Samsung launches 5G gaming service with Hatch
I don’t get it. Why would a phone with beefy hardware of it’s own, need a game streaming service?? It can simply render whatever graphics client side, surely…?
Yes that is true, but my guess is they want consumers to buy their latest high-end 5G phones so they need reasons to convince them that 5G is of value - and streaming is the easiest sell at the moment. the low latency and high bandwidth of 5G make games streaming a natural fit for marketing purposes.
It might be a good deal in the future. Why to overload your phone, making it smoking-hot, when you can play remotely? But compression and lags might be a factor.
I’m sure many people don’t use their hardware to play constantly, and it stands idle sometimes for years unused. So such a service could make sense. But such a service must be very easy to use, with a daily pay. This way it could be competitive. I would not want to buy a monthly subscription or a half-a year one.
For hardcore gamers it might not be their choice, but for casual it might be too much of a fuss to get used to with all this pay for 5G and subscription.
Doomed for failure. That’s all I can say.
Being a phone, it’s not going to be in the same power league as a console. Being a $1,300 device, it’s going to be too expensive to play with them anyway. As an add-on service to a pre-existing device, it will have to carve out its own market and hope that there are enough people willing to buy into it. I’m sorry, but Hitman Go and Arkanoid Rising hardly seem like killer apps.
Until these devices can bring console level power and console quality libraries, we should just stop expecting our phones to be one stop solutions. For now, let a phone be a phone. I hardly see the need to launch a dedicated game service for a device that will largely be for the casual audience. A basic app store should be enough for now.
FWIW, I’m also not 100% sold on the idea of streaming games. It all seems great when you’re looking at only 50 people using the service. What happens when it goes more mainstream? Right now, there are nearly 9 billion… BILLION… smart phones on the planet. That’s more phones than people. Global internet usage is now past the 51% mark. That’s nearly 4 billion people with some sort of net connection. I have serious doubts that there’s a decent enough infrastructure to support broad base game streaming atm. Seems good as a small scale thing. Taking it a PS4 sized market of 92 million seems highly challenging. Maybe for the PS6. Certainly not in time for PS5.
Samsung has its work cut out for them. Mass appeal game streaming is AT LEAST a good 5 or 6 years… at best. Too other many things have to fall into place first.
I have, basically, no idea what you said up there. Sounds like Nonsense. Why would “these devices” need to “bring console level power” when the number crunching is being done SERVER-SIDE??!!!
When you say you have doubts about infrastructure, you may be right, you may, but…Google, as well as other companies, do have a LOT of cash in the bank, y’know? A LOT!