Can someone explain this to me....

I am seeing constant articles doting on the idea that Microsoft is about to revolutionize gaming with their XCloud streaming service, or that Google is coming into the fold in a big way with theres as well. I don't get it. Why are all these articles centering on players who haven't arrived yet Sony has literally been doing what they want to do for 5 years now with Playstation Now?!?! Is it because of the data farms thing? That is also something that I do not quite understand why it's a game changer (for games at least) because are they not always bottlenecked by internet speeds? PS Now's issues are derived from latency that I really cannot fathom being rectified unless internet speeds improve. 

This is not to mention that I find the Stream only future of gaming to be very alarming issue. It seemingly is centered on less of what consumers WANT gaming to be and more on how developers can alter the landscape to benefit them. Streaming has taken hold of all other media formats because they are static, non intereactive mediums (Movies, music). A video game is constantly changing and shifts depending on who is playing it. A Stream only future sounds impossible for small fledgling developers and would pretty much kill the indie scene and we are back to AAA Publisher owning everything and suffering from extreme tunnel vision.

Are any of us really thinking this through? Discuss.

An article I was just looking at even mentions Nintendo's very limited stint in Game streaming(saying how Switch beat MS to the punch) before mentioning the 5 year old Streaming Service on Playstation. I was reading it like ".....What?!"

Aspect ratios really stop making sense to dote on when dealing with streaming to portable devices. There is a threshold of good enough because you can only get certain quality at that distance. I mean do you care about streaming at 1080p/4K ?

Because PS NOW sucks, simple is that

I would attribute the fact it might have better colors with Streamed content is not dependent on console base hardware, so the version on the Switch is some level of a PC version stream.

The decrease in latency has more to do with Japan's internet speeds running literal circles around Western world internet speeds and consistancy. I imagine this is the larger reason why the Streamable version is Japan exclusive.

Console hardware most certainly does play a role. - Especially when it comes to decoding streams.
The Switch by extension having a more modern SoC is likely to support newer encoding formats.

A couple thoughts from reading posts...

1. Streaming only future is not going to happen anytime soon. But I do like the option of being able to stream a game being played on expensive hardware as opposed to buying expensive hardware. Or even if I do own the hardware, there are circumstances I may want to stream when away from home.

2. PS Now has really just been a solution to play old games. It seems MS is going a direction where you could buy cheap streaming hardware or some other device to play current games. MS has a superior infrastructure as well so there is more potential with streaming from them.

3. Latency in cloud gaming is not limited to our internet speeds. The servers we connect to also matter in regard to latency.

Been wondering the same thing. I have been streaming games to my Vita via Remote Play since PS4 arrived, and I have been using PS Now since 2014.

I have seen so many videos and articles talking about how awesome it would be to stream things like God of War or Spider-Man a Mobile device, and I'm like, o/????

I have watched a few vidoes of people streaming Assasins Creed, and praising Google and Micorosft for innovating game streaming.

It makes no sense. PlayStation Now has been great at the technology level. Remote Play has been allowing you to Play any PS4 Game on Vita and Xperia all gen. The only draw back to PS Now is the lack of new games. Other than that, what other services gives you streaming, downloads, and covers your Online gaming subscription?

NONE

This just seems to be a thing with Sony services though. Music Unlimited was miles ahead of Spotify and Apple Music, but it could not gain traction. PlayStation Vue wipes the floor with Cable, let alone the other OTT services, yet it has the lowest subscriber count of them all.

For whatever reason, Sony just can't sell services.

The reason why there are so many articles hyping up Xcloud and treating it as something revolutionary is because of corporate shills and news outlets trying to generate views. It's as simple as that.

Streaming isn't new because PS Now is about four years old. It works quite well. Experiences can vary but there are many liars who use exaggerations to claim it is bad or people who haven't used it trying to claim it is bad. But now that Microsoft is ripping off Sony (which has become the norm the past 6 years or so) corporate shills want to avoid mentioning PS Now. In fact, some of these news outlets who are treating Xcloud as if it is new are the same outlets who downplayed and ignored PS Now.

Remember, this isn't new behavior. It has become a trend. When Microsoft unveiled Kinect, outlets hyped it up and claimed it was the future. Kinect would've died sooner had journalists not tried to defend it so much.

When Microsoft mentioned cloud power, journalists hyped it up. We still haven't seen it and journalists are quiet about it as if Microsoft had never made the promise.

When Microsoft announced streaming from Xbox to PC over home connections, journalists acted like it was the second coming. Some ignored the fact that it was Microsoft attempting to answer Remote Play. Other journalists actually stated it was superior to Remote Play. Streaming over a home connection only is better than streaming anywhere?

When Microsoft announced the universal windows app program, journalist hyped it as the next evolution of the world.

When Microsoft announced backwards compatibility, journalists made a huge deal about it and used it as ammo against the PS4. However, Xbox 360 backwards compatibility requires you to download the games even if you own a disk based copy.

When Microsoft announced they were backtracking on their no cross play policy, journalists cheered and acted like it was something new.

When Microsoft announced Game Pass, journalists acted like it was some breakthrough innovation. They either ignored PS Now or used Game Pass as a way to downplay PS Now. "No one wants to stream"

Now we have Xcloud, and journalists are doing the same thing.

Microsoft is losing badly and I'm sure there are many people in those news outlets out there who don't like this because they're loyal to Microsoft products and subscriptions. Gaming journalism has become a dumpster fire of click-bait and writers who let their bias influence their coverage. They have clever ways of writing their articles and presenting false narratives as objective reporting. Journalism is corrupted by money and personal, hidden agendas of the writers pretending to be journalists.

This.

The current implementation is utter crap as the games run from a Playstation somewhere in the world, and if none is ready then you can't play at all. Add to this the gray and brown of last gen with bad compression on a non-consistent connection, making them blocky as a PS1 game and huge lags if the console is far away. If you're idle, the service will disconnect you to make room on the server, so save before going to the bathroom. Random disconnections are rampant, just as lost cloudsaves are (and no, you can't save them locally either). Oh, and if you don't have a PS4 controller, you will be fucked in any game that needs motion controls at any point of the game. Finally, while the yearly subscription is okay in price (99$), the monthly is 14.99$, so 12 months will add up to almost double that price.

"The current implementation is utter crap as the games run from a Playstation somewhere in the world, and if none is ready then you can't play at all."

Which is exactly what Xcloud does. 

"Add to this the gray and brown of last gen with bad compression on a non-consistent connection, making them blocky as a PS1 game and huge lags if the console is far away. If you're idle, the service will disconnect you to make room on the server, so save before going to the bathroom."

Those are problems with all streaming services. Obviously PS3 games aren't going to look good but streaming at 720p and 30 fps requires less data. PS Now can also stream PS4 games.

Streaming games at 1080p or 4k requires a faster internet connection with more data. People complain about the quality of PS3 games on PS Now but then they complain about the data requirements. Sometimes I can't tell if people are really this dumb or they're just hating.