10 Facts About Cloud gaming

Cloud gaming, sometimes called gaming on demand or gaming-as-a-service or game streaming, is a type of online gaming that runs video games on remote servers and streams them directly to a user's device, or more colloquially, playing a game remotely from a cloud.

Cloud gaming platforms operate in a similar manner to remote desktops and video on demand services; games are stored and executed remotely on a provider's dedicated hardware, and streamed as video to a player's device via client software.

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.

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.

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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.

The network infrastructure required to make cloud gaming feasible was, for many years, not available in most geographic areas, or unavailable to consumer markets.

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.

GameCloud gaming was designed as white-label service based on Nvidia's Grid that other providers could use to offer game streaming to their customers.

Microsoft has announced plans to use a similar approach to bring the xCloud gaming game streaming technology to iOS via the browser sometime in early 2021.