Vratislav Holub In recent years, cloud gaming services have become increasingly popular, with the help of which you can immerse yourself in the gaming of AAA games on your iPhone. The servers of the given service take care of the rendering of the games and their processing, while only the image is forwarded to the player, and in the opposite direction, the instructions regarding control. The whole thing is of course conditional on a stable internet connection. This is a fairly good option for people who, for example, do not have a powerful enough device (PC/console), or are looking for a way to play their favorite games on the go on their phones or tablets.
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In the Apple community, cloud gaming services are quite popular. Macs and gaming have not always gone together, which is why their users have to find an alternative way to their favorite games. However, if they don't want to invest in a gaming PC or console, then they are more or less out of luck. Either they won't play at all, or they have to make do with the small number of games available for macOS.
Cloud gaming or playing on a MacBook
I personally perceived cloud gaming as one of the best innovations of recent years. My favorite so far is the GeForce NOW service, which in my opinion is the best set up. Just connect your own game library, for example Steam, and start playing right away. As such, the service just lends performance and lets us play games we've long owned. Although the service is also available for free, practically from the beginning I paid for the cheapest subscription so that I would not have to limit myself in terms of playing time. In the free version, you can only play for 60 minutes at a time and then you have to restart, which can be pretty annoying on weekend evenings.
Cloud gaming: GeForce NOW and Xbox Cloud Gaming
During the entire period of use, I had no problem with the operation of the service, regardless of whether I was connected by cable (Ethernet) or wirelessly (Wi-Fi on the 5 GHz band). On the other hand, it is necessary to take into account that the games will never look as good as if we played them directly on PC/console. The quality of the image is understandably reduced by a lot due to the streaming itself. The picture looks practically the same as if you were watching the gameplay on YouTube. Although the game is still rendered in a sufficiently high quality, it simply does not have enough for normal play directly on the given device. But that was no obstacle at all for me. On the contrary, I saw it as a minimal sacrifice for the fact that I can enjoy even the latest game titles on my MacBook Air. However, if image quality is a priority for gamers and a key factor for the gaming experience itself, then they probably won't enjoy cloud gaming as much.
As we mentioned above, for me personally, the possibility of cloud gaming was the perfect solution to my problem. As a casual gamer, I wanted to play a game at least once in a while, which unfortunately is not entirely possible in combination with a Mac. But suddenly there was a solution, for which only an Internet connection was enough. But after a while my view started to change until I gave up on cloud gaming in general.
Why I quit cloud gaming
However, the mentioned GeForce NOW service was starting to lose over time. Several games that were crucial for me disappeared from the library of supported titles. Unfortunately, their publishers have completely withdrawn from the platform, which is why it was no longer possible to use the platform. Switching to Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) was offered as a solution. It is a competing service from Microsoft that serves practically the same purpose and has a fairly extensive library. In this case, it is only necessary to play on the game controller. But there is a minor catch in that as well – macOS/iPadOS cannot use vibrations in xCloud, which noticeably reduces the overall enjoyment of playing.
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It was at this moment that I became fully aware of all the shortcomings that suddenly played an increasingly powerful role. The absence of popular titles, poorer quality and constant dependence on the Internet connection changed my view over time and forced me to switch to a traditional game console, where I do not have to deal with these shortcomings. On the other hand, this does not mean that I consider cloud gaming services to be impractical or useless, quite the contrary. I'm still of the opinion that it's a great way to enjoy AAA titles even on devices that aren't fully optimized for it. Above all, it is a perfect rescue option. For example, if the player is away from home with plenty of free time and doesn't even have a PC or console at hand, then there is nothing easier than starting to play in the cloud. No matter where we are, nothing prevents us from starting to play - the only condition is the mentioned internet connection.
What about Apple, GeforceNow, NVidia SHIELD Pro and the potentially coveted gaming steering wheel? Can it be paired somehow? Thanks