Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing (Amazon). Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider such as Amazon, Microsoft, or Google.
Cloud computing has also made cloud gaming possible. Cloud gaming is a type of online gaming that runs video games on remote servers and streams them directly to a user’s device (Wikipedia). This shifts all the heavy lifting of the processing power from their device to the cloud.
What this means, is that you do not need to have a top-notch gaming computer to play all the newest games. You can stream the newest games on your 10-year-old laptop that barely handles Google Chrome or your mobile phone. Imagine playing GTA V on your phone, isn’t it crazy?
Before cloud computing, being an avid gamer was very costly. Buying new hardware and games is not cheap. New games cost over €60, not to mention the prices of new hardware. For example, graphics cards can cost up to €3000. Due to on-demand pricing, cloud gaming is an affordable alternative as you pay for what you use. Although, most cloud gaming services charge a monthly subscription fee (€4.99-€30) in order to access cloud gaming. In addition, most cloud gaming providers offer huge game libraries on top. Meaning that users can access more than 200 games for free.
Personally, I have never used cloud gaming because I did not know it was a thing. I am going to give it a try tonight as I am very curious how well cloud gaming will perform. If this is indeed more affordable and the performance is great, is it the end of traditional gaming?
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