Category: Gaming

Have you ever imagined playing FIFA 19 on your poorly spec-ed machine which suffers to run FIFA 17? Or even playing PUBG/ Fortnite on your mobile device which can’t even support them?

Well so have I, and that future is right before us. The big question everyone is asking is how and the answer is cloud gaming.

Cloud gaming (gaming on demand) is basically a type of online gaming that allows direct and on-demand video streaming of games onto computers, consoles and mobile devices, directly into an app or a web browser.

The actual game is stored and run on a cloud server with huge processing power and the video results are streamed directly to your personal computer over the internet.

The concept of cloud gaming is not new, its 3 years old to be specific and started with a makeshift by Sony. Sony first launched the PlayStation now and it was designed to give old gamers a feel of their past with the introduction of legendary PS2 and PS3 games such as Bloodborne or Batman: Arkham City. It’s available on both Windows and PlayStation consoles.

The gameplay is smooth as long as your connection is stable but a slight reduction in network speed would reset you to your last saved point and that makes the game-play finicky. The service cost $10 a month and $100 dollars a year for 750+games but the lack of download functions for most games still make it a much less appealing deal than the PS plus subscription which offers online multiplayer games.

At a price of $10 per 100 hours, Vortex is kinda cheap considering the wider variety of games it offers including Battle Royale’s Player Unknown BattleGrounds and Fortnite. Vortex is another cloud gaming service and was designed by Remotr. It can be played on almost all devices although the best experience is on Android phones.

Microsoft recently jumped into the cloud gaming train last year with their announcement of the Xcloud scheduled to be released in either 2019 or in 2020 with the new Xbox. It is primarily geared towards allowing people to stream AAA games on Android phones which reiterates the point stated by Microsoft that the Xcloud is not intended to compete with consoles.

This is totally different from the idea that Google portrayed with the launch of the Google Stadia dubbed “the future of gaming is not a box,”.

Stadia has been set up by Google to “revolutionize” the gaming experience as we know it today if the demo shown is anything to go by such as seamless transfer between multiple devices and loading games in less than 5 seconds.

This is made possible by the 10.2 teraflops GPU which seems capable enough. In terms of input, Stadia supports input from both PS4 and Xbox controllers and the traditional keyboard and mouse for pc. However, Google introduced its own controller with the regular features of any controller but added a Google assistant button and a button to stream live to Youtube.

The fact that all the gaming happens inside your chrome browser is a bit insane.

But do the internet speeds around the world support it? I don’t think so. Google Stadia recommends an entry data speed of 25Mbps which is absurdly high for a country like Ghana. Not all our networks even support 4G connection and even the ones that support have been alternating between 4G and 3G. We just aren’t there yet so I doubt it’ll be of much use to us at the moment.

But with the advent of 5G, it seems like a good time for cloud gaming. Even in that scenario, only a few select cities would get it. Where does that leave the rest of the world? Would cloud gaming be enough to replace your console? I don’t think so.

Everyone has that childhood memory of playing games on a console whether at home or at the game centre. The pleasures those memories had on us still hold a place in our hearts.

Gone are the days when the PlayStation,  Xbox and Nintendo were synonymous with gaming. Don’t get me wrong they still are, but now there’s mobile and pc gaming.

If I told you the mobile gaming industry made more revenue than PC and console gaming or that much more money was invested in the mobile gaming industry than the others? As to why this is so, the reasons are many but let’s dissect the entire shift from console gaming to mobile gaming.

Gaming has been with us since the beginning but the introduction of faster internet speeds was the genesis of online multiplayer games.

Initially, most of these were limited to mobile phones such as Clash of Clans and  Hay Day. The console games eventually made an online option for the offline games for example FIFA which had an online portal while other games like Gran Turismo were solely online based.

It was the internet that gave mobile gaming a boost. Nevertheless, mobile gaming became a window of opportunity that brought many people to the gaming industry and consequently PC and console games.

The advantages of console gameplay are so clear so why mobile gaming? Bigger display, better frame rates, smooth interface. The biggest difference is even a 4K display. It has been a norm for many TV’s for a while now and even though flagship phones are shipping with 4K screens the battery consumption is twice the 1080p display and not everyone has a flagship phone.

But where the mobile phone falls short in graphics it makes up in portability. Mobile phones have become so integrated into our lives that we rarely see people without them.

As people commute from home to school or to work in public transport, they tend to make use of that time to play mobile games. I mean who wants to work on the train? Candy Crush Saga, Temple Run are games that are usually played as they don’t demand that much of attention and thinking.

The hardcore game such as PUBG, Honor of Kings, Call of duty usually demand much more time and attention and are usually played during breaks at work. The very fact that we can launch ourselves into games anywhere at any time gives mobile devices an edge over the less portable consoles.

With more portability comes more competition. Everyone loves to brag about how far they’ve progressed in a game to their friends.

It’s the reason leaderboards exist and some games even go a step further to create a leaderboard among friends. Healthy competition never killed anyone.

Aside from competing among themselves games now have a squad mode where friends can play against each other. A typical scenario would be a group of teenage boys playing Fortnite or PUBG together after class hours.

Sure they can do it with a console but the physical presence really makes it feel like a team.

Another difference between mobile gaming is basically the “initial” price. To start console gaming you need a TV, the console itself and games which aren’t free. Mobile games just require your phone. Many of the mobile games are basically free to download but rather have in-game purchases.

This makes mobile gaming an easy sell. You just have to use the same device you use to call, to use social media to play games too and that’s really hard to turn down.

The use of console is not expected to go down any time soon as people are anticipating the PlayStation 5 and the next Xbox with much enthusiasm.

But then what happens when the world shifts into Virtual reality and Augmented reality? We’ll never know, we just have to wait and see how everything turns out.

Ghana’s @Wondhakid last Sunday emerged the winner in a 3-math EA Sports FIFA 19 international Friendly against Jamaica’s @Killdem.

Out of the 3 matches played on the night, @Wondhakid won the first two matches 1-0, 3-2 before going on to lose the third one to @Killdem 0-1.

Ghana is still trying to put a voice out in the eSports industry on the continent and in the world at large and victories such as these are sure to leave a mark and amplify the eSports voice in the country.

The match was streamed live on Facebook by the organisers: the Ghana eSports Association.

You can watch the full play below: