Playfin

“Cloud gaming” has been all over the news lately. It’s rumored to be an upcoming feature in Google TV apps, LG-brand televisions, and of course the main offering of the new OnLive subscription service. What’s all the fuss about? Come to that, what the heck is cloud gaming?

Cloud gaming, sometimes referred to as “gaming on demand”, is a new system for delivering gaming content to players without the need for expensive PCs or consoles. Cloud gaming accomplishes this by streaming games to a television or PC via broadband connection. If you’ve ever watched a video on Hulu or YouTube, you’ve experienced streaming video content — the video files don’t have to be downloaded, they remain on a server and you just access a little bit of them at a time. Cloud gaming works in a very similar manner, except even the processing power itself is tied to the server. Your computer doesn’t have to be awesome, because the cloud gaming service is doing all the hard work and you’re reaping the benefits. Imagine that as a cloud gaming service subscriber, you basically own a super-powerful gaming computer that’s also a PS3 and XBOX 360, but it’s in a different state, and your ethernet cable acts as a combination monitor/mouse/keyboard/controller cable. That’s the basic gist of it!

Why is this exciting? First of all, you don’t need to buy any expensive equipment. Second, because the service providers are splitting the cost of games across thousands of customers, you get unlimited access to a huge collection of games for much less than it would cost to buy them. Finally, most of these services are “portable” in the sense that you can log into your account and play games nearly anywhere you can get a stable internet connection. Many services are even compatible with iPads and other portable devices! While gaming purists will probably stick to playing games the old-fashioned way, it’s hard not to get excited about this new technology.

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