It might be a little early to celebrate the death of the twenty-teens, but we can’t help but look at the future. Wave goodbye to crappy internet, console gaming, and unconvincing Instagram filters. Say hello to the tech of the future.
To be clear, we aren’t trying to make half-baked predictions. We’re focusing on technological innovations that are in progress right now—things that should come to a universal and commercial maturity in the next five or ten years.
We Need Gigabit Internet Speeds
Internet in the United States is frustratingly slow. In fact, the internet all over the world is much slower than it should be, even though we’ve already developed super fast data transfer technology. Fiber optic cables are capable of transferring 500 gigabits of data per second, and 5G can reach speeds of about 10 gigabits per second. If these numbers don’t mean much to you, consider the fact that 5G is hundreds of times faster than the average internet speed. So, why do we still have crappy internet?
Basically, our internet sucks because we don’t have proper internet infrastructure. But that’s set to change in the next few years. Cellphone carriers are racing to bring 5G across the nation, and there’s a good chance that your current phone supports 5G. At the same time, about 25% of all Americans live in an area that has access to fiber optic internet (even if they don’t take advantage of it), and that number will only continue to grow.
In the end, the demand for 4K may drive the demand for gigabit internet speeds. People want to make video calls in 4K, they want to stream movies and TV in 4K, and they want to stream video games in 4K. All of that high-resolution data transfer is going to require some super fast internet, and only our ISPs can make it happen (please make it happen).
Game Streaming Will Revolutionize Gaming
Game streaming is exactly what it sounds like. It’s Netflix for games. You subscribe to a service, and that service allows you to play video games through an internet connection. There’s a small chance that you’ve heard about services like PlayStation Now and Shadow, but the real giants of game streaming might be Google, Bethesda, and Microsoft.
While other game streaming services feel like half-baked experiments, Google’s Stadia seems to be an all-out invasion of gaming. Google is using its network of servers and fiber cables to bring 4K/60fps gaming to any computer with 30mbps network speed. Like Netflix, slower connection speeds will result in lower game resolutions, without any buffering or lag.
But game streaming isn’t just some convenience; it’s also a threat to traditional console and PC gaming. Right now, the games that you play are limited by your hardware. If you have a crappy computer, then you’ll have trouble playing resource-heavy games. But with game streaming, video games are processed by remote computers far away from your home. With a good internet connection, you could stream Red Dead Redemption 2 in 4K at 60 FPS to a cheap desktop, tablet, or even a cellphone.
Game streaming could be the death of console gaming. At $10 a month, a year of Stadia is cheaper than any current-gen gaming console. And you don’t even have to pay to use Stadia; its “Base” subscription is free. While there are plenty of hurdles to jump through, the fact that more than five major companies are racing to build the best streaming platform sends a clear message: game streaming is a revolution.
