Topic: Will we see a Switch 2 streaming, cloud gaming service?

It feels like within a few months Switch 2 pricing will be increasing as will the cost of other competing hardware. The original Switch is certainly fast enough to do a good cloud gaming experience that is really down to your internet connection.

Would you be happy with keeping your original Switch but subscribing to a higher tier of online services so you could play Switch 2 games via cloud gaming. The Switch 2 console actually has quite high input lag for some games, actually higher than cloud gaming services with a good connection.

Of course it wouldn't have to be limited to the original Switch, it could also be used for the Switch 2 for games you don't outright own and of course other hardware like android tablets, steam deck and desktop PCs etc could be compatible. Maybe even Xbox and PS5 etc. You would need a controller that could mimic all the important controls of Switch 2 but also Nintendo could produce a compatible bluetooth controller for non-Nintendo hardware.

Nintendo would clearly have to invest in banks of Switch 2 compatible hardware servers. However that hardware could be enhanced with higher resolutions, higher frame rates and less frame rate inconsistencies. The servers could even be x86 based and emulating the Switch 2 although maybe Nintendo wouldn't be comfortable with that as it would be a risk that the emulator code would get leaked.

The huge increase in component pricing may lead to a general collapse in hardware sales volume across all formats. Of course these servers would be expensive but then a monthly fee of let's say $30 with a contention ratio of 30 users for every server brings in $900 a month or $10800 a year. Server cost for Nintendo, maybe 8 Switch 2 chipsets per server, maybe $1500-3000 to them with inflated RAM and storage costs. So a potential of close to $90,000 a year from each server unit and maybe a lifespan of up to 7 years plus of course each chipset has a low TDP too so energy costs are going to be very good being ARM based. It feels like something that Nintendo could do. More importantly Nintendo doesn't have to share revenue in the same way, no margin for wholesalers or retailers. One server can provide about 6000hrs of gaming per month. If each subscriber averaged 3 hours of gaming per day that is about 90 hours over a month so you could say but of course many gamers would want to play at similar times so the contention ratio for the service wouldn't be anywhere the 70:1 theoretical ratio but much lower. Also looking online the average amount of time people play per week is 10 hours so only about 40 hours per month. Nintendo will also have to pay third party content providers for use of their games on such a service probably by the hour. I think such a service would be more focused on first party games though.

Also smart televisions, basic android boxes and quite a lot of low powered devices could be used for the service. Nintendo could even introduce a streaming only device with controller for perhaps $80 just based on very cheap SOC ARM chipset that has a great wifi chip. Such devices could be based on older technology where prices are still very low i.e. DDR3 RAM chips and 12Nm fabricated SOC. As a bonus it could play emulated Nintendo software up to Super Nintendo SFX level natively, maybe even N64. In fact it could be sold as a classic console with the streaming feature included for their online service.

Do you think a Switch 2 streaming service is coming especially if hardware sales drop significantly?

I won't be interested in it at all either way. I prefer to play my games natively thanks very much.

I am going to say no, I don't think so. Nintendo will continue to use NSO (Nintendo Classics). Individual companies, such as how I think Square-Enix have done, may sell some Cloud versions for NS2, but I can't see Nintendo going that route themselves.

Streaming only games is absolutely HELL NO from me.

We inevitably going to get there. Nintendo is already laying the groundwork with the Virtual Game Key Cards.
So in the future (since Nintendo is generally 10 years behind the tech curve) we might see Cloud streaming as an option.

On both XBOX and PS5, for many games, you can now choose to install your game from your Library or just Stream it.
And on both these platforms streaming works really well now. To the point that, for me, Cloud gaming/streaming works often better than Remote Play.

I see this as a big positive, because now I can prioritize to have my most played games installed, while I can just stream my less played games. Saving me the headache of constantly dealing with freeing up storage space lol.

Short answer:
No

Long answer:
I've long held the view that game streaming is a bit of a dead end idea. Basically the whole idea of it is that you're trading latency, image quality and bandwidth for the ability to make a higher spec machine look like a lower spec machine. The problem is that early on when that gap in spec, especially for mobile devices, made the idea an easy sell the bandwidth just wasn't there. And now that the bandwidth is certainly here we have portable devices that are capable enough to largely negate the advantage

The golden age of game streaming was probably around 10-15 years ago. After people were starting to get fibre, after the release of 5Ghz WiFi (802.11n), before portables were pushing HD graphics. In a sense you could argue the Wii U was that product in that era, and look at how well it did

Which is kinda where this entire idea of yours falls apart a bit. The Switch 2 IS that low powered device. It might not be the most capable device in the world but, frankly, it puts out a pretty damn good image for the class of device it is. So what are we actually gaining? I mean you might say that people have other more lower powered devices they can use instead but in a few years those devices, when new, will also be similar in spec to the Switch 2. Effectively, you gain nothing here while still paying the cost

That cost? Image quality and latency. You say that game streaming is stable and low latency but, really, that depends on how close you are to the server, how congested the network is and so on. And the thing about streaming is that any latency, any compression, any dropped frames from the connection? That gets added to any latency or poor image quality in the engine or the display. You're replacing the HDMI cable with video compression and an internet connection. And HDMI cables are a god-tier connection, we're talking 10s of Gbps with small fractions of a ms latency and zero compression (ignoring DSC at super high resolutions)

Lastly, in terms of cost. If the intent it so save money by not having to pay for RAM? Well good luck with that. I can tell you now that server costs are not exactly going down. If Nintendo were to go out and take a huge gamble on NVidia backed ARM server farms for running Switch 2 games in the cloud I can't imagine that'd be cheap. And certainly not a smart move given they would already have medium term volume contracts for the various components to make Switch 2 consoles

..... and might I also add, where's the concern for a significant drop in hardware sales coming from? Seems a tad misplaced I would suggest

I'm not even going to comment on the likeliness of something like that happen, but if it did happen: I would not do it, especially if it was like $30 a month expensive. I'm at the point where I basically despise any digital monthly subscription outside of the internet bill and standard NSO 😅 (which may change if NSO gets a price increase in the future, but that's a topic for another time).

Oh I didn't say I wanted it to happen, merely that I think it will happen. It gives software publishers more control and helps them increase their income but no I personally don't want it to go that way. However I still find it interesting to think about how it will be achieved for Nintendo software, they often do things a little differently.

Another thing worth noting regarding game streaming, not everyone lives in countries where all of the population is relatively close. It's easy to say that latency is low if you live in the UK, or on the East/West coast of the US, or in Japan. But I can tell you now that not everyone is so lucky

Such a service in Australia would likely be hosted in Sydney. Most of the centralised internet infrastructure in Australia is in Sydney, because it's the closest city to Australia's population centre. Sydney is, however, not exactly next door to every city in Australia. For example my internet connection, in Perth, if I run a speedtest to a server also in Perth I get 6ms. If however I test against a server in Sydney it's more like 55ms

And this is on a wired connection, so before WiFi. It's also before any latency added from a display or the game engine itself. It also doesn't consider the latency added from encoding and decoding the video stream. It's just really all kinds of not worth it, especially if you live somewhere like I do where the odds of a datacentre for this kind of thing being in my city is fairly small

Lol. I won't be able to have good enough connection for game streaming so that's a moot point if it exist.

@darkfenrir Same. Well, I have great internet on my PC, but the rare occasions I have done online gaming trying to play via an invite for Switch/Switch 2, it has rarely worked well and will often end in a disconnection. I just don't get it.

I am by no means an expert, but to me it seems like the very same issue that would lead to a price increase for Switch 2 (chip shortages) would probably make it difficult to develop the server infrastructure needed to start a Switch 2 Game streaming service. That's not even mentioning that Nintendo would probably want everyone to buy Switch 2's when chip prices go down, at which point the streaming service would become a double-edged sword for Nintendo, now decreasing the value proposition of purchasing an actual Switch 2. Overall, this seems like a terrible idea no sane console manufacturer would do. Unfortunately, Nintendo is not sane.

And deprive themselves of the opportunity to sell you Breath of the Wild for 80 bucks? Never.

Not a chance, not at any time in the foreseeable future. Setting aside the giant technical issues with streaming that are not only unfixed, but almost certainly unfixable because they hinge on things like "the speed of light". . .

1. Streaming requires an internet connection. The Switch's central premise is "docked and handheld". An undocked Switch cannot assume constant good quality internet connection.

2. Market conditions which would make Switch 2's more expensive to sell, would also make gaming servers more expensive to buy. Only this cost would be a capital cost for Nintendo, rather than a cost to the end user.

3. The only justification for streaming is "to play games that local hardware can't". . . and bluntly, Nintendo's solution to that is already "Lets not make giant ass games that require giant ass computers to run".

Newsflash! Digital games on Nintendo eShop, XBOX store and PS Store are now already often more expensive than physical copies.

As someone who has experience actually using game streaming services rather than merely complaining about them on the internet, I'd think that they have their place.

They're best for games where low-latency controls aren't a must, such as turn-based strategy and RPGs but aren't necessarily that bad for action games. If you can handle playing something at 30fps, you can probably play it with streaming, at least if you have a decent enough connection. Stability is what's really important though; if you have a connection that stutters a lot or drops out, it'll be unusable.

]They will typically operate from multiple data centers in larger countries. Microsoft have servers across the East coast of Australia, and Nvidia even have one in Perth. You're still a bit stuffed if you're in Darwin, Hobart or Northern Queensland, mind you, but that's a lot less of the country by population that's poorly served at the moment.

They'll also let me play games that I own outright and can play as downloads offline where I've got the hardware for it. GeForce Now supports a good chunk of my Steam, Epic and Ubisoft Connect libraries, for instance. They've been doing a lot better than anyone with a subscription-only model, at any rate.

Do Nintendo necessarily have to follow suit and offer something similar? Probably not; it's still early days and they don't have the data processing infrastructure of a Microsoft or Nvidia to build from, and would have to pay an inordinate amount of money to someone else just to get started.

Also, PC streaming services typically let you play games on a laptop, a phone or sometimes even just a TV and they're far more ubiquitous options than needing to have a Switch 1. We all know how restrictive Nintendo are when it comes to letting anyone play their games on someone else's hardware and, by the time they got their act together on something like this, there would probably be more Switch 2s in regular use anyway. Maybe it's something to bear in mind for the Switch 3.