(upbeat rock music)
- What in the Sam heck are you doing?
Do you have any idea how
impossible it is to get these things?
(slams)
I'm glad I got here in time
Those gamers over there almost wasted their money
paying scalper prices for a GPU instead of saving it
with this easy trick.
Yeah.
Some of you probably know what's coming,
due to the ongoing shortage of graphics cards.
I am about to recommend something that you might not expect;
using a cloud gaming service, temporarily
until the world returns to sanity.
But I would never consider steering you guys wrong.
So before I settle on a recommendation,
I'm just going to have to try all of them.
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(upbeat techy music)
The thing is, normally the heavy lifting of gaming,
AI enemy, and physics computations, 3d rendering,
you know, that kind of stuff is handled by your PC.
But every cloud gaming service has at least this in common.
It pushes all of that work into a data center somewhere
which feeds the final output in the form
of a video to your machine over the internet.
So that's why the system requirements for all
of the services that we're trying today are similar
to the requirements for watching high definition
video on YouTube or Netflix.
Now you will be making some compromises,
image quality won't be as good,
kind of like how 4k YouTube
doesn't look as good as 1080p on Blu-ray,
and you can expect to experience some latency
like how zoom calls always have a slight delay
when people talk.
But at anywhere from 10 to $15 a month
you could afford about five years of cloud gaming service
for the price of a scalper markup on an RTX 3070.
Let's kick things off then with GeForce Now
from our good friends over it at Nvidia.
After the best little K on my hand
the defenders licked their wounds
and mourned their losses said Siri,
who began to plan her revenge
on the Google assistant and Alexa.
She worked her out one night, Gerald, excuse me
and urged him to travel with her to the land,
to the top of bald mountain.
It's an old mountain
lost it's hair when it's kids got all back-talking
(chuckles)
Man, that looks good, don't it.
The advantages of GeForce Now are many,
Nvidia has been working on this technology for a long time
and they're deeply experienced when it comes to PC gaming.
You also get Nvidia exclusive eye candy, like
RTX real-time Ray tracing, hair works, et cetera, et cetera.
And it's pretty, ain't it? (crickets)
I feel like I'm in a morgue here.
Is it pretty or not?
It's the Witcher 3.
There's only one right answer, it's pretty.
In a game like this, honestly,
where there's already kind of a laggy field
to the camera movements with the mouse.
I hardly noticed the latency.
Have you tried cloud gaming, David?
- [David] Uh hmm.
- Do you find there's a difference
from one type of game to another?
- [David] Oh for sure.
I will no play a competitive shooter.
(chuckles) No, thank you.
- Yep.
- [David] I'll do a story-based game.
Yeah, Witcher 3 would be fine.
- Yep.
- [David] The stream compression on this one
is too much for me though.
- Well, remember too, we've got it
blown up on an 88-inch TV.
- [David] Yeah, that's fair, that's fair.
- If you're on a 48, say for example,
if you knew anyone who had a TV like that.
I think it would look a lot more reasonable.
And as good as GeForce Now is, it's not magic.
It's limited to 1080p at 60 FPS.
If you look closely, you will notice compression artifacts
particularly when there's a lot of motion on screen.
And finally, for competitive games like this,
the additional latency is going to make it pretty
difficult to keep up with very good players.
I got to say rocket league's visual style
which is kind of clean, but then look like fine details
in the grass and stuff does not lend itself well
to this kind of video compression.
(imitates laser sounds)
Oh God, I suck at this game.
- [David] Because you're using a mouse and keyboard.
- No, that's not why.
(laughs) I'm not going to make excuses.
Wow. All right.
I think that's quite enough for that.
Other highlights include the complete access to
in game controls and quality settings,
the very low system requirements
for your streaming device,
compatibility with both Android and iOS,
in addition to of course, Mac and PC, and their free trial
which lets you decide for yourself
if it's worth the price of admission.
With a catch, the free trial works for an hour at a time
and you have to wait in line to use it.
So you can see right now there's 24 gamers ahead of me.
Also the hardware isn't as good
with RTX on not being an option.
If that's something that you wanted to experience
for my part, ain't nobody got time to sit
and wait for these other gamers.
So let's see what Sony has to offer.
After all, while PC gaming does have its benefits.
Playing Sony exclusive titles, like God of War or
The Last of Us isn't one of them.
I was initially surprised to see a lower price
for Sony service, considering
that it actually includes some games.
So save your money and buy a water bottle on LTT store.com
right? Maybe not.
The UI is so bad that it's hard to believe,
it's even from the same company
that makes the PlayStation 5.
unless you are on a PlayStation using PS Now,
there is literally no search function to find games.
You just have to scroll through them.
And some things just outright didn't work for us,
like launching PUBG, let's actually give that a shot.
Oh my God.
It has moved it.
Did I go down too many?
Play history, okay.
At least it's in my play history.
Thought I was going to have to find it again.
What's funny about this is
that it was supposed to just say something
about not being able to get an update and not work at all.
And that's what we were expecting to show you.
But this is good too.
Oh Wow.
69 joined...
Oh I think it's just completely frozen.
I mean, there are a few things
about this experience we can appreciate,
there's the glorious 720p medium details,
the, oh, we've got just the right number
of players in our game.
Nice.
(laughs)
PlayStation Now is not as fun.
Okay.
Let's try relaunching.
Like does this thing even work?
Are you just messing with me
Closing your last game session?
I knew, what game session?
I never even got to play.
How is this so bad?
Are they not a multi-billion dollar company?
Uh, wait.
I can't get this mouse cursor off the screen.
Are you kidding me right now?
I can't get it off the screen.
I mean, I mean, controller compatibility is a plus,
it supports DualShock three and four,
and actually even like things like X-Box controllers.
All though the service does tell you, Hey
we recommend a dual shock three or four
and actually has no support for the dual sense,
The PlayStation five controller, for whatever reason.
I mean, in fairness I guess their devs have
plenty of other stuff to work on.
Okay. So wait, wait, hold on a second.
So let's maximize now.
I'm not going to worry about the mouse cursor.
Let's wait 18 more minutes for this game to launch.
This is enough to sour me
on cloud gaming as a whole, like, I'd be like
this is crap honestly, though, the GeForce Now experience
wasn't perfect either.
Like I had to use my previous knowledge
of kind of the bugginess of that platform
from just using GeForce like in-home streaming to
fix that issue where the game was like running
but it was minimized.
And so I saw like a steam window through my VM
that would confuse an average user for sure.
Huzzuh!
We managed to get into a freaking game here.
- [David] To be fair, the experience is
a lot better on a PlayStation console.
- Okay, that's valid.
But remember the premise of today's video
is you're a PC gamer who's stuck without a video card.
You know, you want cross-platform compatibility I think.
So, that's fine.
But guys, if it doesn't work on other platforms
you don't get to market it as working on other platforms.
Yeah.
And making matters even worse,
on a third person view style game like this, like I said
with Witcher 3, I don't normally notice the kind
of chugginginess, the lagginess of camera movements
but here it is very, very noticeable.
I mean, if there's no other way to play the game
because you're not going to run out and buy an end of life,
PlayStation four at this point.
it's not like you can't experience it.
It's just really not the definitive version I would say.
1080p up rendering,
except that everyone's at 720 pmps now.
- [David] On PlayStation you can download the game.
- Yeah.
But like they should not have marketing materials
in a service that are not applicable to it.
- [David] I agree. (laughs)
- If I was paying for this service,
I'm paying for the service aren't I?
You're paying for it right now?
I'm glad because I would consider this
to be entirely unacceptable.
You're going to get me to reimburse it, aren't you?
- [Plouffe] I mean, sure.
- Okay. So I'm paying for it and I'm pissed off.
I mean it...
I full screened the client
and it still just refuses to remember
that I would like to play my games full screen.
Look at those interlacing artifacts.
Are they even trying at all?
And it's doing this crap again or is it,
is that the blanking issue?
I can't even tell.
Yeah, it is.
Let's move on to, you know what?
Okay, Stadia.
Google might've given up on you
but I haven't yet because at $9.99 a month,
with modern games included with the service,
and third-party controller support
it has the potential to be pretty compelling.
Whoa, Holy crap.
Look at the way they've applied their anti-aliasing.
I don't think I've ever seen anything worse than that.
That is a really crappy anti-aliasing method.
I don't even think that's done through the game.
That has to be something that Stadia is doing
as part of their, just, you know
rendering it a lower resolution than trying to
upscale it kind of optimization.
Instead of proper anti-aliasing where
it smooths the stair-step,
it's like they're taking the stair-step
and just like smearing Vaseline on it.
(mouse clicking)
Why am I not able to start?
Hello?
One of the key drawbacks of Stadia is
that it requires a Chrome browser, but then again
one of the advantages of Stadia is
that it runs on basically anything with a Chrome browser
even an iPhone or an old Google Chromebook.
And unlike GeForce Now, it's got support for 4k streaming.
But watch out because according to Stadia Game DB,
most of the graphically demanding games
are locked at 30 FPS if you crank them up to 4k.
That is going to have a noticeable impact
on the smoothness of your experience.
It's not nearly as bad as PS Now though.
Like I don't feel that like movement, movement,
you know like it's not so delayed.
I'd definitely rather have a keyboard and mouse right now.
Thanks Google.
And another thing to watch out for
with Stadia is multiplayer.
Stadia absolutely does have multiplayer
support across its game library
at least in games that support it.
But in many cases, the players that you were matched
against will also need to be gaming on Stadia.
For some titles then, that means
pretty slim pickings for matchmaking.
Now a handful of developers have that
in cross play support to the Stadia ports of their games.
But according to this list on r/Stadia,
it's still very much a work in progress.
It's totally like, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Pow, pow, pow, pow!
- [David] Oh my God, is it a bot?
(laughs)
- No way.
Oh my God!
I just got to kill punching someone with a gun to death.
You know, it feels not bad.
It feels not bad.
Though, I wouldn't suggest doing much in the way
of competitive gaming on Stadia.
Cloud Gaming already is going to put you at a disadvantage.
And from our experience,
on a high quality internet connection,
GeForce Now did deliver slightly lower latency.
Although, that was yesterday and this is today.
This is better than we had before.
Yeah. Not bad, not bad.
Oh, nevermind guys.
This game totally works with mouse and keyboard.
It was just PUBG that was being stupid.
And the latency actually feels really good.
So the worst thing we can say about the latency
for Stadia then is that it can be a little inconsistent
because we had some problems yesterday when
we were doing the prep for this video.
No, this is awesome.
(chill music)
The delay is unreal on this particular game.
Now project Xcloud is $15 a month.
But there is some serious value here
because you're not strictly subscribing to Xcloud.
You're subscribing to game pass ultimate,
which happens to include a fantastic library
of games that you can play on your Xbox on your PC
or as you can see here in the cloud.
Hello?
I can't control where I'm looking
because the delay is so much. (laughs)
Now here's the thing though,
at least a few of you are probably
screaming at your screens right now
that cloud gaming extreme got Xcloud working on a PC
and some of the problems we're having
might be to do with the fact
that we're using a non officially supported Android client.
Well, you know what you guys are right.
The issue is that the workaround
that cloud gaming extreme used has been resolved
with a recent update.
So unfortunately we won't be able to experience it on a PC
until Microsoft launches it officially.
On that subject, there are a couple
of others cloud gaming contenders that are looming
on the horizon.
Amazon Luna is currently in early access
and can stream games at 720p with a game list
that looks pretty darn good.
But we all know how Amazon's rival,
Google's cloud gaming service launch went
and how Amazon's game studio's going.
So all I can say about that one is good luck, daddy Bezos.
And then there's the one that we've
talked about before, Shadow.
It's $11.99 a month, and offers high-end hardware
with good performance in both games
and even other applications.
Like you can use it for video editing
because it's pretty much just a remote desktop connection
into a windows 10 instance that happens to be
in their data center.
But the thing with Shadow is that
while we would love to recommend it based
on our past experience,
it's not yet available throughout most
of the United States let alone the rest of the world.
And its future is a little uncertain right now,
due to the bankruptcy filing of
Blade Corp., its parent company.
Which makes the bottom line today pretty challenging,
project Xcloud is extremely promising in the future.
And it's great for Xbox gamers today.
Pretty much a no-brainer, but it's really hard
to recommend it for PC gamers without graphics cards
until you can easily set it up on your gaming PC.
PlayStation Now, frankly kind of sucks
for many of the same reasons.
Like I can only really recommend subscribing
for a month or two, getting your Philip PS exclusives
then ditching it.
And then GeForce Now offers the best overall experience
thanks to its wide support for both games and devices.
Because basically if it works on a PC,
and the game developer hasn't blocked it, it should work
on GeForce Now, but it's effectively
the most expensive offering on the table.
Once you factor in that you have to buy
all of your own games.
As for Stadia, it's still Stadia.
It's not the worst in any way,
but it's also not the best in any way.
And the problem is that it doesn't replace a gaming PC
in the same way that X cloud or GeForce Now
can at least try to.
And on that subject, another benefit of GeForce now,
at least for our audience, is that the library
of games that you buy for it and then own
can be painlessly ported with your saved files
and everything to your gaming PC,
once the shortage is resolved.
So I think we're going to give the nod to
team leather jacket for today, and say that we are
excitedly anticipating both future cloud gaming developments
from the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, and maybe even Shadow.
And also looking forward to a world where we
just don't have to care about those
cloud gaming developments anymore
because we can actually just buy graphics cards.
You know what else I'm looking forward to?
(snaps)
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(upbeat electric music)
Well then, are any of you are going to go this route
with the current market, how it is?
Let us know in the comments if you sold your graphics card
(chuckles)
and you were left staring at an empty case.
Oh, by the way, speaking of cases.
If you want something else to watch,
check out our diamond play button PC
they may not have a graphics card
but it's ready for an upgrade in the future.
It'll be perfect for this.
Guys.
Don't worry, that's a dummy GPU.
It doesn't work.
I mean, it especially doesn't work now.