I totally agree with you. there's a cost benefit analysis we make when purchasing something and I can imagine the case where I'm ok paying 50c an hour for a remote game.

It's hard though not to see the writing on the wall in regards to "local compute GPU availability". Every single industry even tangentially related to compute power has "silently" moved their bus model to consumption based, despite the consumer base having 0 appetite for that. (We're not engineers/app developers who are forced to use LLM agents, we're trying to pay a service that hosts games.)

I am unsure how a medium that was a failure as a free/subscription model will succeed as a floating pay-as-you-go model.

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brody_hamer 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For a period of time I would rent a windows box with gpu from aws, install my game, and play it over parsec (a Remote Desktop tool designed for low latency). It was around $0.40/hour for a high-end gaming rig for the ~40 hours I needed to binge my new game. I play new games infrequently, so the cost analysis was “a new computer for $1500, or rent one for the time I need it for $15.”

It’s just a bummer that this process wasn’t a bit easier. I recall there was some setup involved.

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bjord 2 hours ago | parent [-]

from your perspective this feels like a positive, then, no? cheaper price per hour, no requirement that you use those hours all at once?

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Reubachi 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It's a positive in the sense that the industry has made it marginally cheaper in time/resources to pay-as-you-go.

It's a positive in the sense that due to these industry changes (computer power going up 20x in cost.), the platforms are offering a way to let us peons play games.

It's a negative in that it's a futher commitment of these vendors to hoarde compute/GPU power from western consumers and chinese LLM vendors. MS will routinely purchase the highest end GPU for sake of keeping this service alive, nevermind their own LLM. Good luck getting one yourself.

	▲	bjord an hour ago \| parent [-]
		agreed

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bjord 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

yep, actually in my area this will be cheaper than the gaming cafes people frequent—I think the lack of reasonably-local servers is the main thing that will block adoption.

I'm not so certain the average gamer is well-informed enough to realize what they're giving up, or that they feel strongly enough to take a stand for it if they do. I'm hopeful they will, we'll see.