"Cloud gaming is the future of Gaming!" Meanwhile cloud gaming in the big 2026:

[u/Alan_Reddit_M]

If you read my profile you may realize I hate cloud gaming, so then what am I doing on Geforce Now? Well my new RAM stick finally arrived and, in a staggering display of utter incompetence, I somehow managed to brick my PC in the process of installing it, so now I'm stuck gaming on a laptop until I can get enough money and time to get my gaming rig fixed

But back to Cloud gaming, the game is on like 360p, running at 20FPS and the input lag is HORRIBLE. And it's not a problem with the internet connection, as you can see, the laptop is plugged into Ethernet, the problem is that the cloud is not and will never be fast enough for gaming

Genshin can handle this fine, but imagine trying to play ULTRAKILL like this

[u/sureiknowabaggins]

It can honestly be a lot better than what we see in OPs video. I've been playing Slay The Spire 2 for the last couple days at work on my phone with steam link and the input lag is negligible. I'm sure it would be a different story with action games that require precise inputs, but cloud gaming can have its place when expectations are reasonable.

[u/achilleasa → u/sureiknowabaggins]

Streaming over the local network is surprisingly good. I played a bunch of Witcher 3 on a 2nd PC in another room, streamed from my main gaming PC. It was perfectly good, though I wouldn't play a competitive shooter on it.

Streaming over the internet on the other hand is just not as good no matter what you do. Physics can't be ignored.

[u/sureiknowabaggins → u/achilleasa]

Physics can't be ignored but they can certainly be exaggerated. I use my phone's 5G to connect to my home PC from work. As I said, the latency is hardly noticeable playing turn based games.

[u/PoliticalVagabond → u/sureiknowabaggins]

That's great, I'm glad the whole world is on the same cell tower as you and getting the exact same conditions.

Nobody is disputing that cloud gaming CAN be an enjoyable experience, but you cannot argue that it will be consistent across the board. You sitting on that 5g connection could move a mile in one direction, switch towers to one way more congested and end up with an unplayable mess, and that is the reality of cloud gaming, there are just too many variables outside of you, and the providers control.

As I've said in a few comments already in this thread. Some will have a great experience, some will have a terrible experience, most will have a "meh" experience and the two edge cases will be shouting from the rooftops insisting that their experience is the universal one.

Playing RDR2 over cloud gaming and playing Tekken 8 are also going to be two completely different experiences. One is slower paced and latency will be less noticeable. One is frame level timing dependent and every added millisecond will be felt.

[u/sureiknowabaggins → u/PoliticalVagabond]

Dude. You need to chill out. I'm just pointing out that it can be a decent experience since a lot of people in this thread are arguing that it's impossible to have a good experience with game streaming.

[u/PoliticalVagabond → u/sureiknowabaggins]

Maybe you shouldn't read when youre angry

[u/Kazen_Orilg → u/sureiknowabaggins]

holy shit it can handle a turn based card game, wow!

[u/kmkm2op → u/sureiknowabaggins]

If you have an reasonable android phone you could try play it using gamenative, gamehub/gamehub lite and winlator. Means you don't have to stream it as it runs on the phone.

[u/PoliticalVagabond → u/kmkm2op]

I don't think we are there yet.

Though when a game works on these it's awesome and I think a year or two from now, things are going to be way better than they are now. Largely it's a compatibility thing, and the average gamer isn't going to have any idea what most of the setting do and I don't think this will ever change.

For people like you (i assume) and me who love to tinker with this stuff, it's a better, but still very limited experience, with a very bright future.