Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have been a supporter of cloud gaming starting with the OnLive micro game system in 2009. Since then I’ve tried Nvidia GeForce Now (Nvidia Shield), Stadia (Chromecast), Vortex (PC), Xbox Game Pass (XB1), and now Luna (Fire Stick 4K). The biggest obstacle I had during my OnLive gaming experience is still an issue today, location and your ISP. As an example, I will walk through my experience with OnLive. I live in central IL and the closest OnLive data centers were in Dallas and Chicago. Each of these locations offered the same quality of game play because of distance and my ISP routing. Chicago should have provided the best result just on distance alone, 204 miles vs 731 miles to Dallas. Unfortunately, the number of hops from my location to Chicago was 15. The number of hops to Dallas was half that resulting in the same quality due to the physical distance. Your actual ISP provider is another issue. Even though the internet is supposed to be open to everyone, ISPs do not like to share lines, which is why there were so many hops to reach Chicago. I had a competing ISP installed and it only used 8 hops to reach Chicago, but it was a slower overall connection (DSL vs Cable) resulting in equal quality. Now that Comcast has stated it will be adding data caps to home internet users, Comcast is creating yet another barrier for cloud gaming to overcome. The short story is you will need to test each platform to find the one that works best for you or try running tests on the data center locations to shorten the list of possible services. You will most likely still end up trying multiple cloud gaming providers trying to find the one that works for you. For me, it is Stadia With an Ethernet connection. I was really hoping Luna would end up being the best for me. The interface is slick and it is really easy to use. Switching back and forth from Fire TV and the Luna service is quick and done with a simple push of the center button. The controller will, if connected with Blue Tooth, switch between a direct network connection for Luna and a BT connection for Fire TV. I will keep using Luna hoping it will get better for me. Luna also provides a great way to demo and/or play android games on a TV. I have already purchased several games from Steam due to trying them on Luna. I don’t think cloud gaming will improve until ISPs realize they can capitalize from cloud gaming services. I really expected back in the day from using OnLive that ISPs would start providing faster direct connections to your platform of choice for an extra fee. It has not happened yet, but I am sure one day there will be cloud gaming packages. “So, would you like to sign up for a Google cloud gamming package today for an introductory three-month price of $19.99?” Update (12/03/2020): I purchased an Ethernet adapter for for the Fire TV 4K and gained a significant improvement to Luna. With both Luna and Stadia using a wired connection I did a head to head with Metro Exodus. Luna provided twice the resolution and near instant response time. Response time was based of the melee attack and Stadia is at least a half second behind Luna. I also forgot to mention that not only does Luna have a slick interface, it is easier to use when compared to Stadia. Stadia requires the app to browse and/or purchase games. Luna does everything, except pairing the controller, through the Fire TV interface making Luna more user friendly and polished. Now that I have had a chance to compare everything equally, Luna is by far the better choice for me.