game on a console, then switch to a tablet or phone, then switch back. Friends lists, achievements, trophies - all this is synchronized across all devices.
Luna
Amazon's gaming service launched in Early Access in October. Platforms - Windows, macOS, Fire TV, plus iPhone and iPad via browser. The service became available for Android users a couple of days ago. Similar to iOS, access is via a browser.
The subscription system is not quite standard. The service operates on a channel model, in which it is proposed to pay a monthly fee for each game channel that the subscriber would like to access. There are two channels working now. This is Luna Plus Amazon for $ 5.99 per month, which offers games from a large number of publishers and Ubisoft Plus for $ 14.99 per month.
Play with Amazon Luna controller, PlayStation 4 or Xbox One gamepads
But this is also early access, so far only US residents and those who pretend to be them using a VPN can get it. Here is a list of supported Android devices:
- Pixel 4XL, 4A, 4A 5G, 5;
- Samsung Galaxy S10, S10 Plus, Note 10, Note 10 Plus, S20, S20 Plus, S20 Ultra, Note 20, Note 20 Ultra;
- OnePlus 7, 7 Pro, 7 Pro 5G, 8, 8 Pro, Nord, 7T, 7T Pro, 7T Pro 5G.
My.Games Cloud
The gaming division of the Mail.ru Group holding opened a public beta test of the My.Games Cloud cloud gaming service in November 2020. It allows you to install a client application on any Windows computer and play quite modern games even on old PCs with picture quality up to 4K.
Titles such as Fortnite, PUBG, DOTA 2, Warface, Battlefield V, Crysis and others are now available.
Two tariffs are available for test participants. The first one is free. It offers the player 23 hours of game time per month in FullHD resolution at 30 frames per second and medium game quality settings. In addition, ads are shown to users on this tariff. By subscribing for 999 rubles a month, you can play without it, in maximum graphics quality and resolution up to 4K with a frame rate of up to 120 per second.
So far, users who are within a radius of 1500 - 2000 km from the server centers of My.Games Cloud in Moscow and St. Petersburg will be most comfortable. But in the future, the number of such centers will be increased.
An interesting nuance - the service works on Nvidia servers, but the basis for the software and hardware complex wasPlayKey solution.
Conclusions? Yes, actually, there are none. I am glad that there are more and more services - as mentioned above, this means that cloud gaming will develop. There are, of course, other cloud services that were not mentioned in the article. But it is already huge, I said the most important thing, and I propose to discuss the rest in the comments. Who likes which service and who would you choose from the newbies?