It’s probably worth starting with the very sad reason for the appearance of this article.In August 2021, I had to sell my Playstation 5 purchased at the release, and despite the fact that the console had already been re-purchased. For six months I had to look for alternative methods to play, and the most logical option was cloud gaming.
Considering that advertisements for various services for playing in the clouds rain down on me from every video on YouTube, in fact, I didn’t even have much of a choice. Moreover, without a set-top box, I became an ideal representative of the target audience for cloud services, due to the hardware I have in use.
I had to play for almost six months and also take footage/screenshots on the following devices
I’ll make a reservation right away that the data from both devices will be listed mixed up so that this whole story doesn’t grow to completely cosmic proportions, but I can say that I didn’t notice any big differences between the game on one device and the other. Which is not surprising, because what difference does it make to you to stupidly stream videos in 1080p?. And yes, each game that we will talk about was launched at least once on each of the two devices through each of the three services that I will talk about.
By the way, another important point, there will be absolutely no information here about the scheme by which cloud gaming works, and it is better to have at least a minimal understanding of what it is (by the way, for me personally it is just minimal), I doubt that this will cause inconvenience, because every gaming blogger has given the necessary background in advertising.
I had a chance to play at the following sites, two of them are quite actively advertised and I have heard about them many times, I found out about one by chance at work.
Now the fun part, the games I ran
• CS GO – because it is the audience of online shooters that cloud platform marketers are targeting, but in general I’m not a CS player at all.
• DOTA 2 – for the same reason as CS – marketers. And I had to step over myself a lot to start this game
• Rainbow Six Siege – because it is an online shooter (see. point 1) and because I just love siege.
• The Witcher 3 – everyone loves The Witcher 3
• Mount & Blade Bannerlord – I really wanted to play Bannerlord, but even with the presence of a console it is not yet possible to do this.
GeForce NOW
The cardinal differences from other sites are the impossibility of paying hourly (you have to pay a minimum for a day or night) and there is something like a free demo version in which you can play for half an hour, while standing in a huge queue, I have never sat in such a queue until the end.
Putting yourself in standby mode for at least an hour in order to be able to complete a quest in the Witcher or play a short match in a siege is somehow too humiliating even for me.
But we will consider the so-called PREMIUM subscription, which essentially just gives the normal functionality of a cloud service for money
GFN is the only platform that has a full-fledged desktop application (by the way, it works better on a Mac than Steam applications).
In addition to the fact that the game must be purchased from Uplay, Steam or EGS (other stores are not an option). It should also be supported by the service, so I advise you to first check the list of supported games before paying for access to the full version. For example, I was very upset when I found out that you can’t run any part of the FALLOUT series here, but thanks to this, the games work more stable, and some games even support the vaunted ray tracing.
The games are pre-installed on the platform servers; precious paid time does not need to be spent viewing the download bar and.T.d., launch happens almost instantly after standing in line
The duration of these very queues plunges you into despondency and completely breaks the mood for a wonderful evening. After you share a little of your honestly earned money with GFN, it will be reduced by about half
The problem is that the number of people with whom you will have to stand for the gameplay changes from launch to launch completely randomly, and sometimes it is not much longer than turning on some Playstation 3 and loading the desired game on it, but sometimes, even with access to the full version, 300-400 people will stand in front of you, and this, again, is a MINIMUM hour of waiting.
The platform is very demanding on the quality of the Internet, my 300 Mb/sec is something like a comfortable minimum, 50-100 Mb/sec about which they talk a lot in advertising guarantees you constant drops in resolution and frames. And even with my 300 MB, any extra load on WiFi brought slowdowns and lags. Video calls hit the hardest, but even if someone else in the apartment decides to watch YouTube or an online movie in 1080p or higher, this becomes noticeable instantly in the game.
I don’t know how people who don’t have WIFI-5 support on their router generally play, but the service warned about the possibility of additional slowdowns when I accidentally switched to WI-FI 2.4
Of all the platforms we are talking about, GFN is the cheapest, but only sells time to gamers in large volumes. It should be preferred if you plan to play often and for a long period of time (month or year).
How I played on GFN
Resolution: 1366×768 (cannot be changed)
FPS: varies greatly 70-100
Overall, it’s playable, but I can’t say it’s comfortable; when you switch to low settings, the situation with the framerate changes, but it’s still not the same level as on a good PC.
FPS: stable 60
It’s completely comfortable to play, everything is as advertised
• Rainbow Six Siege
FPS: 60 with drops
It’s good only on medium, and better on low, sometimes the game generally has fits and fepes begin to jump from 60 to 200, which creates the feeling of constant microfreezes, in such situations, playability becomes purely technical, and if you’ve previously spent an hour in queue, you don’t want anything other than a refund from the service.
FPS: stable 150
An excellent game plays great, on the promised ultra it will be slightly below 60 frames, they won’t let you run it in 4k, but on the other hand they don’t promise this.
• Mount & https://tropical-wins.uk/login/ Blade Bannerlord
Resolution: 1920×1080 (4k not allowed)
FPS: The game will try to maintain 60 frames, but will reduce FPS if the connection speed drops
The feeling is close to what is described in the advertisement, you play comfortably on ultra, or so, if someone loads the Internet, the resolution may drop very much, up to unbearable 640×480, but I played cyberpunk on Playstation 4, this is the norm of life there.
PLAYKEY
This is, in my opinion, the most balanced of the three services. It is advisable to use it if the opportunity to play is rare and for a short time, although it is the most expensive of what I was able to try (an hour, when purchased separately, is almost twice as expensive as LOUDPLAY 80 rubles versus 49, a month is twice as expensive as GFN 1900 rubles versus 999)
But according to my personal feelings, there are the smallest queues (or rather, they are absent, at least in a form visible to the user) and it is possible to run games with higher settings (some even run comfortably in 4k resolution)
Microsoft Store and Origin are added to the “gold reserve” of supported stores. There is its own application, but you still need to search for and launch games through the browser, and the main thing is why this scheme works is completely unclear to me.
As is the case with other services, 50 MB Internet will not allow you to play well and from Wi-Fi, before starting the game, it is better to turn off everyone else in the house. Games, like GFN, are preinstalled on the other end of the line and there is no need to waste time on installation/downloading, given the high feasibility of hourly payment, this point is especially important.
Recently it became possible to use a remote desktop, but while I was testing this service, it had not yet been introduced.
How I played on Playkey
FPS: Stable 60
Quite comfortable, especially since it supports 4K; in pursuit of frames (which is usual for online shooters), the resolution can be lowered to 1080
FPS: 100 with drops
Playing is completely comfortable, I, as the owner of a 4k monitor, am doubly comfortable, small frame drops at this frequency do not bother me much, especially since there is a “resolution headroom” if the Internet starts to lag.
• Rainbow Six Siege
FPS: stable 60
Quite comfortable, I didn’t test 4k, FPS drops in a siege hurt me too much to risk it.
FPS: stable 30
If you set the graphics and FPS to the “console setup”, then you can play in 4K, but to play at 60 frames you will have to sacrifice something.
• Mount & Blade Bannerlord
FPS: The game will try to maintain 100 frames, but will reduce the framerate or resolution if the connection speed drops
In fact, I was desperately trying to play in 4k, but I constantly changed either the graphics settings or lowered the resolution to make it comfortable. For stable 100 frames in battles, I still recommend playing at 1920×1080
Loudplay
The main “Killer Feature” is that the service launches not a specific game from the store, but a full-fledged remote PC. Accordingly, it becomes possible to launch the game from absolutely anywhere, and even (of course I condemn) use torrents, utorrent is prudently located on any of the desktops.
Accordingly, if there is a need to run any non-game software, you can do it without any problems. Out of curiosity, I installed Adobe Premiere Pro, but I couldn’t work with it normally, it froze when rendering even the simplest effects.
In general, I have a rather biased attitude towards the platform, because when I used it, some technical work was carried out and I had to hang, literally, in endless queues, the data on my virtual PC was not saved, which is especially sad in this case, because unlike the other two services, games must be installed each time before launching (they are not pre-installed), if the PC is not saved in the cloud, and it is deleted if you do not log into it for a couple of days (so you need to connect it regularly it’s simply because, just like in daily reports on mobile phones) or it can also fly off during maintenance. work, and since the payment option is only available hourly, you have to pay out of your own pocket for every minute of installation.
For the sake of fairness, it is worth clarifying that the download and installation occurs quite quickly (average download speed is about 50 MB sec). Regarding Internet speed, the situation is the same as with the other two participants in the parade.
Another interesting feature, since the service connects not a single game, but an entire PC with its own configuration, it sets its own monitor resolution, and if it does not match the one set directly on the machine from which you launched it, then the mouse position or image proportions may be displayed incorrectly. So I had to change my 2560 x 1440 to 1080, randomly poke around the desktop settings already on the virtual PC and a fragile balance was found, therefore, in order not to break it, I also ran all the games at 1080.
Loudplay is the most profitable when paying hourly, if you plan to play every day, or almost every day for at least a month, GFN is clearly cheaper.
It is also advisable to use the service if you have a great desire to pirate.
How I played on Loudplay
Resolution: 1366×738 (cannot be changed)
FPS: 60 with drops up to 30
I can’t consider it playable when the framerate in CS drops below 60 frames, purely technically, of course, you can play
FPS: 120 with drops
It’s absolutely comfortable to play, the situation is even better than in advertising.
• Rainbow Six Siege
FPS: stable HP
The game refused to start, some problem with the battle eye. I didn’t want to pay money to fix someone else’s cloud PC at all.
FPS: stable 30
In general, the game is ok, but these are not the promised ultras, they are not even average.
• Mount & Blade Bannerlord
It’s quite comfortable to play, the reality matches the promises, a couple of times the resolution dropped completely by pixels, but the game heroically continued to work, however, a similar situation happened with other services.
Confirmation of information on settings and FPS can be seen in the video.
Results and “revelations”
What do we have after all these beautiful evenings in the clouds??
Firstly, the obvious conclusion is that all services are different, with their own pros and cons
BUT there are still a couple of questions left
Is it possible today to play comfortably and without pain through cloud services??
All of the listed platforms, with some reservations, provide characteristics either similar to the previous generation of consoles, or even pile a little joy on top.
Everyone remembers complaints about the terrible input lag and other brakes on Starte google stadia, besides, I managed to try now I can’t use anything like that.
Can they replace a current or previous generation gaming PC or console today??
Anyone who has used a classic gaming platform for a long (or even not very long) time will never be able to come to terms with the need to stand in line just to play (while paying for the game itself and separately for the opportunity to run it), with the need to kick out all the people and devices on your network from the Internet, and with the fact that, for reasons completely beyond your control, your super-powerful virtual PC can suddenly turn on potato-mode and take away your entire graphics. I’ve been trying to get used to this for more than three months and I can say that it’s impossible!
Cloud gaming is not the best place for online shooters. Yes, I was too lazy to try the same Warzone or Fortnite, but in CS with the rainbow I didn’t feel “Full stuffing” on any of the tested platforms, stupid deaths due to drawdowns will cause unprecedented frustration, and the average frame rate hangs on the verge of a comfortable minimum. I don’t claim the title of honorary cyber cutlet, but a slight delay in particularly tense moments is felt; for me it is not critical, but for conquerors of prestige diamonds it can play a decisive role.
Kalaud today, this is a story more about single projects that feel great here. The most reasonable use case is if, having a console as your main platform (or not having any platform at all), you really want to play a single-player and relatively demanding PC exclusive, such as Bannerlord or Baldur’s Gate III
But everyone knows that we live in times of shortages and inadequate prices for consoles and video cards. Paying just a conventional 50 rubles per hour will definitely be more profitable, right?? Well, unfortunately, there is no other way out except simple mathematics.
I will analyze it using the example of a conditional gaming year, during which it is planned to play on average two hours a day (the scheme is close to real, since on weekdays you can miss a couple of evenings, but make up for it by spending 6 hours on the weekend).
Total 365 x2 = 730 so many hours we expect to play in a year.
I will calculate prices based on the cheapest tariff for a one-year period.
We get the following picture in terms of cost:
+ Lowest cost in a long time
Cost per year 9,990 rub.
+ Ability to play at higher settings
+ Support for a large number of game stores
– Highest price per hour
Cost per year RUB 23,998.
+ Lowest cost per hour
+ Ability to install any software
– Sometimes you need to use crutches to play properly
Cost per year RUB 29,170.
The offer from GFN seems very nice. A year of play without problems (well, apart from those described above) for only ten thousand, but there are nuances.
Firstly, to use cloud services they need to be launched on something else, and it is desirable that this something can handle streaming at 1080p normally. The price for such a solution from normal brands (I do not take into account the cheapest solutions from no name manufacturers) starts from 20 tons.r.
Price of the cheapest solution + price of the cheapest subscription for a year = approximately 30,000 rubles.
And it still costs the same amount
• it produces similar performance in games
• instead of a limited number of platforms from which you can launch games, it gives only one, but with a gamepass that contains hundreds of games, and its cost when purchased is OFFICIALLY almost 3 times cheaper than an annual subscription to GFN for the same period (unofficially even cheaper).
• Instead of queues, it gives Quick Reusme, with which you don’t have to wait for the game to start at all.
• Definitely won’t reduce the resolution if the Internet is slow
And this is the cost of the cheapest service and the approximate cost of the cheapest laptop that will allow you to feel normal. If we take into account a device in which the SSD is larger than 128GB and add to it a subscription to the same PLAYKEY, then the cost of Playstation 5 digital begins to emerge, even taking into account the extras, without which it is now impossible to buy it in a store at the RRP.
And if you take into account the time of relevance of a console or a decent PC (4-5 years). From the mathematics described above, the possibility of assembling a boyar platform is already beginning to emerge.
And even if you are a schoolboy who has the opportunity to receive 100 rubles a day to play, but there is no way to save from your salary, work part-time in the evenings or on shift to quickly collect an amount of 30-40 thousand. (loans are evil – we don’t consider them) – show the calculation to your mother, explain the long-term benefits, most likely they will understand you and soon you will be able to play without cloudy hemorrhoids.
On the other hand, if you plan to play one or two games a year and not hang out in grinders like Division between them, then the math is no longer in favor of your own computer or console.
Finally, I will say that all of the above are just my personal feelings and observations, they may differ (and most likely will differ) from the experience of other users, since cloud services are patched and update functionality almost daily, which gives hope that cloud will someday be able to compete with the classics, but today this is a very situational story (for example, an acute desire to play a PC exclusive, or my situation with the temporary absence of the main platform). If the development of technology does not slow down and brings benefits to its owners in a year or two, then what I have stated will be absolutely invalid
For example, while writing this text, Rostelecom acquired GFN.RU for 1.5 billion, and there are also active rumors that Sony, instead of introducing backward compatibility with games of previous generations of Playstation in the general understanding, will launch them through the cloud.
But for now, for the mass audience, cloud gaming is not yet a new step in the development of the industry.
If you have read this to the end, I sincerely thank you and hope that you are playing or will play very soon in maximum comfort.
Best comments
Xbox Cloud gaming plays great and is much cheaper. The only negative for those who are far from Europe is that you can forget about games that require quick response. But for Moscow/St. Petersburg this is the best option.
Caps is bad, remove it from the name
there will be absolutely no information here about the scheme by which cloud gaming works, and it is better to have at least a minimal understanding of what it is (by the way, for me personally it is just minimal)
As a person who has been playing in the clouds for almost 10 years, and has not changed his computer since 2013, I will try to do something about the mess that is in your head and dispel some of the myths. No attacks, I understand perfectly well that “cloud gaming” for 99.99% of players is something mystical, absolutely unreal and found only in advertising.
The platform is very demanding on the quality of the Internet, my 300 Mb/sec is something like a comfortable minimum, 50-100 Mb/sec about which they talk a lot in advertising guarantees you constant drops in resolution and frames
Almost any cloud service, especially if its servers are located “under your window” (i.e.e. with a ping less than 5 ms) does not require more than 30-50 Mbit/s for 1080p/60. The problem arises when players start boasting about their Internet size, because more megabits/sec will not give you absolutely anything (well, except for higher speed of downloading torrents with a large number of seeds).
The main indicator that is necessary for the “cloud”, but which no provider will tell you, is the quality of your Internet. But it won’t report it, because it is impossible to somehow calculate, check and show it to the client.
Many people say: “Well, I watch YouTube in 8K and nothing lags, but your cloud shows me soap in 360p.”. Of course, the problem may lie in a hundred different reasons, but in 90% of cases there is exactly one reason – your Internet cannot cope with the transmission of data packets in real time. Unlike YouTube/Twitch and other things, all packets should fly between you and the server without delays, pauses, stops, losses, etc.n. And for this you only need 50 Mbit/sec, just like in the advertisement. I have just such an Internet (50 Mbit/s at almost any time of the day) and I play at 1920×1200/60 on the London GFN server, while being in Tver. Ping at 24-26ms. of course it doesn’t interfere. I won’t write about myths about ping anymore, there are already a lot of letters)
Do you also want? I can only advise you to sort through providers and their tariffs until you find a suitable option. Less popular providers can show better results, since their routes will not be clogged with thousands of people downloading hentai with chicks from Genshin or all seasons of Supernatural from morning until evening.
FPS: The game will try to maintain 60 frames, but will reduce FPS if the connection speed drops
No, the quality of your connection does not affect game FPS. The game doesn’t even care what your connection speed is. She doesn’t even know that the picture flies somewhere along the wires.
The feeling is close to what is described in the advertisement, you play comfortably on ultra, or so, if someone loads the Internet, the resolution may drop very much, up to unbearable 640×480, but I played cyberpunk on Playstation 4, this is the norm of life there.
Specifically in GFN you can lock the permission to what you need in the settings. Nothing will decrease, but the picture quality will of course decrease as the connection quality decreases.
Otherwise there is nothing special to edit. The two main problems of the current “clouds” are weak hardware and confusion over the legal status of cloud gaming, and therefore what games are available, where and how.
60 FPS at ultra in every game will not be possible even in the 3080 tariff of the European GFN, and it still has the most powerful hardware on the market. Some games are downloaded, but do not work in some services, some become exclusive to others, and somewhere games suddenly go into storage for a long time or even forever. service and so on.
Nevertheless, for those who are interested in the topic of “clouds”, in addition to the services mentioned by the author, I can also recommend taking a look at:
— Soap service. There are two unlimited games, a desktop with all launchers and Playkey technology as the main features.
– western GFN. Stupidly the most budget option.
– boosteroid. A promising Western service with vague prospects. Yes exactly)
— Mike service. The most promising of the young with a trump card in the form of Gamepass.
And yes, if you want to test some service, then do it at the time of day that you are going to play. It is preferable that it be night and it is undesirable that it is evening)
I think the reasons are obvious – on different days and at different times you will have different Internet quality.
The text in the title is automatically formatted in caps upon publication, but I can’t do anything. Corrected other headings
No, well, this is a byte, I have to trigger.
My computer is fine, so I didn’t look closely at the clouds. But it turns out that there is no chance, I often have 20-15 out of the declared 30 Mbit.
Thank you, it was interesting to read!
GFN is a bummer, not cloud gaming. Getting drawdowns in CS with a resolution of 1366×768 for money and playing The witcher 2015 on medium-high is a VICTORY! And this is a service from an industry giant. I can understand if there are delays – but FPS drops… B this is for 1000 rubles, the amount seems to be not small, but for such quality… it’s debatable
I’ll double-check the moment, because in my opinion I locked the permit directly in the service and the permit was still eaten (especially in online jokers). I can’t prove it here, so I won’t declare it, maybe salvation was really close, but I didn’t notice.
You need to disable the option “optimize for weak connections” or something like that.
Post sponsored by Phil Spencer 🙂
Rostelecom is an industry giant.
I was sure that everything was not super clear everywhere and that I expected someone to correct me, thank you.
The problem arises when players start boasting about their Internet size, because more megabits/sec will give you absolutely nothing
I didn’t plan to brag about the Internet, especially since I have nothing to show off with, perhaps the problem may still lie in the number of devices connected to wifi. In any case, when on a device on which I was not playing, active data transfer began on the game, it was immediately reflected.
Unlike YouTube/Twitch and other things, all packets should fly between you and the server without delays, pauses, stops, losses, etc.n. And for this you only need 50 Mbit/sec, just like in the advertisement.
I didn’t know about this feature, otherwise I would have definitely reported it
Specifically in GFN you can lock the permission to what you need in the settings. Nothing will decrease, but the picture quality will of course decrease as the connection quality decreases.
I’ll double-check the moment, because in my opinion I locked the permit directly in the service and the permit was still eaten (especially in online jokers). I can’t prove it here, so I won’t declare it, maybe salvation was really close, but I didn’t notice.
No, the quality of your connection does not affect game FPS. The game doesn’t even care what your connection speed is. She doesn’t even know that the picture flies somewhere along the wires.
Then I can’t understand at all why such jumps in frames happened, maybe the old hardware is to blame
I also talked with other cloud users, and once again I am convinced that everyone has a completely different experience
To be honest, I was very afraid that I would be seriously accused of being a Billy boy, I’m very glad that everyone understood everything)
Now I have a subscription to GeForce Now, I decided to test some games that are on Steam. Cyberpunk 2077 and Control are played with virtually no lag; after a few minutes you lose the feeling that you are playing through an interlayer and not on your computer. But in Deus Ex Mankind Divided, the controls are like jelly. The game is not the most responsive on my hardware, but through the cloud it’s really annoying. You can play some single-player games, and even complete them with ray tracing and other things, without any stress. But the problem is that there are not enough games in GFN! Yes, there are big titles there, but I can’t play most of the games in my library, they’re not there.
As for eSports games, it seems completely off to me. Where there is a very active exchange of data packets, delays in control, interruption of sound, and jerking of the picture begin. To check, I played Team Fortress 2, where there is really no load on the hardware, but data exchange is important – it’s simply unplayable.
So you can use the service if you test the game you want to play in advance. It’s better not to take a premium subscription, so as not to be disappointed in the controls, but test it in free mode. If, of course, you manage to stand in line, hehehehe.
In general, the saddest thing about the game is on GFN, but I haven’t played much and haven’t made any footage with screenshots
I’ve never been able to stand in line for a free entry, I honestly tried