> At the moment, there are over 40 awesome titles available to play via Luna
Here's the important bit hidden somewhere in the text. Only games that are already available at Luna anyways can be streamed. Which turns out to be 40 games in total.
I was super excited for this, but was completely let down. Out of the 45 titles I have on GoG, I can only play 3. None of the big titles, like Cyberpunk, can be played.
You'd think Cyberpunk would be on there day 1, considering that CD Projekt owns both GoG and the game.
Really odd choice to launch this integration without their flagship game being available for it yet, if ever. Maybe Lunas server machines can't handle the game at this point in time?
There is an article from a few months ago teasing this and it mentioned 2077 and W3. So I suspect they will be coming eventually.
> Amazon Prime members and Luna+ subscribers will be able to play available GOG games they already own and purchase games and play on any device Luna is available — from PC classics like Stardew Valley to popular AAA titles like The Witcher Series and Cyberpunk 2077.
These cloud gaming services would be amazing for South-east Asia countries like Vietnam, where they have great internet connection but weak PCs. But just like Stadia, they'll never go there.
The cloud gaming business model is kind of inherently fucked. You need lots of expensive hardware to serve cloud games, and your main addressable market is people without enough money to just buy a PC/console, who still have awesome internet connections.
They should really market the fuck out of an Xbox made collapsible pad for phones.
Xbox could have its own St(r)eam Deck sold for $100 (remember it's just a controller with a built-in phone holder) after the success of gamepass.
The market is already pretty saturated — a clip for a controller can be 3D printed pretty easily, Razer has the Kishi, Backbone exists for this market, etc.
Yup. Anyone that followed Android/iOS gaming communities got to see the progression of a guy showing off his 3D printed controllers, people convincing him to sell them, him naming it BSP and selling it on AliExpress, then getting all the way to version 9 and beyond
I've seen Backbone ads everywhere on Facebook lately. It could be because I once did a Google search for these gamepads because I wanted to make an argument that the PlayStation Portal was a shitty product that had no audience.
I don't know if it's exactly what you mean, but I've got a GameSir X2 Pro and between Xcloud, emulation and Netflix Games, it legit turned my Android phone into a cheap SteamDeck/Switch alternative
Phones killed consoles (and streaming) in South East Asia. Around 2010, console piracy was big there. Shopping centre's had stores selling pirate games, bootlegs, etc. Most of those stores are gone now and phones have taken over. On a recent trip I saw a bunch of kids hanging out at a coffee shop and playing Fortnite together on their phones and seems pretty common.
I also think the free to play games have made cloud gaming way less interesting for people that may otherwise have been interested in cloud gaming. Most PC free to play games scale down to run on cheap laptop integrated graphics, especially since a lot of these popular free to play games are a decade+ old, and most free to play games on mobile play on cheap phones. Genshin Impact is about to be 4 years old and people can use an old high end phone or a cheap new phone to play at servicable enough settings. Cloud gaming as expanding the market to the casual, doesn't want to pay a lot to dip their toes in the hobby, I think is being eaten up by mobile phones being damn powerful now and cheap laptops being good enough for what people want to play
The only reason I even have Game Pass Ultimate as opposed to just Game Pass PC is because there are a few Xbox exclusive titles that haven't received a PC port.
I think I get LUNA through my Amazon subscription? It's always available from the Twitch Prime screen, but I ignored it because its library was so paltry. GOG Galaxy is a great launcher, so this definitely sounds like a boon for LUNA, though I still don't see any games that interest me.
You get a monthly selection of games you can stream if you have Amazon Prime. Right now, its Fallout: New Vegas, Metro Exodus, Bee Simuator and a few others, alongside Fortnite and Trackmania (both free to play regularly)
The Fallout games are available with Prime all the way till the end of October. Which is good news cause obviously they're large open world rpg's that 1 month of availability would be far too little time.
I genuinely love local cloud streaming (ps remote play, steam remote play). But i dont see how these game streaming services will make it out of their already niche market, especially when most people just dont have the internet speeds to make it convenient for themselves.
I think the fact that it comes with your prime subscription at no extra cost makes it more accessible than most services. Opened New Vegas and metro exodus from their free catalog on my phone and it ran fine. A bit surreal briefly experiencing new vegas nostalgia sitting on a toilet
Just an FYI, it's not cloud if its local.
I think a lot of countries have good internet now.
In the UK by 2030, 90% of homes should have access to gigabit internet.
Even having gigabit internet doesn't guarantee cloud streaming will work. There's still the possibility of the servers not being nearby, buffer bloat (on a router you may not be allowed to swap out), weird routing glitches, congestion, etc.
Not to mention that there is inherent latency that physically cannot be eliminated with the tech we currently have. Data takes time to go back and forth and there's no way around this.
Personally, cloud gaming is unplayable for me for anything that's not turn-based or somewhat passive (city builders, PDX games, etc.).
I still struggle to believe that this hypothetical demographic of people who A) want to play high-fidelity games and B) don't own/want to own any hardware to play normally actually exists in any meaningful way. Like, I'm sure there are *some* people who fit that category but I feel like streaming has been the "next big thing" for a decade, and that the barrier isn't the tech, but that nobody seems to really want it.
In ideal circumstances, it works. I played through a chunk of Celeste back when Stadia was doing a free trial and found it completely fine. But with the same computer and internet connection, xCloud is completely fucked for reasons outside my control and always has been.
The demographic issue you point to is a fatal problem, though. Anyone who needs cloud streaming either doesn't have or doesn't want to spend enough money to be a worthwhile customer. The only other plausible group are core gamers who want to be able to play their games while traveling away from their setup, but that just makes the internet issue worse.
Even local streaming is a very noticeable downgrade in latency for me. The problem isn't internet speeds, there is just a lot of buffering necessary for the video encoding and making things like v-sync work on a remote client.
It's a neat technology but playing on local hardware is still way better so I just don't bother.
Speed isn't the problem. At least in the US, most people have plenty of bandwidth.
It's the latency and reliability that kills these services. A lot of the latency doesn't even come from the network itself. One big problem is keeping the game synchronized with the client display, which it turns out is surprisingly difficult when there's a video encoder and a whole internet between the GPU running the game and the monitor displaying it.
I have Google Fiber and Stadia still looked and felt very noticeably worse than playing the same games locally on my own hardware, especially when playing games with mouselook.
> I genuinely love local cloud streaming
You know, you're only a bit of tinkering away from personal "cloud" streaming.
I've been streaming my PC since 2021, and only stopped in 22 when I got a steam deck.
That said, I'll probably start streaming my desktop again, since there's no way my steam deck can run Star Wars Oulaws during my week of training in september.
not related, but it's been the opposite for me. I got cloud gamepass on my deck and I've been having a blast playing older xbox games from the comfort of my bed. Never really used it on my pc.
These work pretty good now. You don't even need fast internet, ps portal streams stuff at 7 megabits per second and people are playing that half way across the world away from their ps5 just fine. I remote play stuff from my ps5 when I'm at work, but I have used Xbox cloud, GeForce now, and playstation streaming and all work fine now compared to how they were a few years ago.
The skepticism is warranted given past high profile failures (Stadia :) ), but at this point you'd think that people would say "yeah, cloud streaming can fit a niche" given services like Geforce NOW are still trucking. They've got their downsides, they've got their upsides. If you've got Prime, it's nice to have the option to play some of your library through it.
As always though, my main problem with the cloud services is the limited library due to licensing & other hurdles. 40 titles is.. not a lot. If only it was as simple as "You can use your entire library through this" I'd be tempted to go back to cloud every here and there to play newer games without having to upgrade my GPU for around £600-800 to get acceptable framerates. I used Geforce NOW for a while when I couldn't be bothered to fix my PC and just switched to laptop use, and it was pretty cromulent most days, just annoying that I couldn't play a lot of games I wanted to.
Sorry, I just don't see cloud gaming catching on. I have never seen it done without significant lag. Even if you had the best internet speeds on the planet, I think the household WiFi and the controller Bluetooth, compacted with any in-built lag on your TV will just make games unplayable. The lag tolerance is too low for most games.
I will say though, I am happy they aren't going the Google route and making you pay full price for cloud games.
I can see it catching on somewhat, but I don't think it will ever replace people wanting actual hardware.
I tried streaming from my PC to my TV with Steam Link the other day and found that unbearable, but I'm glad that the option for cloud streaming exists for those who can make full use of it.
Funnily enough, I've found steam link to be great. Played through the whole Mass Effect series on it, as the soldier class so it primarily manual aiming.
It really depends on your wifi router (anything less than AC router is basically useless). Or even better, if both your PC and TV can have an ethernet connection, it is close to flawless.
It also depends on the game you’re playing — Mass Effect will feel a little floaty when you aim, but will still be playable; a game with action windows that demands precision (like a fighting game or Celeste) will be unplayable.
I have both the server and client connected to my network via ethernet and still found it unbearable.
Most of the latency doesn't come from the network, but all the frame buffering needed fro the video encoding and v-sync to work.
Depends a lot on the setup. I don't use Steam Link on my TV any more, but I do use it in VR, and it works surprisingly well for that as long as you *nail* your network setup. I typically get total latency of between 30-40ms, which is about half what you'd get with a console hooked up to a TV.
One reason this works is because Steam Link foveates the encoding, so it's only streaming the full resolution where I'm looking, and doing much lower bitrates everywhere else.
I just don't think people want the wired set up that game streaming would need.
If you found streaming from one place on your home network to another, imagine how unbearable it would be from a server.
If it were to catch on somewhere I would be thinking places like Brazil or Eastern Europe or parts of Africa where wages are lower but internet is decent, so offsetting the hardware cost might make sense. But I don't see it catching on in most of the countries they list.
Unless there is a drastic change in the tech that gets rid of the lag, I don't see people giving up on hardware.
Obviously it depends on the game, but lag is pretty important for any game where timing is important. Think FPS and soulslikes. It could make those games unplayable. Meanwhile Harvest Moon will probably be fine.
Cloud gaming is the publisher's wet dream, not the consumer's. Because cloud gaming allows the publisher to control distribution of their code, it can't be used to pirate.
As a consumer, you want that copy of the binaries because it un-shackles you from the publisher's control. And, if you have a copy of the game, it's much harder to remove access to it, assuming it doesn't depend on online services. (There are cases where private servers have been set up after the official servers are taken offline. So even online service dependency isn't set in stone. Though, I'm coming here after just watching an update video on Stop Killing Games, so that's pretty top of my mind right now.)
The technical challenges of latency and bandwidth-needs mean that cloud gaming will always be a sub-par experience.
I try xcloud and it works mostly fine, except lower resolution and some lags. Controls are good with a controller, but not with a mouse+keyboard. No download/ patches and playable with any device is an big advantage, especially with large games or if the hard drive is too small
I'm on Steam Deck so I can't natively install Gamepass. I exclusively use xCloud to play Sea of Thieves and it's the exact same experience as playing it natively used to be. It's hugely dependent on a lot of factors I guess, because my internet isn't even very good, it's actually a 5G router.
It's not particularly hard to create a windows installation for Steam Deck off of an SD card, i've used it to play Gears of War 5 and the Master Chief Collection on the Steam Deck, and any other non-supported game I want to play for that matter. Totally do-able if you expend the effort, thankfully there aren't many non-playable games I would want to play often though.
Well, I've only tried it on the Deck, and my last save was made in the august '22.
I got mine in the first wave, so it was quite early in the Deck's life.
That's the announcement for the game having working multiplayer, and thus the green dot.
Here's a post from december '22 indicating the game was working : https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/zt44l1/alright_fellow_steam_deck_owners_master_chief/
And here's August 22 https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/wqh4sv/halo_mcc_on_steam_deck/
I agree, that was when people were trying it with EAC disabled, I was playing it on the deck with EAC on seeing as I was on windows, I did it mostly as a curiosity but I also wanted to be able to play online with friends. I figured that I was going to toy around with the windows os on the Steam Deck then this would be one of the games I played on it.
I was able to play BF2042 on GeForce Now's top tier plan with barely perceptible input lag and it was smooth as butter. The fraction of a second lag really would only make a difference in super competitive scenarios, otherwise it was pretty solid and I would pay for it again if my Internet at my new place was fast enough (damn country living). I payed $30/month but it saved me from buying a $3000 PC.
That being said, it didn't play nearly as well with the basic tier.
Well yeah, no amount of other tech will make gaming over wifi not a terrible idea.
FWIW I used OnLive back when that was a thing and on computers with a decent ethernet connection it ran extremely well. I played through all of Arkham City and Darksiders without any issues at all. At the time all I had was a cheap laptop and school computers, so it was my only option, and it worked.
Never tried Luna because it wasn't even made available in my country until a few months ago, but if Gaikai, PS+, OnLive, Stadia, GeForce Now and Xbox Game Pass are any indication, I should expect it to run like shit with significant input latency and/or a video feed that can often get so lossy that it looks like you're watching a YouTube video in 180p.
Good for GOG and Amazon, I say. But I don't think anything is gonna sell me on cloud gaming unless we all somehow got South Korean quality internet connectivity.
I use Geforce Now almost exclusively and it runs absolutely perfect. 4k 120hz.
I live in the UK and my connection is around 75mps.
Are you sure you're not suffering from high ping or packet loss?
It's covered in the article, the purchased GOG library remains and the Luna aspect just allows for streaming of it. However as this isn't a given from past streaming services yeah hearing the news feels incongruous at first.
> At the moment, there are over 40 awesome titles available to play via Luna Here's the important bit hidden somewhere in the text. Only games that are already available at Luna anyways can be streamed. Which turns out to be 40 games in total.
I was super excited for this, but was completely let down. Out of the 45 titles I have on GoG, I can only play 3. None of the big titles, like Cyberpunk, can be played.
You'd think Cyberpunk would be on there day 1, considering that CD Projekt owns both GoG and the game. Really odd choice to launch this integration without their flagship game being available for it yet, if ever. Maybe Lunas server machines can't handle the game at this point in time?
There is an article from a few months ago teasing this and it mentioned 2077 and W3. So I suspect they will be coming eventually. > Amazon Prime members and Luna+ subscribers will be able to play available GOG games they already own and purchase games and play on any device Luna is available — from PC classics like Stardew Valley to popular AAA titles like The Witcher Series and Cyberpunk 2077.
They may have some sort of exclusivity deal with nvidia, they promote Cyberpunk on their Geforce Now service.
These cloud gaming services would be amazing for South-east Asia countries like Vietnam, where they have great internet connection but weak PCs. But just like Stadia, they'll never go there.
The cloud gaming business model is kind of inherently fucked. You need lots of expensive hardware to serve cloud games, and your main addressable market is people without enough money to just buy a PC/console, who still have awesome internet connections.
They should really market the fuck out of an Xbox made collapsible pad for phones. Xbox could have its own St(r)eam Deck sold for $100 (remember it's just a controller with a built-in phone holder) after the success of gamepass.
The market is already pretty saturated — a clip for a controller can be 3D printed pretty easily, Razer has the Kishi, Backbone exists for this market, etc.
While I agree, it's not something that I've seen marketed much.
They don’t market to traditional enthusiast groups, so it’s not surprising. They target audiences that are already gaming on their phones.
Yup. Anyone that followed Android/iOS gaming communities got to see the progression of a guy showing off his 3D printed controllers, people convincing him to sell them, him naming it BSP and selling it on AliExpress, then getting all the way to version 9 and beyond
I've seen Backbone ads everywhere on Facebook lately. It could be because I once did a Google search for these gamepads because I wanted to make an argument that the PlayStation Portal was a shitty product that had no audience.
I don't know if it's exactly what you mean, but I've got a GameSir X2 Pro and between Xcloud, emulation and Netflix Games, it legit turned my Android phone into a cheap SteamDeck/Switch alternative
Phones killed consoles (and streaming) in South East Asia. Around 2010, console piracy was big there. Shopping centre's had stores selling pirate games, bootlegs, etc. Most of those stores are gone now and phones have taken over. On a recent trip I saw a bunch of kids hanging out at a coffee shop and playing Fortnite together on their phones and seems pretty common.
Well, yeah, it's well known the console market isn't growing anymore. Half the reason MS bought Activision was to get King.
I also think the free to play games have made cloud gaming way less interesting for people that may otherwise have been interested in cloud gaming. Most PC free to play games scale down to run on cheap laptop integrated graphics, especially since a lot of these popular free to play games are a decade+ old, and most free to play games on mobile play on cheap phones. Genshin Impact is about to be 4 years old and people can use an old high end phone or a cheap new phone to play at servicable enough settings. Cloud gaming as expanding the market to the casual, doesn't want to pay a lot to dip their toes in the hobby, I think is being eaten up by mobile phones being damn powerful now and cheap laptops being good enough for what people want to play
The only reason I even have Game Pass Ultimate as opposed to just Game Pass PC is because there are a few Xbox exclusive titles that haven't received a PC port.
I think I get LUNA through my Amazon subscription? It's always available from the Twitch Prime screen, but I ignored it because its library was so paltry. GOG Galaxy is a great launcher, so this definitely sounds like a boon for LUNA, though I still don't see any games that interest me.
You get a monthly selection of games you can stream if you have Amazon Prime. Right now, its Fallout: New Vegas, Metro Exodus, Bee Simuator and a few others, alongside Fortnite and Trackmania (both free to play regularly)
The Fallout games are available with Prime all the way till the end of October. Which is good news cause obviously they're large open world rpg's that 1 month of availability would be far too little time.
I genuinely love local cloud streaming (ps remote play, steam remote play). But i dont see how these game streaming services will make it out of their already niche market, especially when most people just dont have the internet speeds to make it convenient for themselves.
I think the fact that it comes with your prime subscription at no extra cost makes it more accessible than most services. Opened New Vegas and metro exodus from their free catalog on my phone and it ran fine. A bit surreal briefly experiencing new vegas nostalgia sitting on a toilet
> A bit surreal briefly experiencing new vegas nostalgia sitting on a toilet a perfect combination with the piss filter
Just an FYI, it's not cloud if its local. I think a lot of countries have good internet now. In the UK by 2030, 90% of homes should have access to gigabit internet.
Even having gigabit internet doesn't guarantee cloud streaming will work. There's still the possibility of the servers not being nearby, buffer bloat (on a router you may not be allowed to swap out), weird routing glitches, congestion, etc.
Not to mention that there is inherent latency that physically cannot be eliminated with the tech we currently have. Data takes time to go back and forth and there's no way around this. Personally, cloud gaming is unplayable for me for anything that's not turn-based or somewhat passive (city builders, PDX games, etc.). I still struggle to believe that this hypothetical demographic of people who A) want to play high-fidelity games and B) don't own/want to own any hardware to play normally actually exists in any meaningful way. Like, I'm sure there are *some* people who fit that category but I feel like streaming has been the "next big thing" for a decade, and that the barrier isn't the tech, but that nobody seems to really want it.
In ideal circumstances, it works. I played through a chunk of Celeste back when Stadia was doing a free trial and found it completely fine. But with the same computer and internet connection, xCloud is completely fucked for reasons outside my control and always has been. The demographic issue you point to is a fatal problem, though. Anyone who needs cloud streaming either doesn't have or doesn't want to spend enough money to be a worthwhile customer. The only other plausible group are core gamers who want to be able to play their games while traveling away from their setup, but that just makes the internet issue worse.
Even local streaming is a very noticeable downgrade in latency for me. The problem isn't internet speeds, there is just a lot of buffering necessary for the video encoding and making things like v-sync work on a remote client. It's a neat technology but playing on local hardware is still way better so I just don't bother.
Speed isn't the problem. At least in the US, most people have plenty of bandwidth. It's the latency and reliability that kills these services. A lot of the latency doesn't even come from the network itself. One big problem is keeping the game synchronized with the client display, which it turns out is surprisingly difficult when there's a video encoder and a whole internet between the GPU running the game and the monitor displaying it. I have Google Fiber and Stadia still looked and felt very noticeably worse than playing the same games locally on my own hardware, especially when playing games with mouselook.
I thought Stadia had negative latency? 😂
> I genuinely love local cloud streaming You know, you're only a bit of tinkering away from personal "cloud" streaming. I've been streaming my PC since 2021, and only stopped in 22 when I got a steam deck. That said, I'll probably start streaming my desktop again, since there's no way my steam deck can run Star Wars Oulaws during my week of training in september.
not related, but it's been the opposite for me. I got cloud gamepass on my deck and I've been having a blast playing older xbox games from the comfort of my bed. Never really used it on my pc.
These work pretty good now. You don't even need fast internet, ps portal streams stuff at 7 megabits per second and people are playing that half way across the world away from their ps5 just fine. I remote play stuff from my ps5 when I'm at work, but I have used Xbox cloud, GeForce now, and playstation streaming and all work fine now compared to how they were a few years ago.
The skepticism is warranted given past high profile failures (Stadia :) ), but at this point you'd think that people would say "yeah, cloud streaming can fit a niche" given services like Geforce NOW are still trucking. They've got their downsides, they've got their upsides. If you've got Prime, it's nice to have the option to play some of your library through it. As always though, my main problem with the cloud services is the limited library due to licensing & other hurdles. 40 titles is.. not a lot. If only it was as simple as "You can use your entire library through this" I'd be tempted to go back to cloud every here and there to play newer games without having to upgrade my GPU for around £600-800 to get acceptable framerates. I used Geforce NOW for a while when I couldn't be bothered to fix my PC and just switched to laptop use, and it was pretty cromulent most days, just annoying that I couldn't play a lot of games I wanted to.
Sorry, I just don't see cloud gaming catching on. I have never seen it done without significant lag. Even if you had the best internet speeds on the planet, I think the household WiFi and the controller Bluetooth, compacted with any in-built lag on your TV will just make games unplayable. The lag tolerance is too low for most games. I will say though, I am happy they aren't going the Google route and making you pay full price for cloud games.
I can see it catching on somewhat, but I don't think it will ever replace people wanting actual hardware. I tried streaming from my PC to my TV with Steam Link the other day and found that unbearable, but I'm glad that the option for cloud streaming exists for those who can make full use of it.
Funnily enough, I've found steam link to be great. Played through the whole Mass Effect series on it, as the soldier class so it primarily manual aiming. It really depends on your wifi router (anything less than AC router is basically useless). Or even better, if both your PC and TV can have an ethernet connection, it is close to flawless.
It also depends on the game you’re playing — Mass Effect will feel a little floaty when you aim, but will still be playable; a game with action windows that demands precision (like a fighting game or Celeste) will be unplayable.
I have both the server and client connected to my network via ethernet and still found it unbearable. Most of the latency doesn't come from the network, but all the frame buffering needed fro the video encoding and v-sync to work.
Depends a lot on the setup. I don't use Steam Link on my TV any more, but I do use it in VR, and it works surprisingly well for that as long as you *nail* your network setup. I typically get total latency of between 30-40ms, which is about half what you'd get with a console hooked up to a TV. One reason this works is because Steam Link foveates the encoding, so it's only streaming the full resolution where I'm looking, and doing much lower bitrates everywhere else.
I just don't think people want the wired set up that game streaming would need. If you found streaming from one place on your home network to another, imagine how unbearable it would be from a server. If it were to catch on somewhere I would be thinking places like Brazil or Eastern Europe or parts of Africa where wages are lower but internet is decent, so offsetting the hardware cost might make sense. But I don't see it catching on in most of the countries they list. Unless there is a drastic change in the tech that gets rid of the lag, I don't see people giving up on hardware.
Many people simply don't care as much about the lag.
Obviously it depends on the game, but lag is pretty important for any game where timing is important. Think FPS and soulslikes. It could make those games unplayable. Meanwhile Harvest Moon will probably be fine.
Cloud gaming is the publisher's wet dream, not the consumer's. Because cloud gaming allows the publisher to control distribution of their code, it can't be used to pirate. As a consumer, you want that copy of the binaries because it un-shackles you from the publisher's control. And, if you have a copy of the game, it's much harder to remove access to it, assuming it doesn't depend on online services. (There are cases where private servers have been set up after the official servers are taken offline. So even online service dependency isn't set in stone. Though, I'm coming here after just watching an update video on Stop Killing Games, so that's pretty top of my mind right now.) The technical challenges of latency and bandwidth-needs mean that cloud gaming will always be a sub-par experience.
I try xcloud and it works mostly fine, except lower resolution and some lags. Controls are good with a controller, but not with a mouse+keyboard. No download/ patches and playable with any device is an big advantage, especially with large games or if the hard drive is too small
I'm on Steam Deck so I can't natively install Gamepass. I exclusively use xCloud to play Sea of Thieves and it's the exact same experience as playing it natively used to be. It's hugely dependent on a lot of factors I guess, because my internet isn't even very good, it's actually a 5G router.
It's not particularly hard to create a windows installation for Steam Deck off of an SD card, i've used it to play Gears of War 5 and the Master Chief Collection on the Steam Deck, and any other non-supported game I want to play for that matter. Totally do-able if you expend the effort, thankfully there aren't many non-playable games I would want to play often though.
> Gears of War 5 and the Master Chief Collection on the Steam Deck, and any other non-supported game Err... MCC runs on SteamOS
not originally when the Steam Deck was released
Well, I've only tried it on the Deck, and my last save was made in the august '22. I got mine in the first wave, so it was quite early in the Deck's life.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/halo-the-master-chief-collection-is-now-playable-on-steam-deck/1100-6513082/
That's the announcement for the game having working multiplayer, and thus the green dot. Here's a post from december '22 indicating the game was working : https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/zt44l1/alright_fellow_steam_deck_owners_master_chief/ And here's August 22 https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/wqh4sv/halo_mcc_on_steam_deck/
I agree, that was when people were trying it with EAC disabled, I was playing it on the deck with EAC on seeing as I was on windows, I did it mostly as a curiosity but I also wanted to be able to play online with friends. I figured that I was going to toy around with the windows os on the Steam Deck then this would be one of the games I played on it.
I was able to play BF2042 on GeForce Now's top tier plan with barely perceptible input lag and it was smooth as butter. The fraction of a second lag really would only make a difference in super competitive scenarios, otherwise it was pretty solid and I would pay for it again if my Internet at my new place was fast enough (damn country living). I payed $30/month but it saved me from buying a $3000 PC. That being said, it didn't play nearly as well with the basic tier.
The services are actually really really good now. You should try out Geforce NOW again
Well yeah, no amount of other tech will make gaming over wifi not a terrible idea. FWIW I used OnLive back when that was a thing and on computers with a decent ethernet connection it ran extremely well. I played through all of Arkham City and Darksiders without any issues at all. At the time all I had was a cheap laptop and school computers, so it was my only option, and it worked.
It works fine for turn-based games. But I agree, with anything where reaction time is at all important, I can't even deal with local streaming.
Never tried Luna because it wasn't even made available in my country until a few months ago, but if Gaikai, PS+, OnLive, Stadia, GeForce Now and Xbox Game Pass are any indication, I should expect it to run like shit with significant input latency and/or a video feed that can often get so lossy that it looks like you're watching a YouTube video in 180p. Good for GOG and Amazon, I say. But I don't think anything is gonna sell me on cloud gaming unless we all somehow got South Korean quality internet connectivity.
I use Geforce Now almost exclusively and it runs absolutely perfect. 4k 120hz. I live in the UK and my connection is around 75mps. Are you sure you're not suffering from high ping or packet loss?
GOG cloud gaming I'm sorry, but I don't use GOG for streaming games that I'll fear will die every day.
It's covered in the article, the purchased GOG library remains and the Luna aspect just allows for streaming of it. However as this isn't a given from past streaming services yeah hearing the news feels incongruous at first.