Xbox Scarlett is the upcoming console from Microsoft and the company has put a lot of emphasis on streaming. At E3 2018, Xbox boss Phil Spencer announced that the company is working on something that will allow gamers to play games on any screen. As impressive as that might sound, streaming is not going to replace hardware and that includes the Xbox Scarlett and the PS5.
Marc-André Jutras, who has worked at Ubisoft and Activision in the past and is now working at Cradle Games, the studio behind Hellpoint touched on the matter and the following is what he had to say in this regard:
I know that in some countries of the world that kind of streaming is becoming more popular. I know in Brazil there is a streaming company that is very popular, because people don’t have money to buy a console, and would rather pay $10 a month and play a variety of games by streaming. I think it will become more popular, but I don’t think it will replace proper hardware. Because playing Call of Duty on streaming? That just doesn’t work.
Playing online multiplayer games does not make sense on streaming service due to the lag. You also need really fast internet which is not something that everyone has access to. All things considered, streaming competitive games is just not possible. You could play offline games. Marc-André Jutras had similar thoughts but he was not sure whether this is something that people will be interested in.
We have seen streaming companies pop up in the past and they tried to introduce the same idea but were unable to execute them properly. Microsoft and Sony are pretty big so they might have the resources to pull this off but Jutras things that this is not a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it. The following is what he had to say in this regard:
The network latency in the last 20 years hasn’t moved much. We are limited by the speed of light when it comes to this in the end. The data from your computer to your router to your neighborhood ISP to whatever switch to node to node to the server farm… you will end up with lag, there’s nothing you can do about it.
All this is very interesting indeed. We will have to wait and see what Microsoft is working on and how the company will tackle the problems that other companies have failed to overcome.
You can also check out our feature about why we think the Xbox Scarlett is going to beat the PS5.
Let us know what you think about the Xbox Scarlett and whether or not you are interested in getting a next-generation console when they launch.
