Comment by babypuncher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by babypuncher | Hacker News Reader

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streaming + vr seems like a recipe for disaster. even if you don't mind a few extra frames of latency when playing games on your TV, you absolutely will when head tracking is involved.

streaming + mouse & keyboard for shooters still feels like shit, even when I tried it on google stadia over google fiber.

honestly i kind of hope this game streaming fad never really takes off, because so far it just seems to make games worse. i'm convinced publishers want it as a means to further erode user ownership of the software they buy. "oh, sorry, the single player game you bought four years ago on a streaming platform is no longer available due to rights issues. would you like to buy the sequel for $70?"

Playing ultra-settings Starfield on an old retina MacBook air is mindblowing. GeForce Now, imo, is quietly the killer app of 2023.

> game streaming fad never really takes off

I am in the opposite camp. I want game developers to be freed from local hardware constraints, and indy developers to have access to the same graphical fidelities as AAA. Real, meaningful innovation in gaming is a possibility.

> and indy developers to have access to the same graphical fidelities as AAA

The bottleneck here isn't performance, it's the cost of producing high quality assets on a AAA scale. Streaming won't solve this.

As for "local hardware constraints", I've yet to see any streaming games that were not possible on local hardware. Personally, I'd rather upgrade my GPU or video game console every 5 years than lose all the very tangible benefits that come with running games on my own hardware (ownership, mods, preservation, etc.)

I will say that I think services like GeForce Now are the best use case for the technology. Since it is essentially a rentable high end gaming PC in the cloud, the user brings their own games. If GeForce now shuts down, you still have the option of downloading all the games you bought for on it to a PC. Nvidia is smart to position this as an additive experience, rather than a replacement like Stadia was.

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