Lots of good discussion here. I still believe at some point cloud gaming or some hybrid of it will be the way a substantial portion of gamers will game, whether it's mobile, console, or PC, and even likely even the majority of gamers eventually. My daughters love Stadia and don't know or care whether its in the cloud or on their PC. I'm a big user of Microsoft Flight Simulator and much of that title's graphics goodness is streamed.

I think it's become clear, though, that'll it'll take someone to have more of a Netflix style "all you can eat" model than a Valve style "buy your game" model for it to work, with only likely Valve themselves with their own hypothetical future streaming service that will likely to be able to get away with that, if only because of everyone's existing library.

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Quoting: GuestPains me to say this, but I agree. Google went wrong something a few years ago and never fully recovered imho...

Absolutely. A lot of people attribute it to the hiring of their first true CFO in 2015 [External Link] who immediately set about to making sure Google runs like any other dollars and cents business, which is indeed likely better for their bottom line, but the magic definitely ended at that point. They've pretty much shut down or spun off all of their moonshot ventures and ambitious projects, Stadia soon to join them....

At this point, I think anyone would be absolutely crazy to commit money to any retail Google service short of an Android phone. Who can trust Google to back or iterate upon anything they do anymore?

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So this is Game of Throne's last season's Battle for Winterfell as an RTS... Love it. Great idea. No 4X's, just survive the night. I'll almost certainly pick this up...

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Quoting: ArkBlitzTalking about desktop improvements, I'm genuinely surprised to see one specific functionality completely unaccounted for in all Linux desktop environments that is already the standard in both Windows and Android: the ability of checking the notification toolbox after the popup window expires, and being able to activate the corresponding app by clicking on it

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. The times I have to use Windows, this is one of the few things I enjoy.

My understanding in Linux (and I could be wrong) is that the click to app functionality is actually up to the individual app developer, and not the DE, but I could be wrong...

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Hard to imagine what the Linux world would even look like without GOL. Happy birthday!!

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Quoting: Purple Library GuySo basically, in that whole long list, there is one genuine advantage to a gamer: You can game on cheaper hardware. But even that isn't an advantage if you're just gaming on the hardware you were already gaming on.

Oh, I grant that for me on my i7 with 1080Ti there's almost zero advantage for cloud gaming (other than playing titles I otherwise wouldn't have access to on native Linux or Proton). But this isn't about now. I see us now at the very infancy of cloud gaming, the equivalent of how it was back in the late 80's or 90's when "movies on demand" started and people were like, "wow!" We're generations of service iterations and devices away from this breaking into the mainstream.

However, as I point out above, 99% of my kids' and their friends' gaming is already on Chromebooks via Stadia, web apps, and Android apps on Chromebooks. Those two Chromebooks for each of my daughters purchased used cost me a total of about $350 and they also use them for everything from podcasting to video production to Zoom to school work with zero complaints. That's a hardware cost win in my book. Anything heavier duty they can use my wife's or my Linux laptops.

Also, the MSFS streaming scenery model is a thing right now already, and it's terrific.

There are many advantages to gamers who aren't ones on forums like this one. Gaming will be more mobile, more universal, more inexpensive, less platform specific, more social, and with less intrusive DRM. I've given up on many titles where bots and cheating became rampant, and that'll likely happen less in the future....

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Quoting: LoftyMost of this post explains the benefits of a cloud streaming from a corporate perspective.
The points you make that are more 'family' centered appear to be speculative

Certainly some of the points are from a corporate perspective, but the family ones aren't speculative. I've personally known LOTS of families that either didn't buy recommended Chromebooks because their kids said they couldn't game on them or purchased consoles in addition to Chromebooks for that purpose (Google of course knows this too). From a practical standpoint, my kids and tons of their friends are gaming on their Chromebooks right now (Stadia, Android apps, and web based various educational games), so it's hardly "speculative"... And that's definitely saving me money :).

I'm old enough to remember each one of the arguments used against cloud based gaming used to explain why cloud based music and movies would never work. The EXACT same arguments, and we've seen how that's worked out....

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Quoting: JozuaI've never really seen the benefit of cloud gaming

I think the benefits are pretty compelling:
* Only one platform to target for programming, rather than 5 or 6 for a title. Less effort, larger audience...
* DRM, obviously
* For most genres other than FPS/arcade, lag/latency really won't be an issue
* Allows for high end, AAA gaming on even modest hardware. Fleets of Chromebooks haven't been purchased by families since, "Timmy doesn't want one since he can't game on it." That changes overnight with cloud gaming...
* Less hardware costs for families if you can, in a near future, game on cheap Chromebooks or Raspberry Pi's, or dedicated cloud streaming hardware. Gaming is an expensive hobby.
* For some families, theoretically less software costs if any service can break through with a more Netflix style all-you-can-game subscription cost. There's a reason perpetually renewing streaming subscriptions have ultimately proven more lucrative for (some corners of industries) than per-purchase DVD's or CD's....
* If ever realized, some potentially terrific social gaming and interactivity opportunities as part of cloud gaming that's hard to replicate with per-PC gaming...
* Opening up new genres. Look at MSFS's modelling and streaming of the world for the flight sim...

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A shame your experience hasn't been good. Some reports I was reading online were quite positive, and seemingly from a gaming library and streaming model standpoint, XCloud has the potential to be one of the best. Glad it works on Linux!

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Quoting: poiuz

Quoting: iiariThe other item of slight concern for me is the non-replaceable/swappable 53 Wh battery

Did they state this somewhere?

Yes, on their website:

The Linux lightweight laptop's internally screwed 53 Wh lithium-ion battery allows runtimes of around 8 hours (3K high-resolution display) in practical everyday use (@ 150 cd/m2 and Wifi active). In idle mode up to 12 hours are achievable.

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