The game in streaming or game in the cloud is the future, but also the present for many people. In addition, this year we have heard two great news in this regard. On the one hand, there are the improvements to the NVIDIA service, which already promises via streaming a graphic quality similar to that which we would achieve with the RTX 3080. For its part, Microsoft is also making changes so that the quality of xCloud is similar to that of we get with an Xbox Series S at home.
The news are so many and they are coming so fast, that To say that the current generation of consoles (PS5 and the new Xbox) will be the last that many people will acquire is not entirely risky. The reason is simple: the game in the cloud will be enough for a great majority. The future is exciting, and as our colleagues at Engadget said, your next console may not be a console, but a TV.
And there is no waiting. Maybe as of today, your TV is already compatible with Stadia, because LG has confirmed that Google Stadia can already be installed on its TVs with webOS 5.0 and 6.0. And this is where we find several problems that may explain (for the worse) the future of video game streaming beyond desktop browsers and smartphones.
Your 2019 high-end TV (4K 120 Hz) is not suitable for playing in the cloud if you do not buy a Chromecast or others
The new Stadia application for LG televisions is only for 2020 and 2021 models, despite the fact that on paper they have hardware very similar to those of 2019, without considerable improvements in sections that improve the streaming experience, such as a much better Ethernet or Wi-Fi network card.
LG and Google are telling consumers that their 2019 TVs, and in particular OLEDs from that year, are not ready for cloud play, despite the fact that, for example, the LG OLED C9, a very popular model, It started at $ 2,500 and $ 3,500 respectively at 55 and 65 “at the time of launch..
Video game streaming came to democratize the high-end experience no matter what hardware you had, because In the end, the important thing is the network connection to receive the video signal well and send our interaction without latency, but a fast high-end TV from two years ago, with a 4K panel, 120 Hz and with a input lag relatively low (in that the new models have improved a lot).
It is not something that only the consumer sees, It is something that companies like Microsoft are responsible for making possible with their console hardware, with decisions like bringing xCloud to their 2013 Xbox One consoles. Yes, a 2013 Xbox will be able to play current games at the highest quality in 1080p, better than its hardware natively allows locally, as we see in the video below . Why? Because streaming gambling is still that, a stream video that only needs to be decoded. And the 2019 TVs from LG, and earlier, are compatible with VP9, the codec that Google on YouTube and Stadia and that gives better performance than others.
In the end, the compatibility problem of streaming videogames in software will be the same as that of streaming content itself. Despite having more than capable devices, every year many TV brands and application developers abandon specific models simply because it has been a long time since they were launched. HBO Spain was compatible with LG TVs from 2014, 2015 and 2016 since 2019, but HBO Max has been arriving and goodbye: the application is only compatible with models with webOS 3.5 onwards. That is, only for those released as of 2017.
The problem is even worse than on smartphones, Because even if your iPhone or Android mobile is not updated, it will be able to continue using key services for many more years. For example, as of today, WhatsApp is compatible with Android 4.0.3 or higher, a version released in December 2011. In the case of iOS, WhatsApp is compatible with iOS 10 onwards, so you can use it up to a iPhone 5 from 2012, which will soon be 10 years old.
Although Stadia ends up reaching older LG TVs, in the end, the underlying problem is that by not updating to new large versions, Tizen and webOS greatly limit the future of a television, be it high-end or low-end.
The problem with devices such as televisions is that although companies like LG are treating their models very well in terms of improving compatibility of functions such as HDMI 2.1 or the support of Dolby Vision at 120 Hz, the big version does not change. That is, if your LG has been released with webOS 5.0, it may update to 5.9, but never to 6.0 as seen so far. That means that if 6.0 has exclusive functions, even if there are only months of difference, you will be left out.
More information | LG