What used to be a dream pioneered by the minds behind OnLive and Gaikai has become a palpable reality in recent years, as more gamers continue to embrace cloud gaming as a popular way to access and enjoy popular video games across a large number of devices.
Google and Nvidia have been among the first large companies interested in cloud gaming with Stadia and GeForce Now, proving that the technology can work well while Microsoft released xCloud to acclaim from players and reviewers alike.
New kid on the block
Facebook has been offering games on the social media network for more than a decade, but most of them have been fun, casual titles that can be played with ease since they are coded on HTML 5 or Flash in the case of older titles that have been retired.
In an attempt to boost the popularity of Facebook Gaming, the social media titan has announced that it will bring cloud gaming to the desktop and app versions of its service, a move that is quite interesting thanks to a different strategy.
Different strategy
While big cloud gaming services like Stadia and the upcoming Amazon Luna hope to attract more subscribers by securing exclusives, Facebook wants to start with free-to-play titles that can be played even if the latency is high.
The feature is available in select US states for now, as Facebook wants to observe the performance and potential of the service before a global release will take place. A great boon is represented by support for cross-platform progression, as players can enjoy mobile games on Facebook and then download the game without losing their progress.
While streaming mobile games is a bit far from the high-quality PC titles offered by Stadia and GeForce Now, Facebook can offer them for free, and this is quite important on a social network that is accessed by millions of people on a daily basis.