AstonJ

AstonJ

Cloud gaming: Are game streaming services bad for the planet?

This caught my eye: “carbon emissions could rise by 30%” - that’s worrying :confused:

Microsoft is poised to launch its game streaming service, delivering high-end titles direct to phones - and Google already offers an equivalent service.

Cloud gaming promises top-tier graphics and performance without the expensive hardware - with no more massive updates or downloads.

But some studies suggests it could be more damaging to the planet.

One recent study from Lancaster University estimated that if gamers moved to streaming over the next decade, carbon emissions could rise by 30%.

Most Liked

dimitarvp

dimitarvp

To answer the title: it’s IMO better for the planet. All those routers, switches and servers are powered on 24/7 anyway so why not use their bandwidth better by not having expensive and power-draining gaming machine at home, streaming to a much weaker and eco-friendly device instead?

But, save for rather basic games – and/or games where latency doesn’t matter – I can’t see cloud-streamed gaming ever take off due to most of the internet being dog-slow.

wolf4earth

wolf4earth

That’s certainly worrying, if it came to fruition.

But if you ask me: streaming services will never have the same market share as consoles or even the PC today.

Sure, for some games it works fairly well, anything which has a slower pace, but games such as shooters or fighting games are not really enjoyable when streamed.

Where Next?

Popular General Dev topics Top

New
First poster: Maartz
This Keyboard Lets People Type So Fast It’s Banned From Typing Competitions. A new peripheral lets you keep typing without ever lifting ...
New
First poster: malloryerik
GitHub - hlissner/doom-emacs: An Emacs framework for the stubborn martian hacker. An Emacs framework for the stubborn martian hacker - G...
New
CommunityNews
Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it. Thanks to the DALL·E 2, we finally have a very nice graphic representation of the feelings of...
New
First poster: bot
GitHub - lucidrains/PaLM-rlhf-pytorch: Implementation of RLHF (Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback) on top of the PaLM architectur...
New
First poster: bot
sqlglot/python_sql_engine.md at main · tobymao/sqlglot. Python SQL Parser and Transpiler. Contribute to tobymao/sqlglot development by c...
New
First poster: KnowledgeIsPower
Building a Slack/Discord alternative with Tauri/Rust linen <span class="hashtag-icon-placeholder"></span>blog. Introduction My name is K...
New
CommunityNews
Apple Patents Suggest Future AirPods Could Monitor Biosignals &amp; Brain Activity - AppleMagazine. The US Patent &amp; Trademark Office...
New
First poster: jkdiaz
Dark mode isn’t as good for your eyes as you believe. The shadowy display mode has leagues of fans claiming it helps reduce eye strain, ...
New
New

Other popular topics Top

AstonJ
If it’s a mechanical keyboard, which switches do you have? Would you recommend it? Why? What will your next keyboard be? Pics always w...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Machine learning can be intimidating, with its reliance on math and algorithms that most programmers don't encounter in their regular wor...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Write Elixir tests that you can be proud of. Dive into Elixir’s test philosophy and gain mastery over the terminology and concepts that u...
New
ohm
Which, if any, games do you play? On what platform? I just bought (and completed) Minecraft Dungeons for my Nintendo Switch. Other than ...
New
dasdom
No chair. I have a standing desk. This post was split into a dedicated thread from our thread about chairs :slight_smile:
New
New
dimitarvp
Small essay with thoughts on macOS vs. Linux: I know @Exadra37 is just waiting around the corner to scream at me “I TOLD YOU SO!!!” but I...
New
Margaret
Hello everyone! This thread is to tell you about what authors from The Pragmatic Bookshelf are writing on Medium.
1147 29994 760
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Create efficient, elegant software tests in pytest, Python's most powerful testing framework. Brian Okken @brianokken Edited by Kat...
New
hilfordjames
There appears to have been an update that has changed the terminology for what has previously been known as the Taskbar Overflow - this h...
New