Every year seems to be the year of mobile gaming, when new games or phone technologies will usher in a new era of legitimizing smartphone gaming. And yet, the biggest innovation of the year that could change mobile gaming forever is... an innovation for regular gaming: game streaming services. The promise of streaming is simple: Instead of playing locally, your game runs on a machine some distance away, and the footage is streamed to you in real time (with control inputs streamed back and forth). The device you stream it to doesn't have to be powerful, heck, it doesn't need much more than a screen and is therefore perfect for mobile streaming. At E3 2019, we spent some time with Microsoft xCloud, streaming Xbox games directly to a smartphone. It was impressive: we were able to play Halo 5, Sea of Thieves, and Gears 5 with an Xbox One controller connected to a phone running the game, but we didn't have a release date or details on how. which players would access. At the end of 2020, we learned that it would simply be rolled into Xbox Game Pass as part of the Ultimate subscription level... and so xCloud was just a small update to 15 million subscribers. game pass Microsoft has promised that more than 150 Xbox One games will be playable on xCloud at launch (it launched in the US in beta on September 15 and is slowly rolling out to more countries), and there will be more. to come when EA Play launches. fully integrated in 2021, and Xbox Series X titles will also be added, all playable on smartphones. Google Stadia has been allowing subscribers to stream games on mobile for quite some time now, on Android since its launch on WiFi and then on the go since July 2020, and recently on iOS thanks to a small workaround (more on that later). . Amazon Luna was announced and released quietly this year in a closed beta, while Nvidia GeForce Now had a surprise release at the end of the year. All of this to say that 2020 has laid a lot of groundwork for mobile game streaming, which has great potential to change the way we play games on phones in 2021. There are a few things to clear up first. ... and the problems are less. in technology than in business.
![Google Stadia Cyberpunk 2077]()
(Image credit: future)
But is there a technical problem?
Game streaming on mobile is not only feasible, it has its advantages, as we saw when we played Cyberpunk 2077 on Google Stadia. But there are some obstacles that make the experience impractical, if not impossible. The obvious hurdle is connectivity: Stadia recommends a reliable 10Mbps downstream connection for basic gameplay and resolution, while you'll need 35Mbps to play in 4K HDR. It might be feasible for people in cities, but not in more remote areas. The emergence of 5G has great potential for mobile game streaming, with speeds under 6 ranging from 200 Mbps to 300 Mbps on carriers (up to over 1 Gbps with mmWave), but coverage of the network 5G is far from widespread. There is also the question of data. Operators haven't adapted their pricing models much to a new era of massive data streaming, aside from capping their unlimited plans once users cross a download threshold, which is pretty low considering casual streamers often use 3-4 GB per month, while Netflix and HD video addicts consume 6-8 GB. games. There is also the mobile gaming experience. Streaming games to your smartphone isn't always the best way to play; Many games are less fun when shrunk to a small screen, especially text-rich genres like RPGs that require a lot of reading. Along those lines, games designed explicitly for mobile are likely to be more fun to play than those that work without mods on phones, at least until streaming services encourage developers to mod their games for a better mobile experience. . And then there's Apple.
![Epic / Apple / Google]()
(Image credit: Valerio)
Mobile Game Streaming: Overcoming Apple's Obstacles
In August 2020, Apple clarified that, yes, it would only allow streaming services on its devices if they followed the App Store guidelines, meaning they featured every game in the catalog. of your service for individual review. Microsoft and Google have apparently been hesitant about this restriction, and it's understandable, as it would likely force them to seriously rework how their game catalogs and services work. In response, streaming services have planned workarounds: Google Stadia announced it will stream via a web app, the same tactic Nvidia's GeForce Now used when it launched in beta, and Amazon Luna has said it will launch while slowly developing its closed beta. Microsoft plans to do the same for access to iPhones and iPads in 2021. Playing through a web app is tedious, but doable. Obviously, it would be a lot easier if these services ran through unobtrusive apps, with clean, custom interfaces instead of annoying browser bugs like search bars and navigation buttons. It is very possible that Apple will strike agreements with each individual service provider by reducing agreements, as is the case with Amazon to allow in-app purchases through its Prime Video purchases and applications (including bypassing App Rules Store to give Apple a smaller discount, according to Verge). But Apple could be under external pressure to allow games to stream on its platforms; the company eventually cut its discount from 30% for in-app purchases to 15% for apps that don't make a lot of money every year. But this very late change in App Store policy seems to have happened as a result of the ongoing legal dispute between Apple and Epic Games; Complaints filed by the latter suggest that Epic wants to create its own store on Apple devices. Either way, Apple needs to change its App Store policies to open the doors for game streaming services already gearing up for a big year in 2021. While streaming via web apps is better than streaming transmission. Being locked out of the platform, without a native app experience, is holding everyone back and giving mobile gamers another reason to switch to Android.