What you need to know
- Folks staying at home have been gaming in the cloud more than ever: 50% more, to be precise.
- Shadow has also seen a 30% increase in productivity app usage during the day.
- Shadow's new half-priced option for $12/month could be helping push things along, too.
Cloud gaming is quickly becoming the norm, accelerated by the advent of folks working from home and staying at home due to global confinement measures. Shadow released some rather incredible numbers, showing that cloud gaming in the U.S. has grown over 50% since the beginning of March, and people using Shadow's VMs to more effectively work from home have risen over 30%, as well.
What's particularly interesting about Shadow's figures is the increase in players during the day. Shadow shows that gamers typically play in the evening or at night but, since the world started slowing down a bit and more people are at home during the day, cloud gaming usage before 5 pm in each time zone has also risen by more than 50%. Aside from cloud gaming, folks have been using Shadow's VMs to be more productive during the day, showing a 30% growth in usage on weekdays.
Since Shadow's service provides users with a full virtual machine that's running Windows 10, there's little difference between the VM Shadow loans you and the computer you might be running at home. In fact, the biggest difference for many people is the horsepower that Shadow's VMs provide. No matter if you've got an iPad, a Chromebook, or some other type of light and agile computer, Shadow's VMs can be used in place of a high-powered desktop computer, even offering top-tier cloud gaming through one of their new pricing plans.
Shadow's service is different from other cloud gaming services, like Nvidia's GeForce Now, because it gives you an entire VM to work with, not just a curated list of approved games. That also means you can do anything from running the Virtual Desktop app to stream VR games to your Oculus Quest, to crunching huge spreadsheets in Excel for work. Shadow also has its own VR cloud gaming service coming soon for the Oculus Quest, which will give Quest gamers the same full Windows 10 VM to play any PC VR title like Half-Life: Alyx, for instance.
Your own personal cloud VM
Shadow's service doesn't just give you a curated list of games to choose from; it lets you play any PC game you own on any service you own it on. Gaming isn't the only thing you can use it for, though, as this is a full Windows 10 VM that can do anything you want.
