Blog
Essays and analysis
Long-form pieces from our editorial team — opinion, industry analysis, and the kind of writing we'd rather read with a coffee than scroll past in a feed.
108 essays
- Analysis·7 min read
Modding and the streaming layer — what survives, what doesn't
PC modding is one of the largest reasons people still own gaming PCs. Cloud gaming inherits the parent platform's mod support — but the boundary is messier than either side admits.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·8 min read
The cloud gaming latency floor: where physics ends the argument
Marketing keeps promising the latency gap is closing. Speed-of-light math says there's a floor neither encoder nor data centre will get past — and we're already close to it.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·7 min read
The gaming laptop was supposed to die. It didn't.
Cloud gaming was the technology most often forecast to kill the mid-tier gaming laptop. Five years on, gaming laptop sales are up, not down. What did the forecasters miss?
By Marin Björk - Opinion·7 min read
The case against subscription cloud catalogs
Game Pass and PS Plus Premium make cloud gaming feel cheap. The trade-off is invisible until the game you sank 90 hours into rotates out of the catalog.
By Marin Björk - Counterpoint·7 min read
VR cloud streaming has been almost-shipping for five years
Every cloud gaming conference includes a VR streaming demo. Almost none of them ship as products. The reason isn't the technology you'd guess.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·9 min read
Why GeForce Now keeps winning — and what could change that
NVIDIA's data centre footprint, its bring-your-own-library structural advantage, and the fact that it owns the encoder pipeline end-to-end. Plus the three things that could topple it.
By Alex Tan - Opinion·6 min read
'I'll wait for the local port' is the dominant cloud-resistant customer behavior
Many users who could play a title on cloud explicitly wait for the local port instead. The pattern is rational, growing, and a meaningful headwind for the cloud gaming category.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·8 min read
Most 4K cloud streams are not actually 4K
Cloud services advertise 4K. Almost none of them ship a bitrate sufficient to make 4K materially better than 1440p. Here's the math, and why we'd take 1440p at high bitrate over 4K at low bitrate every time.
By Alex Tan - Forecast·8 min read
Cloud gaming five years from now
The 2030 picture: post-AV1 codecs, region-by-region rather than provider-by-provider competition, the death of low-end gaming PCs, and the consolidation we don't think is coming.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·6 min read
Family plans are the missing tier in cloud gaming
Spotify, Netflix, Apple Music, Disney+ — every successful subscription service ships a family tier. Cloud gaming services don't. The reason is a fight inside the gaming industry that nobody outside has noticed.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·6 min read
Cloud gaming on the train — what actually works
Cloud gaming on transit was supposed to be the killer mobile use case. In 2026 it works in specific countries on specific networks and not at all elsewhere. The detail matters.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·8 min read
Why anti-cheat is cloud gaming's biggest unsolved problem
Modern anti-cheat is kernel-level and detects virtualisation. Cloud gaming, by definition, runs games in a virtualised environment. The collision is uglier than the industry admits.
By Alex Tan - Counterpoint·7 min read
Competitive players on cloud — a survey of what they actually think
We asked 47 tournament-level players across five competitive shooters how cloud gaming fits into their practice. The answers are sharper and more nuanced than the standard 'cloud is unfit for competitive' line.
By Alex Tan - Counterpoint·6 min read
The hidden cost of 'free with Prime' cloud gaming
Amazon Luna positions itself as included with Prime — the cheapest cloud gaming on the market. The truth is more interesting, and more annoying.
By Marin Björk - Analysis·7 min read
The Steam Deck quietly ate the handheld cloud category
In 2019 the handheld cloud gaming pitch was strong: small device, big games, no install storage. By 2026, the Steam Deck owns the handheld PC gaming category and cloud is an afterthought. Why.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·6 min read
Cloud gaming on planes — Starlink is changing the conversation
In-flight WiFi has been a punchline for two decades. Starlink's aviation rollout in 2024-2025 is changing what's possible at 35,000 feet — including cloud gaming.
By Alex Tan - Forecast·7 min read
Cloud gaming runs Windows VMs. Should it?
Every major cloud gaming service runs Windows-on-bare-metal in the data center. The architecture is incidental rather than deliberate. The 2027-2028 question is whether the industry should keep doing it.
By Alex Tan - Counterpoint·7 min read
Apple's PWA-only policy turned out to be good for cloud gaming
When Apple banned native cloud gaming apps on iOS, every major service was forced into Safari. Five years on, that constraint produced a better iPhone gaming experience than the alternative would have.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·6 min read
Every cloud service has a Fortnite problem
Fortnite is the most-played game on Earth. It's broken or unavailable on most cloud services. The reasons are a fight about platform fees, anti-cheat, and a publisher that doesn't want cloud.
By Alex Tan - Opinion·6 min read
1440p is the cloud gaming sweet spot, not 4K
Cloud services keep selling 4K as the headline feature. The math, the eyes, and the latency budget all point at 1440p as the actually-correct choice for cloud streaming in 2026.
By Marin Björk - Forecast·7 min read
Smart TV cloud gaming finally works in 2026
Samsung Gaming Hub, LG GameQuick, Vizio's quieter cloud play. The TV-app cloud gaming pitch was disastrous in 2022, dubious in 2024. In 2026 it's actually working. Here's what changed.
By Marin Björk - Forecast·7 min read
An ad-supported cloud gaming tier is coming and it's going to be ugly
Streaming video moved to ad-supported tiers. Music followed. Cloud gaming is structurally next, and the ad-supported cloud gaming product is going to be a mess — but it's still going to ship.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·7 min read
Cloud gaming's accessibility wins are bigger than the industry admits
The category that doesn't appear in any cloud gaming review: how cloud changes what's possible for players with motor, visual, or cognitive disabilities. Quietly, it's one of the most consequential shifts in gaming this decade.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·6 min read
Roguelikes are the cloud-friendliest genre and nobody markets it
Cloud gaming's worst-case scenarios — input latency, dropped frames, session resets — are basically fine for roguelikes. The genre fits cloud better than anything, and nobody has noticed.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·8 min read
What cloud gaming learned from Stadia — and what it didn't
Three years after Google shut Stadia down, the industry has internalised some of its lessons and ignored others. We sort which is which.
By Kenji Park - Opinion·6 min read
Voice chat is the silent failure of cloud multiplayer
Cross-service party chat in cloud gaming is a mess. Every service handles voice differently and most handle it badly. The reason is that nobody owns the problem and nobody is incentivised to fix it.
By Kenji Park - Opinion·6 min read
'Resume your save' is the cloud feature nobody implements correctly
Cloud services promise that you can pick up where you left off, on any device. The actual save-state model is messier than the marketing implies. Where the abstraction breaks.
By Marin Björk - Forecast·9 min read
The Chinese cloud gaming market the West doesn't see
Tencent's Start, NetEase's cloud platforms, Huawei Cloud Gaming. Three of the world's largest cloud gaming services run inside China and almost no Western analyst covers them. Here's what we know.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·7 min read
Why a Brazilian GeForce Now seat costs half a US one
Cloud gaming services charge different prices in different markets. The variance is bigger than streaming video pricing and the reasons are more interesting than 'purchasing power parity'.
By Alex Tan - Forecast·7 min read
Cloud gaming is a discovery channel for game purchases nobody is measuring
Cloud subscribers regularly try a game, fall in love, and then buy it on Steam or PSN to own permanently. The flywheel is real, growing, and underexposed in publisher data.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·6 min read
Cloud gaming customer support is meaningfully worse than streaming video customer support
Netflix has 24/7 chat support. Spotify has comprehensive in-app help. Cloud gaming services have largely abandoned customer support as a category. Why.
By Kenji Park - Counterpoint·6 min read
"Save your progress on any device" is still a broken promise
Every cloud gaming service advertises seamless device handoff. The actual experience in 2026 is closer to 'mostly works for some titles on some devices most of the time'. Here's why, and what would fix it.
By Kenji Park - Forecast·7 min read
The 60-hour single-player AAA is cloud's best category, not its worst
Conventional wisdom: cloud is for casual snacking. Reality: the long single-player narrative AAA — Cyberpunk, BG3, Elden Ring, Starfield — is the category cloud gaming serves best.
By Kenji Park - Opinion·6 min read
Cross-progression is implicitly a cloud gaming feature
Every game that ships proper cross-progression — save state on the publisher's server, accessible from any device — is implicitly cloud-friendly. The publishers shipping cross-progression are the ones enabling cloud gaming.
By Marin Björk - Forecast·6 min read
ISP-bundled cloud gaming is the channel the West keeps missing
Chinese carriers bundle cloud gaming with mobile data. South Korean telcos bundle it with fibre plans. In the West, none of the major cloud services have done the same deal at scale. Why?
By Alex Tan - Forecast·6 min read
What if GPU prices collapse — what happens to cloud gaming?
If 2027–2028 brings a real GPU oversupply like the post-crypto crash of 2023, cloud gaming's value proposition shifts. Three scenarios and what we'd watch for.
By Alex Tan - Counterpoint·7 min read
The Game Pass paradox — does the catalog model grow the gaming pie?
Microsoft says Game Pass brings new players into the category. Sony's PS Plus numbers say their tier-up subscribers came from PS Plus Essential, not from new gamers. Both can't be right.
By Kenji Park - Counterpoint·6 min read
The 'is cloud gaming dying' news cycle is a counterpoint exercise
Every twelve months a major outlet runs a 'cloud gaming is dying' piece. The pattern is consistent and the underlying data doesn't support the conclusion. Here's why the cycle keeps happening.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·7 min read
Unlimited play tiers are mispriced — by both consumers and operators
Game Pass is unlimited. GeForce Now caps you at 8 hours per session. Both are the wrong answer to the same question. Where the unlimited-vs-capped tradeoff actually breaks.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·7 min read
Game preservation is the issue cloud gaming will get blamed for
Cloud-only releases. Server-shutdown sunsets. Catalog removals. Cloud gaming hasn't created the preservation problem — but it's accelerating it visibly enough that 2030 will be the year the industry has to actually address it.
By Marin Björk - Counterpoint·6 min read
Nintendo will never license Switch games to a third-party cloud service
Cloud gaming services have been pitching Nintendo for five years. The answer is no, and it's going to keep being no. The reason isn't what you think.
By Kenji Park - Counterpoint·6 min read
Why cloud gaming streamers don't talk about cloud gaming
Twitch and YouTube are where most younger players form their gaming opinions. Cloud gaming is invisible there. Not because it doesn't work — because the streaming creator economy has structural reasons to ignore it.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·7 min read
The cloud gaming 'play hours cliff' — usage drops dramatically after week one
Cloud gaming subscribers play meaningfully more in their first week than in any subsequent week. The cliff is steep, predictable, and the services aren't talking about it.
By Marin Björk - Analysis·7 min read
What happens to a cloud GPU at 5 years old?
In 2022 cloud gaming services marketed RTX 3080-class hardware. By 2027 those same GPUs are mid-tier. How the cloud datacentre depreciation cycle actually works.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·8 min read
The hidden environmental cost of cloud gaming
A console burns 150–200 watts in your house. The server streaming Cyberpunk to you burns 400 watts in a data centre. Cloud gaming might be more efficient than local — or it might be quietly worse. The honest answer involves more variables than either side admits.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·6 min read
Internet shutdowns are the cloud gaming risk nobody covers
Cloud gaming users in countries with regular government internet shutdowns are uniquely exposed. The cloud-vs-local choice is sharper in those contexts than the gaming press acknowledges.
By Marin Björk - Counterpoint·6 min read
VPNs and cloud gaming — a counterpoint to the easy advice
Standard cloud gaming advice: don't use a VPN. The standard advice is mostly right but the cases where it's wrong are interesting and the cloud services don't tell you about them.
By Alex Tan - Counterpoint·7 min read
Aim-assist and the cloud — a counterpoint to the FPS skeptics
Conventional wisdom: cloud is unfit for FPS because of latency. Reality: aim-assist on cloud-played console shooters is doing more work than it does locally — and that has interesting consequences.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·7 min read
Wi-Fi 7 and cloud gaming — what actually improves
Wi-Fi 7 has been shipping in flagship routers since 2024. The cloud gaming benefits are real but more constrained than the router marketing implies.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·7 min read
HDR on cloud gaming is mostly broken in 2026
Every major cloud gaming service advertises HDR. Almost none of them deliver it correctly end-to-end. The reasons are technical, the impact is visible, and the fix isn't on any roadmap.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·7 min read
Using a TV as a cloud gaming monitor — what's actually different from a PC monitor
Many cloud gaming setups use a TV as the primary display. The relevant differences from a PC monitor — refresh rate, input lag, color accuracy, ALLM — matter more for cloud than for local gaming. Here's why.
By Marin Björk - Analysis·7 min read
Why no European cloud gaming service has scaled
Shadow, Blacknut, Boosteroid, the various Telecom-Italia plays. Europe has produced more cloud gaming startups than any other region. None of them have scaled to compete with NVIDIA or Microsoft. Why.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·7 min read
Cloud gaming is going to have a game soundtrack licensing problem
Game soundtracks include licensed music. Licensed music has streaming rights that differ from the games themselves. Cloud gaming's streaming model is about to collide with music licensing in ways the industry hasn't planned for.
By Kenji Park - Counterpoint·6 min read
5G's cloud gaming promise didn't land
Every major carrier marketed 5G as the network technology that would enable cloud gaming everywhere. In 2026 the 5G cloud gaming reality is narrower than the marketing implied. What went wrong.
By Alex Tan - Opinion·6 min read
Audio quality is the dimension cloud gaming reviews ignore
Cloud gaming reviewers measure latency, bitrate, and visual quality. They don't measure audio fidelity, sync, or surround pass-through — and the audio chain is breaking on most cloud services in ways nobody is documenting.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·7 min read
Cross-region matchmaking with cloud players is messier than ranked queues admit
When some players in a competitive match are on cloud and others on local hardware, the matchmaking has to handle latency variance across the lobby. The current solutions are awkward and the effects on ranked play are real.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·6 min read
Loading screens are cloud gaming's underrated failure mode
Cloud gaming was supposed to eliminate the wait. In 2026 cloud sessions still have loading screens, session warm-up delays, and reconnection penalties. The friction that survived the platform shift is the friction worth fixing.
By Kenji Park - Counterpoint·6 min read
Second-screen companion apps and cloud — a counterpoint about the integration question
Many AAA titles ship companion apps for second-screen use. Standard cloud framing: these don't work on cloud. Reality: they mostly do, and the broken cases are revealing.
By Kenji Park - Counterpoint·7 min read
Fighting games on cloud — a counter-take
Fighting games are supposed to be the hardest genre for cloud gaming. The conventional take ignores how rollback netcode interacts with the cloud session model. The result is more interesting than the standard verdict.
By Kenji Park - Counterpoint·6 min read
Couch co-op on cloud almost works and the gap is worth understanding
Two players, one couch, one screen, one game. The classic couch co-op setup is harder to replicate on cloud than the marketing implies — but not impossible.
By Kenji Park - Opinion·6 min read
The update tax is cloud gaming's quietly biggest win
Local games in 2026 need 30-100 GB of patches per major release. Cloud players don't download a byte. The 'update tax' that locals pay is invisible to cloud users — and it's the cleanest single argument for cloud.
By Marin Björk - Forecast·7 min read
When should a publisher port to a platform vs just ship cloud streaming?
Cloud streaming gives publishers an option that didn't exist 10 years ago: reach a platform without porting to it. The trade-off is more interesting than the cost-savings framing implies.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·6 min read
Trophies and achievements on cloud — the unsung continuity
Cloud gaming services preserve your achievement and trophy progress across sessions and devices. This sounds boring; it's actually the most successful piece of cross-platform plumbing the industry has shipped.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·7 min read
Third-party controllers and cloud — the compatibility landscape is messier than necessary
Xbox controllers, DualSense, 8BitDo, GameSir, Backbone, the Razer Kishi family. Cloud gaming services handle each of them differently. The fragmentation is worse than the marketing implies.
By Alex Tan - Forecast·7 min read
Cloud gaming SLAs are about to become a marketing battleground
Cloud gaming services don't currently offer meaningful uptime guarantees. As the audience matures, SLA marketing is going to become a competitive dimension. Forecast for what's coming.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·7 min read
How the cloud gaming freemium-to-paid funnel actually works
GeForce Now Free, Luna's free tier, Game Pass trial windows — the conversion funnel from free to paid in cloud gaming has specific patterns that the services don't disclose.
By Marin Björk - Forecast·7 min read
Qualcomm's ARM data centre play is cloud gaming's quiet wildcard
Qualcomm's push into ARM-based data centres has been pitched as an AI inference story. The cloud gaming implications are larger than anyone is marketing, and the timeline is shorter than the consensus thinks.
By Marin Björk - Analysis·6 min read
Chromebooks are a cloud gaming category nobody is positioned to win
Chromebooks should be the perfect cloud gaming client. They aren't, and the gap between the potential and the reality is structural rather than incidental.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·7 min read
The cloud-vs-local environmental comparison is more interesting than either side admits
Cloud gaming is greener than local gaming. Local gaming is greener than cloud gaming. Both arguments have been made loudly. The honest answer depends on which user you're modelling.
By Marin Björk - Counterpoint·6 min read
Why Twitch streamers can't reliably stream their cloud gaming sessions
Streaming a cloud gaming session to Twitch is technically possible. Doing it well is harder than either Twitch or the cloud services admit. The friction explains why so few streamers play primarily on cloud.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·7 min read
DLSS Frame Generation on cloud — why the implementation is harder than it looks
AI frame generation doubles frame rates on local hardware. On cloud the integration is messier than the marketing suggests, and the user-visible benefit varies by tier.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·7 min read
DLSS and FSR on cloud gaming work better than the marketing suggests
AI upscaling — DLSS, FSR, XeSS — was built for local hardware. Running it on a cloud GPU and streaming the result raises questions the marketing doesn't address. The answer is more favourable than skeptics expected.
By Alex Tan - Opinion·6 min read
Cloud gaming has replaced the demo and nobody is calling it that
Game demos died in the console transition to digital distribution. Cloud gaming subscriptions are quietly the new demo culture — except the marketing pretends they aren't.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·6 min read
Indie developers and cloud — the catalogue conversation nobody is having
Cloud gaming services market AAA. The indie audience is just as valuable to subscribers and indie developers would benefit from cloud distribution. Nobody is bridging this gap.
By Marin Björk - Forecast·6 min read
Holiday gift cloud gaming subscriptions — the December surge nobody markets
Cloud gaming subscriptions are increasingly given as holiday gifts. The category trajectory through 2025-2027 depends partly on this gift cycle that the services haven't fully embraced.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·6 min read
Speedrunning on cloud — the rules conversation we should be having
Speedrunning communities have spent two decades codifying what counts as a legitimate run. Cloud-played runs sit in an ambiguous category and the community hasn't decided how to handle them.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·7 min read
Recording your cloud gaming sessions — the workflow reality
Capturing cloud gameplay for clips, montages, or content is a workflow with hidden complexity. Where the tools work, where they break, and what to know before you record.
By Alex Tan - Opinion·6 min read
Cloud gaming on AAA launch day — what actually happens
A new Call of Duty drops at midnight. Game Pass Cloud has it day one. So do millions of subscribers, all trying to play at the same time. Here's what actually happens to the cloud service.
By Kenji Park - Forecast·7 min read
The schools-and-classrooms cloud gaming market is bigger than the industry tracks
Schools and after-school programs are quietly running cloud gaming as a teaching tool. The market is real, the use cases are interesting, and none of the major cloud services market to it.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·7 min read
Cost per gaming hour — the metric cloud services don't want you doing
Cloud gaming subscriptions are pitched as 'pay one price, play anything'. The cost-per-hour math is more interesting and exposes where cloud is and isn't a good value.
By Marin Björk - Analysis·6 min read
Beta tests and public playtests on cloud — an underrated publisher opportunity
Cloud gaming gives publishers a low-friction way to run open betas, public playtests, and demo access. Most publishers haven't figured this out yet.
By Alex Tan - Counterpoint·6 min read
Multi-monitor cloud gaming — it doesn't work and probably can't
Local gaming PCs handle multi-monitor setups natively. Cloud gaming services don't. The architectural reasons are interesting and the workarounds are worse than the problem.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·7 min read
The cloud gaming retention numbers tell a different story than the subscriber-growth headlines
Cloud gaming services love announcing subscriber milestones. The retention rate behind those numbers is what actually matters and the picture is more mixed than the press releases suggest.
By Marin Björk - Forecast·6 min read
Will Switch 2 be the device that finally accepts third-party cloud streaming?
Nintendo Switch was famously closed to third-party cloud services. Switch 2 launched in 2024 with the same posture. Whether that holds for the lifetime of Switch 2 is the most interesting unresolved Nintendo question.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·7 min read
MMO subscribers are sharply split on cloud and neither camp will move
Some MMO players love cloud gaming. Others actively avoid it. The split is sharper than for any other genre and the reasons are interesting.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·6 min read
Cloud gaming has broken the review embargo system and nobody is talking about it
Pre-launch review codes assume reviewers play on a fixed setup. Cloud gaming services adding a title to their catalogue before review embargoes lift creates a problem for press. The industry hasn't addressed it.
By Marin Björk - Analysis·6 min read
MOBAs and cloud — the genre that gets it backwards
League of Legends, Dota 2, Smite. MOBAs are the genre where cloud gaming should fit best — they're stable, latency-tolerant for casual play, audience is global. Instead they're underrepresented on cloud. Why.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·6 min read
Bluetooth audio latency on cloud gaming — the chain you weren't counting
Cloud gaming users on wireless headphones experience additional latency the cloud services don't disclose. The chain adds up in ways that matter for competitive play.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·7 min read
The iPad cloud gaming audience is bigger than the marketing implies
iPad has become a quietly large piece of the cloud gaming audience. Apple doesn't talk about it. The cloud services don't lead with it. The data says it's growing faster than any other client category.
By Marin Björk - Counterpoint·6 min read
Cloud is the back-door way to play console exclusives with mouse and keyboard
Cloud-streaming console-exclusive titles to a PC client gives you access to keyboard and mouse input the consoles themselves don't natively support. The counterpoint to 'cloud is a watered-down console experience'.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·7 min read
Console hardware refresh cycles are the cloud gaming clock you should watch
PlayStation and Xbox refresh hardware on roughly 7-year cycles. Cloud gaming services follow that clock more closely than they admit, and the next refresh window is going to reshape the cloud catalogue.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·6 min read
LAN multiplayer is the cloud feature gap nobody talks about
Local-network multiplayer — sit in the same room, play together — is a genre of gaming cloud services have effectively killed for their users. Where the gap shows up.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·6 min read
Gyro aiming on cloud — the feature that almost works
Gyro aiming has quietly become one of the best controller-based input methods for shooters. On cloud gaming it's almost-but-not-quite usable. Where the chain breaks.
By Alex Tan - Opinion·6 min read
Cloud gaming refund policies are worse than they should be
Steam's 2-hour refund window changed PC gaming. Cloud gaming services have nothing comparable. The asymmetry is becoming a consumer-protection issue.
By Marin Björk - Analysis·7 min read
The Microsoft–Sony cloud cold war is shaping the industry more than the consoles do
The Game Pass-vs-PS-Plus rivalry on console is loud and overcovered. The cloud-streaming variant is quiet, strategic, and is doing more to define the next decade of gaming.
By Marin Björk - Opinion·6 min read
The Stadia controller's afterlife is the best Stadia legacy
Google shut down Stadia. They turned the Stadia controllers Bluetooth-only and let them keep working anywhere. It's the most consumer-friendly move any cloud gaming shutdown has made.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·7 min read
Linux is the platform cloud gaming actually made viable
Linux desktop gaming has been 'almost ready' for two decades. Cloud streaming did something Valve's Proton couldn't fully do — make every AAA accessible on Linux machines without the compatibility tax.
By Alex Tan - Counterpoint·6 min read
Running emulators on cloud sessions — the workaround that mostly works
Cloud gaming services market modern AAA. The user community has quietly figured out that the underlying Windows VMs run emulators just fine. The retro gaming use case on cloud is real and undocumented.
By Kenji Park - Opinion·6 min read
Cloud gaming and corporate IT firewalls — a quiet rise and the policy reasons
Corporate networks increasingly block cloud gaming traffic. The reasoning is bandwidth and security; the effect is to push gaming-curious employees off cloud at exactly the moments they have downtime.
By Marin Björk - Analysis·6 min read
Why GTA Online specifically is a cloud gaming nightmare
Most GTA V is great on cloud. GTA Online is broken on it in specific, frustrating ways. The reasons are technical, not incidental — and they tell you something about how cloud architecture handles certain genres.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·6 min read
Cloud gaming on college dorm networks — a use case the services don't market
College students have shared bandwidth, fixed networks, and limited gaming hardware budgets. Cloud gaming should be perfectly fit for them. The reality is messier and IT-policy-dependent.
By Kenji Park - Forecast·6 min read
GameStop, EB Games, and the cloud gaming retail story
Physical game retailers have spent twenty years adapting to digital distribution. Cloud gaming is the next shift, and the retailer responses tell you something about where the industry is going.
By Kenji Park - Opinion·6 min read
Cloud gaming for players with arthritis and RSI — the unsung accessibility story
Our broader accessibility essay covered the surface. This one is for the specific player population where joint issues and repetitive strain make local gaming harder. Cloud offers more flexibility than nondisabled players realize.
By Marin Björk - Counterpoint·6 min read
One cloud account per household is the silent norm — and the services know
Cloud gaming services are priced per user but used per household. The mismatch is invisible in the marketing and central to the actual user economics.
By Marin Björk - Counterpoint·6 min read
Racing wheels and flight sticks on cloud — a counterpoint about peripherals
Conventional wisdom: serious sim hardware doesn't work on cloud. Reality: it works fine for most use cases, and the audience that would benefit most isn't being told.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·6 min read
Battle.net, Ubisoft Connect, EA App on cloud — the third-party-launcher mess
Steam works fine on cloud. Epic Games Store works fine. The other launchers — Battle.net, Ubisoft Connect, EA App, Rockstar Games Launcher — each present specific cloud-session friction that the services don't tell you about.
By Kenji Park - Analysis·6 min read
Denuvo and cloud streaming have an awkward and underdiscussed relationship
Denuvo Anti-Tamper is hated by many players for affecting local performance. On cloud sessions the equation flips — Denuvo's performance overhead is invisible. The cloud as Denuvo's accidental rehabilitation.
By Alex Tan - Analysis·6 min read
Cloud gaming on macOS finally caught up — but for an unexpected reason
Apple Silicon Macs are great computers and terrible local-gaming machines. Cloud gaming closed that gap, but the way it happened is not what the Mac community predicted.
By Alex Tan