I was looking at the Surface Book 3 specs and it hit me that the value proposition for discrete graphics has changed significantly if you want to game on your laptop.
Since Stadia, Geforce Now and other cloud gaming services have launched, I suddenly have no interest in paying hundreds extra for a gaming capable laptop, just to make a compromise on weight, battery life or GPU power. I've been gaming on the cloud services for the past few months, and as long as you're within a few hundred miles of a cloud rendering location, you're going to get a far better mobile gaming experience on a thin, light and cheap laptop than you would on mobile graphics.
I've been enjoying fast-paced platformers, online shooters and action-RPGs on a 5 year old laptop and wouldn't want to downgrade to mobile graphics. This actually shocks me that my hardware preferences could have changed so rapidly. I would have been salivating over the gaming specs of the surface book 6 months ago.
Since Stadia, Geforce Now and other cloud gaming services have launched, I suddenly have no interest in paying hundreds extra for a gaming capable laptop, just to make a compromise on weight, battery life or GPU power. I've been gaming on the cloud services for the past few months, and as long as you're within a few hundred miles of a cloud rendering location, you're going to get a far better mobile gaming experience on a thin, light and cheap laptop than you would on mobile graphics.
I've been enjoying fast-paced platformers, online shooters and action-RPGs on a 5 year old laptop and wouldn't want to downgrade to mobile graphics. This actually shocks me that my hardware preferences could have changed so rapidly. I would have been salivating over the gaming specs of the surface book 6 months ago.