In a week or two, Google will be giving more details about its Stadia game streaming platform.

That definitely has its perks as well as its drawbacks but there is a sort of middle ground that’s being pushed by Valve and now Samsung in theory, offers the benefits of playing PC games on any device, though with some of its caveats.

Cloud Gaming: freedom at a price

On paper, the premise and promise of cloud-based game streaming is definitely enticing for gamers.

In practice, though, there are still a lot of pieces that need to fall into place to make that a viable future, and not all of them are technical.

There is, of course, the requirement for fast Internet connections, something that’s not available everywhere.

But one topic in particular had developers and analysts talking at the 2019 China Digital Entertainment Expo and Conference (ChinaJoy for short), which ran from August 2 to 5 in Shanghai: 5G cloud gaming.

According to analysts at industry research firm IDC, the new technology has the potential to reshape the industry, bring in new players.

Mobile video games are currently created by developers and distributed for iOS and Android platforms.

There is no need for a storage device and gone are bandwidth constraints, as 5G offers lower latency and faster speeds.

For example, Huawei Technologies in June teamed up with NetEase, China’s second-biggest gaming company, to offer a cloud gaming service.

Although China has been cracking down on content deemed unsuitable in video games, leading to licensing delays, it has also been pushing the development of new technologies such as 5G, and Huawei has taken a global lead in the next-generation wireless network.