Converge ICT recently invited select personalities from the gaming realm including Back2Gaming to alpha test their upcoming cloud gaming service. Already hinted multiple times in months past including Converge’s Ookla awarding ceremony as the fastest ISP in the Philippines. Little details are being shared but I was lucky enough to have a technical trial of what they’re offering.
Converge invited a small number of individuals to be part of the alpha round of testing as they set their goal on what configuration can be offered for end users. But first let’s do a quick introduction on what cloud gaming is.
What is Cloud Gaming?
Cloud gaming is the term used to describe services designed to provide a gaming experience delivered through the internet or what is referred as the cloud. The term is not descriptive of the type of game but rather the method at which the game can be played.
Cloud gaming varies on how its done on the source end as well as the host or client but at it most basic, the easiest method is as below:
- A server device runs the game natively on hardware and streams to a client device. Controls for the device are then received from a client connecting through a connection to the streaming host.
- A client device enables the user/player to input controls via as well as display audio/video output on the client side. A client device can be a bespoke receiver, a browser window, a client application on any devices, etc. as long as it can serve visual and audio output and receive input from the user.
- To achieve the best experience, a server-client connection should provide a low latency experience to avoid lag as all inputs will be done on the client-end while all processing is done on the remote-end. Any perceived delay can be attributedย to connection issues especially if the server machine is a very capable one.
In the current gaming landscape, the most prevailing names in cloud gaming is NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW and Sony’s PlayStation Now for subscription-based services but you can actually replicate the same services at your own network via SteamLink or PS Remote Play. SteamLink or streaming directly from Steam connects to a local Steam device and streams the game from that machine, effectively giving you your own private cloud gaming setup.
Now the technical requirements:
- A low-latency, fast connection: since you will be streaming the game as a video output from the remote machine, you will be receiving it as a stream of images. Like with all video services, this requires some bandwidth when done over the internet. While 720p and 1080p may be fairly light by today’s standards, 1440p and 4K in high quality would require sending out at least 60 4K images every second which is easily in the hundreds of megabytes range when sent raw.
- A capable gaming host device: depending on how heavy the game is, an average gaming PC can do the job but if you want to run specific games, your host gaming device has to do video encoding and gaming at the same time.
- An easy-to-use connection method. End-users just want to play, a click-and-play application with no setup requirements should be the simplest way to allow gamers to play on the cloud.
Cloud gaming as a service
What Converge ICT is targetting is offering a PC in the cloud to play games from the end users. This can be achieved via multiple clients but they’re primary target is their Vision box which will serve as the streaming client for their cloud gaming service which works with any HDMI display along with USB peripherals and controllers.
I cannot share much details on how they’re executing it but for now Converge has rolled out these devices to try various clients for their cloud gaming service. Much of those present were shown demos from the Vision box as well as a mobile phone but cloud gaming services can be used on non-native x86 devices like Macbooks and iPads.
I mentioned x86 as the host client is a virtualized Windows environment running whatever gaming platform the users wishes. In the screen on the far end you can see Hades being ran at 1080@60 on a Vision box.
Very, very, very early impressions
Converge ICT has to realize that cloud gaming is not a virtual-PC-for-rent service. From what I’ve heard from the other people in attendance who were from the Valorant crowd, they expect the 64-core, 64GB RAM, Quadro RTX 6000 server to at least offer 144FPS. While that is deliciously honest, there’s a reason while Valorant or any game that has anti-cheat has a circumvention clause in its Terms of Service. Cloud gaming is more about enabling games, specifically PC games from what I can gather from Converge’s demo.
Presenting a blank desktop to a client suggests they’re free to do what they want and this just spells power user to me. As I mentioned earlier,ย this has to be a click-and-play affair. I can’t imagine what advanced users are going to be able to do when given a blank terminal on the ISP end, especially one with Windows.
For the gaming side, Converge says they’re concept partner already has a working implementation but I’ve yet to see this so I have no idea how its implemented. I’ll reach out to my SEA media counterparts to ask for details and I’ve also suggested to the Converge team to explore the current usage from their regional partner.
The next few weeks is instrumental in how Converge shapes their service. With the discoveries revealed by this initial trial, the goal post should be clearer. This should iron out the initial kinks and help form expectations for the final product. As a personal opinion, Converge has the right idea in mind but an esports audience tied to heavily secure platforms are not their major market but rather the pisonet gaming audience who are tied to Roblox, GTA V or other single-player experiences much like the emerging handheld gaming PC market, albeit in a more living-room friendly kind of way.
