CREDIT: TRAFFIC_ANALYZER
Cloud gaming offers convenience to gamers when it comes to things like hardware and finances.

Since tech giants like Microsoft and Sony have released game streaming platforms to their customers, accessibility to gaming has never been better. Streaming offers many benefits both financially and efficiency-wise.

This technology has now given companies the ability to expand their services and offer them to a whole new demographic at a much cheaper rate. Now all people need to do is get ahold of either a Play Station 5 or Xbox controller and play rather than dropping an arm and a leg for a new console.

Some of the subscriptions charge as much as $17/ month to use their service. Being that I’m a loyal Xbox gamer, I have missed out on the opportunity of playing Sony platform exclusive games. That is, until I got a three-month subscription for their cloud service. I was able to play many great titles like God of War and Ghost of Tsushima from my desktop at home.


As a PC gamer, I already have most of the space on my computer taken up by games I downloaded from Steam. I was able to stream the new Bethesda game Starfield with no performance issues, with some occasional lags due to a faulty internet connection.

Before joining the PC family, I was an Xbox One gamer. The new generation of consoles had been released and the prices for them were unreasonably expensive and the new games released were playable on the current generation. Xbox released Game Pass Ultimate which offered a select number of next and current generation games to play without having to download them to my Xbox.

The first game I played was Forza Horizons, released only for the Xbox Series X/S consoles. For the first time, I was able to play games at a higher frame rate unlike the normal 30 frames per second lock that most games were limited to. It blew my mind that I was able to do that without having to go and spend a bunch of money on a new console.

The only downside for a service like this is the issue of multiplayer games. Streaming games takes a huge toll on the bandwidth of your internet and the same applies to many multiplayer games. When simultaneously playing both at the same time, it tends to collapse on itself and ruin the enjoyment for players.

For the future, companies should look further into making these services more sustainable when running these heavy-duty games that eat up so much data.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.