by Daniel Howley via Yahoo!
The Blade Shadow could let you stream high-end PC games from the cloud to virtually any device you own.
The vast majority of gamers around the world play on their PCs. But as any keyboard jockey worth their salt will tell you, PC gaming can be expensive. Between systems that cost more than your standard home console and upgrades needed to ensure your PC is running at the highest possible graphics settings. PC gaming can quickly become an expensive hobby.
Which is where cloud-gaming platforms like Blade’s Shadow come in. Shadow is designed to give you remote access to a high-end Windows gaming PC on which you can play the latest games at their max settings for $34.95 a month. And it’s available for pre-order to select U.S. consumers today.
To be sure, Shadow isn’t the first cloud-gaming platform. Sony’s (SNE) $99 per year Playstation Now is already available for the PS4 and PC, while Nvidia’s (NVDA) $7.99 per month GeForce Now is available for its Android-powered Shield device. A version of the service for Apple’s (AAPL) Mac is currently in beta.
What makes Shadow so interesting is that you can use it to play any PC game or Windows 10 program you can think of on such disparate devices as an outdated PC, Mac, smartphone or tablet. Heck, you can even use one of Google’s (GOOG, GOOGL) Chromebooks if you want.
But you might want to wait to see how well it works before jumping on board.
Made in France
Blade originally launched Shadow in its home country of France in 2016. At that point, roughly 5,000 people signed up for the service. Today, the company says it has 10,000 customers within the country.
Think of Shadow as a scaled down version of Amazon’s (AMZN) cloud computing services. You sign up for Shadow and get a access to a web-based PC that you can use without any sign of lag or slowdown. Blade says its cloud offering is equal to running a PC with 12GB of RAM, a high-end Nvidia graphics chip and an Intel Xenon processor in your home. You also get 256GB of personal storage on which you can store anything you want.
The Shadow Blade box is also available if you don’t have an existing device.
You’ll be able to stream games with a resolution of 1080p at 144 frames per second. That’s seriously impressive firepower. 4K games will also run at a speedy 60 fps.
According to the company, pro gamers who’ve used the Shadow couldn’t tell the difference between using the streaming service and a standard gaming PC.
If you’re so inclined Blade is also offering its optional Shadow Box, a small computer that you can use as your Shadow base station if you don’t already have an existing PC or Mac. That’ll cost you an additional $10 per month or $140 outright.
But, to even use the service you’ll need to have both a high-speed internet connection of 15 megabits per second or greater and, and this is the important part, live near a Blade data center to get the best performance possible.
As of now, Blade says it will have its data centers online in California on Feb. 15. The company says the rest of the country will get access to the service by this summer.
So will Blade be the company that finally takes cloud gaming to the next level? We’ll find out later this year.
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