Cloud gaming: What our leaders think

Cloud gaming has been described as “the future” for more than a decade. In practice, it’s still a work in progress. Internet infrastructure, latency, cost, and other factors limit what’s possible today. 

For us at Room 8 Group, cloud isn’t about some ideal of futuristic, sci-fi-turned-reality gaming experiences. Its real strengths lie in how it lowers barriers, expands communities, and complements traditional play.  

In this piece, three of our leaders—Benjamin Paquette (Senior Game Director), Guillaume Carmona (VP of Game Production), and Yann LeTensorer (VP of Technology)—offer their insights into how cloud technology is transforming the industry.  

This piece showcases some of the insights found in Room 8 Group’s and 80 Level’s joint research report—How UGC, AI, And cloud are transforming gaming—which you can read here.  

Gaming without barriers 

“For me, cloud gaming means levelling out the playing field for everyone, everywhere,” says Benjamin Paquette, Senior Game Director. “No matter what equipment you have, as long as you have access to a screen, you can play the latest and greatest games. With that entry barrier gone, multiplayer games in particular can create much wider communities, erasing barriers worldwide.”  

That accessibility is cloud gaming’s real strength. For players who might not have the latest hardware, the possibility of loading into a game instantly and joining friends wherever they are on the planet feels like freedom. Benjamin relates this to younger generations: “They treat games as their social networks. Cloud gaming allows that social life to happen anywhere, instantly.” 

A publisher’s perspective 

As far as publishing, Guillaume Carmona, VP of Game Production, sees cloud as the natural next step of distribution. 

“By running games on powerful remote servers rather than local hardware, cloud gaming lowers the barrier to entry for players who might not have the latest console or a high-end PC. This broadens the potential audience and encourages new experiments with different genres and experiences.”  

Guillaume points out that the benefits extend to developers, too. Updates can be rolled out seamlessly, sparing players from massive downloads. Cross-play and cross-progression become easier to support when the game is streamed from a central environment. “It’s not just convenience for players—it’s convenience for studios too,” he says. 

The reality check 

But the story isn’t one of unbroken progress. Latency on cloud is especially unforgiving in fast-paced games. A delay of even a fraction of a second can change the outcome of a match. For Yann LeTensorer, VP of Technology, cloud’s adoption will depend on how quickly infrastructure and prediction techniques improve. He is cautious about overselling the present. 

“We’ve been talking about cloud gaming for ages. It has benefits like cross-platform play and instant access, but it requires large infrastructures, stable internet, and you still deal with latency. Graphics quality can suffer from excessive compression used to reduce the bandwidth, and new AI-based compression techniques could help overcome this challenge. Some AI techniques could also help better predict what the player will do next, which could reduce the perceived lag. But it’s not a solved problem.”  

Hybrid habits 

Benjamin notes that the player experience is also shifting in subtler ways. “More and more games use the phone as a controller. You can just take your phone, log into your cloud service, and stream high-quality games on TV. That shift in how people play is just beginning.”  

Cloud doesn’t have to replace traditional gaming. Instead, it can fill in the gaps: playing your previous game save on the go, jumping into a session at a friend’s house, or trying a game without a huge upfront install. 

A cautious embrace 

Yann is frank about Room 8 Group’s position:

“It’s not a priority for us—[we have] more of a follower attitude for now. There are nice things to do with it, but it’s not a key thing.”  

That perspective reflects where cloud gaming is today: promising, but still maturing. Guillaume puts it into a broader context: “Latency and infrastructure will improve over time. We’ve seen it before with online play, with cross-play, with digital distribution. What feels clunky at first often becomes standard once the tech catches up.”  

The long view 

Cloud gaming is already improving accessibility and reshaping how communities play together. But it’s not a revolution that will sweep away consoles or PCs anytime soon. Instead it’s complementary: another way to play—perhaps playing the same game, indeed the same save, wherever you are in the world as long as you have good internet connection. 

As Benjamin says, the social heart of gaming doesn’t change. Whether it’s through cloud, console, or PC, players gather to share experiences. Cloud’s promise lies in making that gathering easier, faster, and available to more people. 

For more in-depth insight on cloud gaming, download the report we published with 80 Level.