The future of gaming is streaming, and home PC gaming hardware will eventually go the way of DVD players. GeForce Now is succeeding where OnLive and Stadia failed (20+ million users now, apparently). Offloading rendering to the cloud means much improved thermals, graphics, and battery life -- especially for laptop users and Mac owners. Apple Silicon is cool, but it's not going to beat a 4080 for pure graphics performance. And that's just computers... GFN can also stream to tablets, phones, TVs, and anything else with a screen and an internet connection.
It makes more sense for Nvidia to put GPUs in data centers with good cooling, shared between multiple gamers and idle workloads (AI, etc.), instead of having them sit in expensive but unused home desktops most of the day
Nvidia is the only one who has a real shot at this because they're the only ones who can directly allocate GPUs to cloud gaming (unless what's left of AMD wants to get in on the action too). And they're the only ones that Steam specifically partners with for its Cloud Play beta: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming
Stadia failed not because of the technology, but because Google mismanaged it and never understood PC gaming cultures. Nvidia and Steam do, and it's a much, much better product for it.
As a supporting point, right now people have decent GPUs but as people get a taste of the streaming approach on a laptop for example, and with the GPU prices increasing, they might not want to spend a whole lot of money on it. A small subset.
And then the AAA-studio will see the hyper-paced style of game would be a bad experience and reduce the revenue, being more likely to prefer the styles that are more comfortable with the latency.
This in turn will make the approach itself more viable let alone the improvements in the area, and when the most popular games ensure they are viable on these platforms, you won't need to buy a 4XXX card.
People I know are looking into 3XXX and 4XXX cards at the moment when they are building a PC or buying a pre-built, 4XXX for the latter scenario, not necessarily 4090 or anything, really just the ones closer to the entry point, and honestly they aren't great value.
I don't like this situation but the writing is kind of on the wall, for the laptops I already see the streaming becoming common.
There doesn't need to be fast and low latency on every last square inch of the Earth for it to be a successful product, it just needs to be ubiquitous enough to be worth it most of the time to enough people. The gamers I know aren't also avid travellers, so if there's gigabit at the primary and secondary and tertiary residence, that covers enough to be worth it to most.
Maybe not if you want to go pro, but amateur/casual FPS play is totally fine. Have you tried it recently?
Between GeForce Now's 120 Hz support, adaptive v-sync, and Nvidia Reflex, it's very playable IMHO. No, it's not as nice as having a 4080 below your desk, but compared to midrange or lower GPUs, the minor input/network latency is more than worth it in exchange for a smooth high FPS, higher viewing distance, and great DLSS.
I don't play competitively (as in ranked), but I do play a lot of shooters on it. It's so much better than it was on Stadia, for example.
I don't play competitively either, but it's pretty easy for me to detect a frame of lag in my mouse controls. (I had to return a non-gaming ergonomic mouse for this reason.) Maybe most people won't care, but it has a material impact on gameplay and immersion.
Anyway, my problem is with the assertion that streaming is "the future" of gaming. It might become a major segment of the market, but I don't expect that it will dominate.
Well, that's why it's an opinion that few agree with :)
IMO most people don't care about playing competitively anyway (as in ranked e-sports). PVP shooters are common even on shitty devices (like PUBG or Fortnite on phones)... and of course consoles. Having a leet PC gaming setup with a super high DPI mouse just isn't a concern of many -- or maybe most -- gamers. Good enough is good enough.
Granted, people have been saying "cloud gaming is the future!" for ~~the better part of~~ (edit: more than!) a decade now, since OnLive was first launched. Stadia was a very public failure, but now there are many (GFN, PSNow, XCloud, Luna, Boosteroid, Shadow, etc.) Among them, GeForce Now is the only one that has the synergy of also being the dominant GPU producer. I believe it won't be long before more players game on the cloud than on PCs.
But feel free to come back in 5-10 years and tell me how wrong I was, lol.
It makes more sense for Nvidia to put GPUs in data centers with good cooling, shared between multiple gamers and idle workloads (AI, etc.), instead of having them sit in expensive but unused home desktops most of the day
Nvidia is the only one who has a real shot at this because they're the only ones who can directly allocate GPUs to cloud gaming (unless what's left of AMD wants to get in on the action too). And they're the only ones that Steam specifically partners with for its Cloud Play beta: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming
Stadia failed not because of the technology, but because Google mismanaged it and never understood PC gaming cultures. Nvidia and Steam do, and it's a much, much better product for it.