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“Cloud games” or “cloud Internet cafes”, are some people on the wrong track in the hot new industry hotspots?

First, let’s imagine a scenario. You love gaming, but your gaming device only has an outdated computer and a decent phone. You have a budget at hand, but it can only meet the needs of the game purchase, but not upgrade the equipment. So, how can you experience games that you like but have far higher configuration requirements than your device?

At this point, the cloud game is the savior you have been waiting for.

It’s not just a savior. Cloud gaming is also a promising new generation industry. Overseas, this kind of service that does not require high equipment configuration and transmits game content through the network is favored by many manufacturers. At home, it also attracts the attention of capital.

In January of this year, CCTV Finance Channel quoted data from a data consulting platform in a report on the gaming industry, mentioning that in the past two years, the national cloud gaming market has grown from 630 million yuan to 2.24 billion yuan. At the end of 2019, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and the 5G Cloud Game Industry Alliance released the “White Paper on Cloud Game Industry Development-5G helps the rapid development of the cloud game industry”, the appendix of which shows some domestic cloud game platforms, including from Douyu, Internet vendors such as Tencent also own mobile communication, China Unicom, and telecommunications companies.

In these cases, China Mobile ’s cloud gaming platform Migu Kuaiyou caught our attention. Migu Quick Tour has a very compelling game lineup. On closer inspection, many of these games have not been licensed and look like “cloud piracy games” or “cloud net bars.” As a new industry, “cloud games” are bound to go through a period of chaos, but the problem of Migu Quick Tour may not be an example, but a microcosm of the rapid development of the industry.

Migu Quick Tour client startup interface

What games does Migu Quick Tour offer?

As of press time, the Migu Quick Tour platform provides 215 games for users to play in the cloud. This includes some free games, mobile games with paid items, as well as many of the major works and independent works that we are familiar with. They are not Players need to install local files to “click and play”. Currently, the platform is in beta, and all content can be played for free. Only some online games with in-app purchases require additional payment.

The “Free Lineup” contains a number of games released by Ubisoft. Prior to February 3, many works in the “Assassin’s Creed” series (including mobile games) were available for free to players; EA was also included Its game, “Titanfall 2” often dominates the Migu Quick Tour game list with excellent single-player plots; it has also won the popularity of “The Wolf: Shadows Twice” in the TGA game of the year 2019. Yes, in the evaluation area of ​​this game, 25 players left a recommendation rate of 92%.

Part of the game lineup

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Halo: Master Chief Collection uploaded by Windspeaker

It’s more than that. The Epic game store ’s exclusive “Control” on PC, Microsoft ’s masterpiece “War Machine 5” in 2019, and “Halo: Master Chief Collection” that has n’t been on the PC for a long time, and “Walking Way”, which has caused controversy due to pricing issues Can be played on the Migu Quick Tour platform. In addition, Migu Quick Tour also provides a lot of independent games, such as “The Unknown Big Goose”, “My Friend Pedro”, “Humans: Defeat”, and “Digging for Ascension” and Goat Simulator, the latter two provideOr mobile version.

All games are free to play.

Behind the seemingly luxurious game lineup, if players have some knowledge of the game industry, they will realize that such a lineup is very outrageous for domestic game platforms.

Having more and better games is an important core competitiveness of a gaming platform. Many cloud gaming platforms are working hard to expand the game lineup in exchange for greater competitiveness. Vendors that already have game malls have a natural advantage in this regard. Sony’s cloud game service PlayStation Now offers 650 games, including games released on different generations of PS; Microsoft claims that Project xCloud will officially support every released Xbox One game and some other Xbox series consoles The total number of old games can reach 3500.

In China, Tencent’s START cloud game, which is still being tested, also provides content on the basis of Tencent’s original game mall. START Cloud is launched based on the WeGame client. If it supports all WeGame content in the future, it can provide close to 400 games. Although the number is not as high as the first two, it is already a very bright number in the domestic market.

Cloud game vendors who do not have a way to sell games will participate in other ways. For example, GeForce Now, a subsidiary of Nvidia, does not have its own game mall. It does not sell games by itself. It mainly provides content transmission services for games already purchased by players on major game platforms.

Some domestic cloud gaming services have also found their own way of survival. These services are more like providing users with a “cloud computer” (some companies also call their products like this). Like Huawei cloud games we tested before, users upload their purchased games in the cloud to meet the content demand. Similar cloud services are not uncommon in China, and not only for cloud games, some players also upload game clients through similar services to meet the needs of opening multiple games on the same device.

Migu Quick Tour does not belong to any of the above-it has a more unique route than the above methods of providing game content.

Who’s game?

Migu Quick Tour has its own game mall, which allows players to pay for purchases or continue to own game content in a subscription-like manner. As mentioned in the appendix of the “Whitepaper for the Development of the Cloud Game Industry”, Migu Quick Tour’s charging methods are divided into continuous monthly, monthly, seasonal, annual, and time-based fees, of which the annual card is 289 yuan / year. In addition, there is a “Limited Free Zone” in Migu Quick Tour. All games in this zone show that the free time ends on March 31 this year, and the price ranges from a few dollars to tens of dollars. Some did not indicate a price.

In the current beta version of Migu Quick Tour, players only need toAfter playing for a certain period of time, you can become a time-limited “G code” user. G-code user privileges include some unspecified “game rights”, and most importantly-cache games locally. After sharing the game content of the PC on the platform to the social network, after actively “Amway” to the player, you can also use the screenshot to find customer service to receive the G code or extend the G code validity period for one month.

After you have the G-code, most of the games mentioned above can be cached to run locally, but you ca n’t play network elements. After being able to download locally, Migu Quick Tour has ceased to be a pure cloud gaming platform. The problem is that these games are incomplete and of questionable origin.

In the upper right of the “Second Play” key, there is an option to download the game to your local computer.

The version of the game built in Migu Quick Tour is more chaotic. Some games include all DLC, some games have incomplete DLC, and some of the games have not been announced to enter the Chinese market. In addition, most games do not have a networking element. It can be said that it is more like a pirated game-in fact, if you have been to some less formal Internet cafes, you will find that Migu Quick Tour is like the game platforms built in those Internet cafes.

In the free zone, the operators of most games are displayed as Migu Entertainment. Among them, some games can indeed retrieve the news of the cooperation between the developer and Migu, and some can not find any signs of cooperation. For example, Ubisoft ’s mobile game “Assassin’s Creed: True Colors” does work with Migu. In addition, many of the above PC masterpieces have “unknown origins”. Some of these games are not approved at all for reasons such as approval May be listed in China. Click the link on the platform. In the section of the sale information, they will only show that they are uploaded by the user. The username for uploading “The Wolf: Shadows Twice” is “Iron Man”, and he also uploaded “Watch Dogs 2” and “Defensive Defense 4”.

We consulted the official customer service about authorization related issues, and the answer was: These “user-uploaded” content actually came from the platform’s operation department, and there was also a cooperative relationship between Miguyouyou and game manufacturers.

“Mechanical Lost City” is indeed operated by Migu Quick Tour

On the Migu Quick Tour platform, “Assassin’s Creed: True Colors” comes with an account with the best equipment and a lot of money

It is intriguing that on the same day that Touch Music asked Ubisoft if it had cooperated with Migu Kuaiyou, the “Assassin’s Creed” series on Migu Kuaiyou’s platform were all removed from the shelves. , There is only one “Assassin’s Creed: True Colors”. The picture shows the page before the game is removed.

Not every game that appears on Migu Quick Tour has a “partnership.” Indie game producer Li Chicheng told Touch Music that he did not cooperate with Migu, but the “Blood Seal” he developed was released on the Migu Quick Tour platform, and even the promotional video was cut off from the Steam platform; CD Projekt Red The Chinese team told Touch Music that at present they did not have any cooperation with Migu and presumably the user “Luban VII” who uploaded “Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” on Migu Quick Tour did not get any permission. In addition, the responses given by more large manufacturers we have asked are not clear-for larger manufacturers, cooperation may be carried out by different departments, so they cannot confirm the existence of cooperation in the first place.

Limited zone

As of press time, no one except Ubisoft has explicitly stated that they have cooperated with Migu Kuaiyou.

Beyond these core questions, what exactly is the game experience of Migu Quick Tour, the “cloud web cafe”? After playing for a while, I can only say that Migu quickly swims into the tourThe performance during the play was excellent, and during off-peak periods that did not require queuing, all games were indeed “ready to run.”

In addition, in about 5 hours of experience, most games will experience severe frame loss and serious image quality loss when the character moves. Mosaics are often visible, and some require detailed operations or rely on screen details. The game is difficult to play. In the static state, although the freeze can be avoided, the picture quality is still poor. There are also two or three games that run relatively smoothly, but the quality loss is still large. According to official customer service, lowering the game’s image quality seems to increase fluidity.

This is the picture performance of “Zombie World War” at rest

And the screen performance of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag at rest

Even if most of the works cannot be connected to the Internet, players who are only for single-player content are likely to encounter some unpleasantness on the Migu Quick Tour platform. If you want to keep the save in the game, you need to log in to the game continuously, otherwise you will be recognized as a “guest” and lose the save. At some specific time, when you open the game, you will find that you are waiting in line … At this stage, maybe it is Migu Quick Tour only provides a small number of clients in the server. When the number of players exceeds the system limit, the system will require players to wait in line. This feature makes it more like a “cloud web bar” rather than a cloud Game platform.

“The game is too hot, now line up for you”

Conclusion

As players, we hope that cloud games will provide the best game body one day.This includes standardized authorization, so players can enjoy all the conveniences of being a genuine user. It is disturbing that some cloud games seem to be moving in the wrong direction. When inquiring about the information related to Migu Quick Tour, we noticed a series of paid services and platforms that also bear the banner of “cloud games” and “cloud computers”. They claim that they do not need to download games, do not require high-profile computers, and can be used in “seconds.” play games. Just like the services provided by Migu Kuaiyou, many of them require players to “queue and wait”, most of them do not need to create an in-game account, and even the game lineup of some platforms has surpassed Migu Kuaiyou to experience “arrogance and domineering.” The series and the “Call of Duty” series of games-this obviously has nowhere to go.

It seems that the cloud gaming industry not only provides business opportunities, but also brings more copyright disputes. Is it legal to upload game works (assuming that they are purchased through legal means) to the player using cloud platform features? Will these revenues be distributed to hard-working game developers? Will manufacturers who are not eligible to sell games upload pirated resources under the guise of “cloud games” to make money? If the future 5G network really greatly enhances the cloud gaming experience, will more players be willing to accept non-standard cloud gaming platforms, which will affect the developer’s revenue? We may not be able to answer these questions in a short time, but if they all come true, the situation will certainly not be optimistic.

In the past two or three decades, we have witnessed every outlet of the domestic game industry, and almost every time it starts from chaos. There are many and many lessons that can be summarized. In the current moment of cloud games eager to try out, let’s hope that history will not really repeat itself.