Will Cloud Gaming portably affect the Switch's appeal and success?

[Soundwave]

I think Nintendo is insulated for the immediate future, like talking the next 3 years, but after that I would be concerned.

The big problem I think is 5G ... 5G is not some hypothetical thing that's far off in the future ... it's basically here now being rolled out worldwide, all the flagship phones for 2020 and 2021 are basically 5G, it is the standard going forward. 5G is fast enough to allow for good streaming.

Data caps are also arbitrary, data bandwidth is not something that's inherently really valuable to cellular providers. Like the first thing every cell provider will try to offer you now to get you to switch is more data or even unlimited data, because it has no real value to them it's not some physical resource or something they produce.

Just as 3G popularized web browsing and 4G made it more possible to watch video on your phone away from phone, I think 5G will bring much higher data plans (there's no point to having a network that fast otherwise). 10 years ago many people only got maybe 500MB-1GB of data, today you can get 10-20GB without too much fuss. Probably inevitably on these services teams up with a big cell provider to provide a certain amount of unlimited usage in the game streaming app as way to gain an edge over other cell providers.

The other thing is Microsoft taking this sector so seriously and having the actual software prowess to back them up I think has accelerated where I thought Cloud gaming would go. If it was led by Google kind of bumbling around it probably would take a lot longer as they figure out what it means to be a game company, but Microsoft really seems to have their shit together and is ready to start building serious user base with the Game Pass angle.