Do streaming services threaten the PC Hardware Enthusiast?

[Wight31]

Good Evening/Morning all.

After reading some articles regarding streaming services for gaming, I can’t help but wonder if the days of the Hardware Enthusiast (gaming wise) are numbered?

Like many of you I enjoy building/upgrading/overclocking/ problem solving when it comes to PCs, I hope that all streaming services offer is another avenue for ‘casual’ gamers to experience PC gaming and not threaten to wipe us enthusiast off the map.



What are people’s opinion on this?

Thanks.

 

[EsaT]

Streaming/cloud gaming is mostly big cloud of illegal substance smoke from bean counters and marketroids who want to remove player's control to games.
(no playing older games, or even newer if it isn't making enough money to run servers)

Even disregarding that aspect of being designed for leeching more money from gamers, connection lag/ping problems are major in enthusiast gaming.
Even with very unrealistic assumption of most countries getting own local game servers true high bandwidth and low latency internet connection isn't going to become common with ISPs pushing wireless unstable non-broadbands.
(turn based strategy games would be one of the few exceptions not giving damn about lag)


And next-gen consoles are bringing some pretty hefty CPU horsepower to kick game development forward.
In fact average Intel based PC might struggle to run heavier next-gen multiplatter games, because of shortage of cores/threads.

 

[Plec]

Streaming/cloud gaming is mostly big cloud of illegal substance smoke from bean counters and marketroids who want to remove player's control to games.
(no playing older games, or even newer if it isn't making enough money to run servers)

Even disregarding that aspect of being designed for leeching more money from gamers, connection lag/ping problems are major in enthusiast gaming.
Even with very unrealistic assumption of most countries getting own local game servers true high bandwidth and low latency internet connection isn't going to become common with ISPs pushing wireless unstable non-broadbands.
(turn based strategy games would be one of the few exceptions not giving damn about lag)


And next-gen consoles are bringing some pretty hefty CPU horsepower to kick game development forward.
In fact average Intel based PC might struggle to run heavier next-gen multiplatter games, because of shortage of cores/threads.

/end thread

In fact average Intel based PC might struggle to run heavier next-gen multiplatter games, because of shortage of cores/threads.

I knew you couldn't end without an opportune, valid swipe at INTEL @EsaT

 

[adrichardson81]

Couldn’t agree more. It’s great for the bean counters, but EA is a prime example of how that ends.

Factor in the bandwidth requirements and the general state of “high speed” internet in the UK (not to mention that the gamer will be fighting for bandwidth with the rest of the family) and it’s just not looking realistic to me.