> and never have to worry about sitting around for hours waiting for updates or downloads

Here's the thing though. Those downloads and updates have a massive efficiency factor. Once you have downloaded your assets, they don't have do be downloaded again to be used.

With these game streaming platforms, it doesn't matter that you have downloaded 100GB in screen frames. They can only be used once and then are discarded. In some cases this is a benefit - on Flight Simulator 2020 the servers only have to send you a fraction of their terrain data. But that's a small part of it.

> stable, smooth gaming-as-a-service experience

Netflix and the like work because you can buffer. Is your connection a bit choppy today? Hit pause and let it buffer a bit, hopefully it will stabilize. But games do not tolerate ANY latency issues. Even things like Steam Link - using only your local network - can struggle if there's too much traffic or interference.

Then there's the business model. I don't want a 'subscription'. If I buy a game today I may be spending $60 upfront(if the game has been out for a while, often much less), but I can play as much as I want.

Do you have fantastic internet connectivity, an under-powered device, and you want to quickly shuffle through different games from an online selection? Ok, this could make sense.

Still, this sounds like a far better deal for corporations, as opposed to consumers.

The 100GB of game data I have to wait around to download.

The 100GB of streamed frames happen while I'm playing so I don't care.

This benefit is for those who value their time highly and want something to 'just work' without having to bother with installing stuff, updating, buying and setting up new hardware every year, etc.

Imagine you only have 30 mins a month to do gaming... Like many busy adults... With a PS4 or PC, you'd spend most of your 30 mins waiting for updates to complete.

Even then, it would still be massively more efficient for the game to just stream in the assets in the background while playing, while still rendering everything locally. WoW, for one, has done that for years.

Or you could just start Steam a few minutes before your monthly 30 minutes I guess. If you have the internet connection required for stable cloud gaming, you won't be spending long waiting for the patches anyway anyway.

You’re missing the point. Most people don’t want to download a video instead of streaming directly, which is a far lower barrier than procuring equipment, dealing with compatibility issues, doing system updates etc. I doubt competitive gamers will ever move across but it hugely reduces the barriers for casual or time poor gamers.

30 minutes is a bit of a trite example but if you only have say less than 10 hours a month the dollars/hour for owning your own your own hardware looks a lot worse than the subscription model.