Steam enters streaming games, also in Poland. He chose a shortcut
Rumors have been circulating about Steam Cloud Play for some time. Links found in various places suggested that Steam was preparing a rival for PlayStation Now or xCloud. We can confirm that everyone was right and wrong.
More and more platforms are investing in streaming games, perceiving it as the future of the entire industry. This technology enables processing of all game code in the cloud, reducing the role of the player's device to the transceiver system, i.e. the gamepad and the display. Completely eliminates the problem of piracy, while providing players access to any games regardless of the device they currently have.
Game streaming, however, is still quite a distant future due to the huge requirements that such services place on the Internet infrastructure. Delays in control (so-called input lag) inevitable for most players due to the type of their internet connection make the game streaming services still a major curiosity. Although they are interested in and invest in almost all major companies in the gaming industry. All except Valve.
Steam still does not offer such a service, despite the fact that it is the absolute leader on the market of PC platforms. Almost completely erased the Xbox platform from this world, probably the only important rival for him today is Epic Games. Meanwhile, Sony already has its PlayStation Now (not available in Poland), Microsoft is finishing work on xCloud . Google Stadia (not available in Poland) and GeForce Now are also active. Valve now reveals his cards.
Steam Cloud Play is a service that aggregates other streaming platforms. For now GeForce Now, then others.
Valve did not take the risk of creating his own streaming service. He decided to use Steam's dominant position on the PC to convince the owners of such services to be their promoter and broker. For now, we do not know how many partners will have in this matter, although we learned the name of the first. This is GeForce Now, whose service will be available from the Steam app.
Subscription prices on GeForce Now are not changed under the influence of partnership with Valve - we will continue to pay PLN 25 per month. In fact, Valve is not even a broker here, we will pay directly to Nvidia for access to the service.
Valve will therefore limit itself to deeper integration of its Steam service with partner streaming services. This is undoubtedly a wisely conservative step - the future of game streaming is unclear, and above all it is still, simply, the future. At some point, however, these services will mature and will not need partners like Valve. If xCloud, PlayStation Now or Stadia are successful and provide the appropriate technical level - it may be too late to build your own steam clouds and data center.
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Steam enters streaming games, also in Poland. He chose a shortcut
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