I see Microsoft is starting to promote their Cloud Based, Super PC Subscription in some of their insiders channels and here and there in the tech news. I wonder what level of GPU they will provide… hummm… maybe one will have to up the subscription for a faster GPU… or even more memory … or faster CPU… The list can get quite long.
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I was thinking of upgrading my PC but I am going to hesitate… probably a good move.
Maybe a Gaming Console and a Tablet might be my future…
Who knows, maybe even a subscription PC for a while.
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The hardware industry has squeezed all of the “Revenue” they can out of us and now it is falling right back on them… They will be the next to issue huge LAYOFFS… All I can say is they enjoyed a huge fruit crop but now the HARDWARE REVENUE TREE is DYING of OLD AGE and GREED.
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BUT…For now, we can all enjoy one of the Best Flight Simulation Games to ever be created.
BRAVO to MSFS 2020 !!
Interesting take.
- Guy who remembers not so long ago, when a 9 MB (you read that right) hard drive cost $2,000, RAM was outrageously expensive, the cloud was something old men yelled at, and the GPU’s you could get had all the processing power of a hamster on crack.
ETA - let’s not forget about the wonder of 56K modems.
I don’t think local PCs will be going away any time soon. At least not for gaming in general. Cloud PCs may supplement that and give people access to higher tier hardware than they’d otherwise be able to readily afford outright, but I don’t see it supplanting PC ownership, and over the long term, I don’t see it as being very cost effective for the end user either.
I see this in a similar light as getting a subsidized phone from a wireless carrier. You pay much higher monthly fees for that subsidy. If you consider what you paid in terms of your monthly phone bill over the period of the contract and compare it to how much it would have cost you to buy the phone up front plus the normal monthly charges over the same period of time, you’ve paid twice as much or more going the route of the subsidized phone. That’s how they make their money. And I’m guessing that cloud PCs will have a similar model, only you don’t own the hardware at the end. You only rent it.
So this may allow someone to get access to a top tier PC that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. But in the long term, I don’t see it as being a fiscally sound thing for heavy end users. But then again, that doesn’t ever stop someone from burning their money so they can have something “right now” vs saving up.
Then of course there’s the issue of latency. Doesn’t matter how fast your rented virtual machine on the other end is and how fast your local internet connection is. There will always be some level of latency. Sure for MSFS, that latency (assuming a good internet connection) might not be detrimental. But for fast moving games, that will be an issue. Particularly for folks that play online or competitively. That’s a no-go.
So I think that there will indeed be people that will use such a service, but I don’t think it will be something that supplants owning your own hardware. The home PC isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Remember 10 years ago all the commentators proclaiming the death of the PC because tablets were the new king. Sales in PC’s slumped and it was all over… until the realisation set in that you can’t do half the stuff on a tablet. People are basically subservient to what they hear. They were hearing PC’s were being replaced by tablets, so they didn’t replace their PC’s and bought tablets. Then they realised that tablets are a limited use case and don’t really replace PC’s, they are additional to a PC. The PC will die when Microsoft kill off Windows (which they’ve wanted to do for years) but thats at least a decade away.
Oh yes, the 56K modem and I thought my 2400 baud was a screamer…ha
Now I have 400 Mbps…and I am slow compared to my 1gbps neighbor…hehe
I cannot wait to see how that “Cloud PC” works out for them.
So, they don’t have a consumer / gaming tier listed as of yet, but this is what you get from Windows 365 for a pretty middle of the road virtual hardware solution that doesn’t even include a GPU. It does include Office 365 as well, of course, since it’s for business. But that’s still a pretty steep price for not a lot of horsepower.
That’s roughly $170US / month plus applicable taxes. I’m pretty sure for a monthly payment like that, you’d be able to have a pretty baller system that would murder this and you would own.
I think you are “mostly” correct, however, I am running into more and more people that gave up the PC because they cannot maintain it… when something goes haywire, which seems to be more often now days, they cannot fix it… Now all the folks that come to these forums are mostly in a different class… they “Can” fix their PC…
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It’s all the “other” folks that seem to be changing the dynamics. They are content with a very nice tablet, gaming consoles, printers, huge TV’s and cell phones. They do not need the hassel of the PC… Personally, I love the PC but that is a product of my age… things are changing…
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We shall see what happens with this in about 2 years…
Most PCs don’t go haywire on their own though. It’s usually from someone messing with stuff they don’t understand.
As an example, have you seen some of the horrible advice that people in this forum and other social media streams give to try to get PCs running MSFS faster? They’re sending people off to edit registry, overclocking, change crucial settings, disable security features, BIOS changes, install 3rd party hack utilities to “speed up” the PC, disabling background services, etc. They’re pushing people who have trouble finding the power button on their computer towards making sensitive changes they don’t understand or know how to roll back from. It’s madness.
After 30 years of working in the PC space, I can tell you that outside of legit hardware failures, which do happen, the overwhelming majority of PC issues are caused by the end user either messing with stuff they don’t understand, or neglecting security / catching malware.
But I do agree. Some people don’t need a PC when a tablet or console would do them just fine.
No kidding, It is madness. I agree.
I have a fellow pilot friend that cannot even maintain or fix his MSFS much less his PC.
I had to laugh at your comments because that was my feeling too…and I told my friend to QUIT listening to the hacks and leave that PC alone… He cannot… that is why he has so much trouble which gives your points so much validity.
Have a Wonderful and Safe Weekend !
Nothing important is going to happen with this in 2 years.
Absolutely100% correct.
I love tweaking my computer, and even after 30 years of experience, I tread very carefully when it comes to messing around with things that some folks blithely advise others to mess around with.
My philosophy has always been:
Rule 1: If you don’t know exactly what it is you’re doing, don’t do it.
Rule 2: If you don’t know exactly how to fix any problems you’ve created by violating Rule 1, see Rule 1.
Tons of people would give up gaming PCs if the streaming alternative was good enough.
No need for upgrades, much lower power consumption, no technical issues.
But big chunks of the world either don’t have internet that’s good enough, or in backward countries there are data limits.
That might take many years to fully sort out, but techoids seem happy to alienate vast amounts of people before they’re ready.
The one thing worth keeping a gaming PC for is old stuff, mods and emulation. But you don’t need a top tier machine for that and the majority don’t care about those things.
I just upgraded mine a few years ago, primarily just for MSFS. It cost a bundle and could use an update already! I would be very happy to pay $XX per month to have access to a gaming PC that is kept up-to-date.
I’m also a ham radio operator, and due to a small lot and noisy conditions, I operate remotely. In other words, I pay to use other stations for my operations. If I get a better location, maybe I’ll get my own gear again. But, for now, it’s nice not worrying about lightning hitting the antenna or a storm blowing it down!
I would also do the same thing for this PC under my desk. Let others keep it up-to-date and fix the water cooler when it goes bad.
Even Microsoft themselves fell foul of that, with their abortive attempt at foisting a tablet interface on us with Windows 8. They reluctantly rowed back on that a bit with 8.1, before giving up entirely with Windows 10.
Every couple of years some pundit cries out that the “PC Age is Over” because of some newfangled insert-buzzword-fad-here deal…
Take it with a grain of salt - actually, pour down the whole shaker on it just to be sure, and add some pepper too for taste…
There’s a reason why the desktop PC is the king of platforms - It’s not because some corporate hivemind did a bunch of focus groups and decided thus, but because PCs evolved to their current shape and form over decades of real-world usage. Anything that didn’t work, we didn’t keep around. Though many such “way of the future” items were touted as the Next Big Thing™ in their time.
In actual fact, it’s most rarely that any product design survives first contact with the end user.
PCs are here to stay - If something else wants to take their place, they’d have to start by first duplicating every feature that makes a PC so useful, no compromises. At which point, as shape follows function, what you’d end up with is a device that for all intents and purposes is, basically a PC
No other platform can be expanded like the PC. No other platform drives hardware innovation like the PC. Nvidia aren’t making 4090’s because they hope to sell them to MS/Sony to put in their latest console.
Like many things in life, as long as there is demand for it, companies will continue to sell it.
The demands a given user puts on their chosen hardware will differ from person to person. But for me I cannot imagine doing any kind of simming on anything other than the PC. The other platforms just don’t have the breadth of hardware to take advantage of. Consoles having yokes is a relatively recent adoption, yet they have existed on PC for a long time. And even further back for simple joysticks.
Can we run MSI afterburner on the cloud pc too? 
raise your hand if your of a certain age and have yelled at the cloud 
I try very hard NOT to store anything of value in the cloud.
I tend to scream when the “Cloud” is down.
I tire from all the companies wanting me to store my valuable business data there.
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Dumb terminals went away many years ago and I am not going back there !
MSFS is already available on XCloud and it will soon be available in other cloud services like Geforce Now and Boosteroid.