Amazon has just lifted the veil from its long-rumored Amazon Luna, meaning the company is officially entering the cloud gaming circle – a network that has grown increasingly crowded over the past year. Google launched Stadia last November, Nvidia’s GeForce Now exited beta in February, and Microsoft’s cloud gaming offering (formerly known as xCloud) is included in a Game Pass Ultimate subscription starting at September 15, although it only works with Android at the moment.
The race is on to see which (if any) of these cloud gaming services takes off with customers, and each company approaches cloud gaming in a slightly different way. If you’re trying to understand each service better, we’ve put together this guide for you.
Amazon Luna
Amazon’s Luna offers unlimited access to different game selections as part of separate “channels” – which almost feels like cable service. But at launch, you can only subscribe to one channel, Luna Plus, and only if you’re accepted as an Early Access user. The only other channel announced to date is the one that will exclusively host Ubisoft games. And at this time, you can’t purchase individual games on Luna – you can only play what’s included in the bundles. Luna Plus will have an “introductory price” of $ 5.99 per month, while the Ubisoft channel, which is currently listed as “coming soon,” has no pricing yet.
The games will be streamed from Amazon AWS ‘widely used cloud computing infrastructure (especially G4 instances), with the promise of loading very quickly with no installation required on your part. And if you buy the $ 49.99 Custom Luna Controller offered to Luna Early Access users, you can connect it directly to those servers while you play, which Amazon says will mean less in-game latency than if you are using the controller via bluetooth. link.
Luna will be available on PC, Mac, Fire TV and, with a notable difference from its competition, iPhone and iPad. The iOS version of Luna is a progressive web app, according to Engadget, a solution that allows Amazon to bypass Apple’s restrictive App Store rules for cloud gaming applications. Games will target up to 1080p, with 4K support “coming soon” for some games, according to Luna’s website.
Amazon plans to have around 50 games each on the Luna Plus and Ubisoft channels, the company said Engadget. That number could be surprisingly easy to increase over time, as Luna runs on Windows servers and Nvidia GPUs in Amazon’s AWS compute cloud, so developers can bring their existing Windows games to those for users. run on Luna.
This might be easier for developers than bringing games to Stadia, forcing developers to port their games to Linux so that they can run on Google’s server hardware – and it doesn’t hurt to do that. many companies have brought their console. PC games recently, including Sony.
Luna will also have integration with Twitch that allows users to watch streams and start games that they watch others play, but Amazon has not said when that might be available.
You can register now for the chance to try the service in early access.
Google Stadia
Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service looks quite similar to Amazon’s Luna at first glance – it lets you stream games from Google’s distributed data centers directly to the device you’re playing it on, as well as a custom controller that can connect to Google’s servers to reduce latency, and promises to integrate YouTube prominently. But Stadia’s business model has some notable differences.
Instead of cable-type channels, Stadia gives you access to games in two different ways. The first is to buy individual titles at full price and stream them whenever you want at no additional cost.
Or, you can get Stadia Pro, a $ 9.99 per month subscription service that lets you claim a range of regularly changing games for free, and keep them as long as you pay the monthly fee. Stadia Pro also lets you play games that you buy individually with up to 4K resolution, starting at the maximum 1080p resolution available to non-professional users.
However, getting developers to bring games to Stadia might be a bit more difficult than for other platforms – as I mentioned earlier, developers have to port their games to Linux. Plus, since you always buy a new copy of a game on Stadia, sometimes you’ll leave your friends and saves from other platforms behind. We found the Destiny 2 and PUBG fairly empty servers in May. It is not yet clear whether this will be true for Amazon’s Luna as well.
But unlike Luna, the Stadia platform also has (some) exclusive games and features made possible by the cloud, and builds games for Stadia itself. Amazon has not said whether it will hire its own game studios or server infrastructure to do something similar, but told reporters it “isn’t focusing on things like exclusives” for Luna.
Stadia is available on a slightly different mix of platforms than Luna: PC, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, the Chromecast Ultra dongle for TVs and some Android phones – but no iOS support. We have counted 88 games on the service as of this writing.
Microsoft Game Pass Ultimate Streaming, aka xCloud
If you subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which costs $ 14.99 per month, you can transfer over 150 Xbox games from Microsoft’s data centers directly to the device you stream them to – although, as I said in the introduction there is the big caveat that you can only Stream games to Android phones now.
There’s another thing you need to know about Microsoft’s cloud gaming service – it’s currently powered by Xbox One S hardware in Microsoft’s data centers. This means that the games you play may have worse graphics and slower load times than other cloud gaming services, which run on robust servers. Even the best internet in the world won’t help the physical hardware of an Xbox One S load a game faster. Although Microsoft is planning to move to Xbox Series X hardware in its servers next year.
That being said, since your saves are all stored in Microsoft’s cloud, it’s easy to switch between playing and playing games on your Xbox (many of which are also included in Xbox Game Pass) and an Android phone. You will also be playing online with other Xbox players. And if you don’t want to use Microsoft’s cloud gaming service, you can stream games directly from your Xbox console to an Android phone or tablet that’s on the same Wi-Fi network, which can result in a stream. better quality on your device.
Microsoft is also well positioned to continue adding games to the service, as in theory any game entering Game Pass could also be available through Microsoft’s cloud. And again, since this is Xbox hardware in a server rack, no porting is required for a developer to bring their game from the Xbox to Game Pass streaming – developers just have to decide if they want. whether or not their games are available in the cloud.
Nvidia GeForce Now
Nvidia’s approach with GeForce Now is to let you play PC games you already own, without needing a powerful PC right in front of you, and usually with your saves on the go. And the company claims that over 2,000 games are available to stream on GeForce Now, which is little more than any of the other three services we’ve covered here.
But again, we’re usually talking about games you already own, which is why this number is so high – and even so, not all developers have agreed to let you play your own titles. It has been opt-in since the turmoil following GeForce Now’s official launch in February, when big developers like Activision Blizzard and Bethesda pulled their titles from the service.
We’re not sure exactly why the developers pulled their games, but it looks like Nvidia didn’t get permission to continue letting players stream many games once GeForce Now moved from a free beta to a paid service. However, some notable developers have opted for GeForce Now again, including Bungie, Electronic Arts, Riot Games, and Valve.
If you choose to pay $ 4.99 per month for the “Founders” level of GeForce Now, you can play your games as much as you want. and Take advantage of the company’s ray-tracing compatible RTX Server graphics cards as you stream them for additional graphics enhancement.
But GeForce Now is unique in that you don’t necessarily have to pay at all just to try – there’s also a free tier that lets you play games for an hour at a time, and you can download some. of the most popular free-to-play games like Fortnite, League of Legends and Destiny 2 if you don’t already have compatible titles in your Steam, Epic Games, or Uplay libraries. The free tier also works on slightly less graphically powerful servers, without ray tracing support.
GeForce Now works on PC, Mac, Android, the Nvidia Shield, select Chromebooks and reaches a maximum resolution of 1080p at 60fps at the moment.
Amazon has just lifted the veil from its long-rumored Amazon Luna, meaning the company is officially entering the cloud gaming circle – a network that has grown increasingly crowded over the past year. Google launched Stadia last November, Nvidia’s GeForce Now exited beta in February, and Microsoft’s cloud gaming offering (formerly known as xCloud) is included in a Game Pass Ultimate subscription starting at September 15, although it only works with Android at the moment.
The race is on to see which (if any) of these cloud gaming services takes off with customers, and each company approaches cloud gaming in a slightly different way. If you’re trying to understand each service better, we’ve put together this guide for you.
Amazon Luna
Amazon’s Luna offers unlimited access to different game selections as part of separate “channels” – which almost feels like cable service. But at launch, you can only subscribe to one channel, Luna Plus, and only if you’re accepted as an Early Access user. The only other channel announced to date is the one that will exclusively host Ubisoft games. And at this time, you can’t purchase individual games on Luna – you can only play what’s included in the bundles. Luna Plus will have an “introductory price” of $ 5.99 per month, while the Ubisoft channel, which is currently listed as “coming soon,” has no pricing yet.
The games will be streamed from Amazon AWS ‘widely used cloud computing infrastructure (especially G4 instances), with the promise of loading very quickly with no installation required on your part. And if you buy the $ 49.99 Custom Luna Controller offered to Luna Early Access users, you can connect it directly to those servers while you play, which Amazon says will mean less in-game latency than if you are using the controller via bluetooth. link.
Luna will be available on PC, Mac, Fire TV and, with a notable difference from its competition, iPhone and iPad. The iOS version of Luna is a progressive web app, according to Engadget, a solution that allows Amazon to bypass Apple’s restrictive App Store rules for cloud gaming applications. Games will target up to 1080p, with 4K support “coming soon” for some games, according to Luna’s website.
Amazon plans to have around 50 games each on the Luna Plus and Ubisoft channels, the company said Engadget. That number could be surprisingly easy to increase over time, as Luna runs on Windows servers and Nvidia GPUs in Amazon’s AWS compute cloud, so developers can bring their existing Windows games to those for users. run on Luna.
This might be easier for developers than bringing games to Stadia, forcing developers to port their games to Linux so that they can run on Google’s server hardware – and it doesn’t hurt to do that. many companies have brought their console. PC games recently, including Sony.
Luna will also have integration with Twitch that allows users to watch streams and start games that they watch others play, but Amazon has not said when that might be available.
You can register now for the chance to try the service in early access.
Google Stadia
Google’s Stadia cloud gaming service looks quite similar to Amazon’s Luna at first glance – it lets you stream games from Google’s distributed data centers directly to the device you’re playing it on, as well as a custom controller that can connect to Google’s servers to reduce latency, and promises to integrate YouTube prominently. But Stadia’s business model has some notable differences.
Instead of cable-type channels, Stadia gives you access to games in two different ways. The first is to buy individual titles at full price and stream them whenever you want at no additional cost.
Or, you can get Stadia Pro, a $ 9.99 per month subscription service that lets you claim a range of regularly changing games for free, and keep them as long as you pay the monthly fee. Stadia Pro also lets you play games that you buy individually with up to 4K resolution, starting at the maximum 1080p resolution available to non-professional users.
However, getting developers to bring games to Stadia might be a bit more difficult than for other platforms – as I mentioned earlier, developers have to port their games to Linux. Plus, since you always buy a new copy of a game on Stadia, sometimes you’ll leave your friends and saves from other platforms behind. We found the Destiny 2 and PUBG fairly empty servers in May. It is not yet clear whether this will be true for Amazon’s Luna as well.
But unlike Luna, the Stadia platform also has (some) exclusive games and features made possible by the cloud, and builds games for Stadia itself. Amazon has not said whether it will hire its own game studios or server infrastructure to do something similar, but told reporters it “isn’t focusing on things like exclusives” for Luna.
Stadia is available on a slightly different mix of platforms than Luna: PC, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, the Chromecast Ultra dongle for TVs and some Android phones – but no iOS support. We have counted 88 games on the service as of this writing.
Microsoft Game Pass Ultimate Streaming, aka xCloud
If you subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which costs $ 14.99 per month, you can transfer over 150 Xbox games from Microsoft’s data centers directly to the device you stream them to – although, as I said in the introduction there is the big caveat that you can only Stream games to Android phones now.
There’s another thing you need to know about Microsoft’s cloud gaming service – it’s currently powered by Xbox One S hardware in Microsoft’s data centers. This means that the games you play may have worse graphics and slower load times than other cloud gaming services, which run on robust servers. Even the best internet in the world won’t help the physical hardware of an Xbox One S load a game faster. Although Microsoft is planning to move to Xbox Series X hardware in its servers next year.
That being said, since your saves are all stored in Microsoft’s cloud, it’s easy to switch between playing and playing games on your Xbox (many of which are also included in Xbox Game Pass) and an Android phone. You will also be playing online with other Xbox players. And if you don’t want to use Microsoft’s cloud gaming service, you can stream games directly from your Xbox console to an Android phone or tablet that’s on the same Wi-Fi network, which can result in a stream. better quality on your device.
Microsoft is also well positioned to continue adding games to the service, as in theory any game entering Game Pass could also be available through Microsoft’s cloud. And again, since this is Xbox hardware in a server rack, no porting is required for a developer to bring their game from the Xbox to Game Pass streaming – developers just have to decide if they want. whether or not their games are available in the cloud.
Nvidia GeForce Now
Nvidia’s approach with GeForce Now is to let you play PC games you already own, without needing a powerful PC right in front of you, and usually with your saves on the go. And the company claims that over 2,000 games are available to stream on GeForce Now, which is little more than any of the other three services we’ve covered here.
But again, we’re usually talking about games you already own, which is why this number is so high – and even so, not all developers have agreed to let you play your own titles. It has been opt-in since the turmoil following GeForce Now’s official launch in February, when big developers like Activision Blizzard and Bethesda pulled their titles from the service.
We’re not sure exactly why the developers pulled their games, but it looks like Nvidia didn’t get permission to continue letting players stream many games once GeForce Now moved from a free beta to a paid service. However, some notable developers have opted for GeForce Now again, including Bungie, Electronic Arts, Riot Games, and Valve.
If you choose to pay $ 4.99 per month for the “Founders” level of GeForce Now, you can play your games as much as you want. and Take advantage of the company’s ray-tracing compatible RTX Server graphics cards as you stream them for additional graphics enhancement.
But GeForce Now is unique in that you don’t necessarily have to pay at all just to try – there’s also a free tier that lets you play games for an hour at a time, and you can download some. of the most popular free-to-play games like Fortnite, League of Legends and Destiny 2 if you don’t already have compatible titles in your Steam, Epic Games, or Uplay libraries. The free tier also works on slightly less graphically powerful servers, without ray tracing support.
GeForce Now works on PC, Mac, Android, the Nvidia Shield, select Chromebooks and reaches a maximum resolution of 1080p at 60fps at the moment.