It was over 18 months ago that we found out about Shadow and then a few months after that we actually got a chance to try it out. At the time is was revolutionary, a first of it’s kind and it worked pretty well. Skip forward 18 months and the market is becoming more open to the idea of cloud gaming, especially with Google Stadia which is set for release in a few weeks. Shadow has had to listen to the market and they have responded well I think, with a new, more competitive pricing strategy.
Developed by French start up, Blade, Shadow is a virtual gaming machine, that is housed within a very large data centre somewhere in Europe, that allows you to play the games you want, via your low-end device, anywhere in the world. It’s currently available on Windows 10, Mac OS, Smart TV, Android and soon IOS. There are just two requirements, your device needs to run a Shadow compatible operating system, and have an internet connection of at least 15mb/s. Also, if you want to play at a 4K resolution, your device must support that.
With Shadow, it is possible to play all your video games, even the latest releases, from any device (computer, smartphone, television, iPad…). And to better serve the gaming community, Shadow has announced a new subscription offering and servers, which sees the use of ray tracing technology combined with the power of GeForce RTX 2080 and TITAN graphics cards.
New monthly subscriptions are as follows:
- Boost – at £12.99 per month (£14.99 without commitment), this highly accessible offer allows subscribers to play all the latest games in Full HD from any device.
- Ultra – at £24.99 per month (£29.99 without commitment), gamers are offered the possibility to play with superior graphic performance(s) in 4K, up to 144 FPS in Full HD with ray tracing compatibility. This offer provides the power of a GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, but also the power of a better processor, more RAM and more storage.
- Infinite – at £39.99 per month (£49.99 without commitment), Infinite grants the most demanding gamers, streamers and creators direct access to the “best available” on the market: a dream computer including ray tracing combined with the top graphics card at the moment (RTX Titan), and 1TB of storage. With this dream line-up, users will be able to play all the latest games in 4K.
It’s hard to compare services like Shadow with something like Stadia, they’re similar in some ways, different in many others and only time will tell how well Shadow will hold up in the market. They’ve made it this far and I hope they continue going strong in an increasingly popular market.
