YES, IT’S TRUE
For so many years we Indian gamers have thirsted for an acceptable cloud gaming experience, many of us were burned by LiquidSky (remember LiquidSky? That was terrible!), HEARTBROKEN by GeforceNow not being locally available, Kicked between the legs after the rumours of Playstation Now being released in India in 2020 were proven to be false, GoogleStadia being… well, let’s not even talk about stadia.
Long story short- after the Indian gamer was let down by ALL these companies that treating him like a second-class citizen, as a low priority customer, we now have a streaming service that ACTUALLY works well!
I know its bad practice for a blog post but I will just give you the link right at the start of the blog, you can click on the “Play demo” button in the centre of the page and judge the experience for yourself, and then come back (please guys, bookmark us) and read our comprehensive analysis of the thegamingproject.co
- Plans and pricing
- stream quality
- Features
- Concerns (about the company and a few other things)
Table of Contents
Plans and Pricing
There’s the free tier, Pro tier (Rs 200) and the ultimate plan(Rs 500).
A part from these 3 tiers, there’s also a weekend plan which I think is the best, you pay Rs. 150 and get all the benefits of the Ultimate plan for the weekend. You get unlimited hours and access to some of the games that you own.
This is the ideal plan imo because for most, people, they are going to work hard at their job or education on the weekdays, they will not have access to games everywhere so they will be able to focus more on their work. Then during the weekend, they get completely unrestricted access to the games. Although if you are gaming EVERY weekend then I recommend just getting the Ultimate plan, would be cheaper.
The free tier is okay, you get 6 hours per month and they don’t stack. Meaning if you played for 4 hours (2 hours left) and the next month starts you will have 6 hours only, NOT 8 hours (6 monthly + 2 carry over). It is good if you just want to try it out before buying. For any serious gaming you’ll have to shell out for a plan.
Stream Quality
It’s not that great, and I think that is fine. This service is meant for people who don’t have access to gaming hardware. Most of the time, that person will not be nit-picking about a few compression artifacts. That person will be happy that he is having an unexpectedly playable experience over the internet.
But that doesn’t change the objective fact that the streaming quality is bad even on the highest streaming settings. I had Lords of the fallen natively running on my laptop screen, and running on the web browser on my external monitor.
I can definitely tell the difference. The game running natively at 720p medium on my laptop looked A LOT better than the game running on the highest settings on the gaming project’s server. The difference between the ultra and very low streaming options was not that huge in some games either. The games with a lot of dark scenes were suffering the most stream compression degradation. Which is probably why the Demo game is a racing game where the motion blur would hide all the quality loss. Overall, its bad. BUT PLAYABLE.
Moving to the other more important aspect of game streaming, it is the latency, it’s fantastic on a wired connection and almost unacceptable on wifi.
Of course, with the game running on the other screen natively, I could definitely tell the difference between the two. The one running natively was much, much more “immediate”. But if I didn’t have that, the latency of the game stream was not that bad either. Although that kinda depends on the game you’re trying to play. There is no point in trying to play competitive shooters over there. You will be at a huge disadvantage compared to people running the game natively.
In the right games It never reached a point where I would consider it unplayable. But I have a pretty okay 50mbps ADSL connection. People with better fiber connections will probably have a better experience and their compression quality loss too might be less severe.
Features
The service has some free games that you can play even if you don’t own those games. This consists of the cheaper low budget games. My favourite among those is Lords of the fallen. It’s basically a Dark Souls rip off. The selection here is rather unimpressive but it is fine for super casual gamers. Your younger brother is asking you to let him play games on your laptop? Just tell him to play the free games on TGP in the free tier. Useful but not something worth my (or your) time.
Now if you buy a plan, you get access to some more free games and (this is where the fun begins) the ability to play some of the games that you own. This is where the real games are. This is what you want to play. There are several AAA games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, GTA 5 and others. They are adding new games and they are very smart about the games that they add.
Metro 2033 Redux went free for a few days on Epic games store recently and they added it to the list of playable owned games. Pretty smart.
Concerns
I have 3 main concerns.
What is their agreement with the game companies? Is the entire thing licensed?
Some of you might be aware that many game developers pulled their game from Nvidia’s Geforce Now game streaming service. How does all that tie in to the games available on TGP? Are all the games just going to disappear one day just like they kinda did with Geforce Now?
Security
To play some of the games like GTA 5 and others, you have to log in to the game launcher on the remote machine. It is technically very easy to just use a keylogger and they will have complete access to your account. Even worse if you log in using the Google account.
Customer service
Recently on reddit there was a post about bad customer service from the company. The guy who posted it and shared his experience said that when he called their support, the CEO of the company picked up the phone.
Well, I don’t know how credible the story is, but that kinda puts into perspective the scope of the operation if you decide to believe it. I am posting a link to the reddit post, you guys can decide if you believe it or not on your own.
Conclusion
Worth a try! The free tier gives you plenty of time to judge the experience first-hand. There are no queues or anything. I highly recommend trying it out.
This Review is Written By – Aryan Tiwari
I’m a simple guy, interested in gadgets and stuff.
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This content is collaboratively crafted and vetted by Shubham, a Mechanical Engineering specialist. His passion for unraveling the intricacies of machinery and consumer electronics mirrors his avid interest in gaming. With his wealth of expertise, Shubham adeptly navigates readers through the complexities of audio, home appliances, and everyday products, guaranteeing a smooth and enjoyable shopping journey. For every product you read about on this site we do rigorous research and testing behind the scenes to bring you the best value for money options. For any query directly reach out to me at my personal Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shubhamgarg8024/
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FYI – Bing-Chat GPT mentioned this as one of the sources on asking “reviews of the Gaming Project 4K cloud gaming”