Cloud gaming services are beginning to back up as the coronavirus forces people to stay at home

Xbox One S
Xbox One S (Image credit: Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • The coronavirus is causing more people to stay at home than usual.
  • This means online gaming services like NVIDIA GeForce Now and Projext xCloud are seeing increased traffic.
  • It looks like this might be leading to long queues and strained servers.

The coronavirus means that more people than ever are choosing to stay at home rather than go out. People staying at home means more people than ever are choosing to go online and play games. It seems this might be leading to some issues with online services not being fully able to handle the stress. We've seen Xbox Live go down a handful of times in the last few weeks, and now it seems people are seeing extremely long loading times and a lot of input lag for other services.

Users of NVIDIA's GeForce Now on reddit are discussing long wait times, restricted access, as well as intense amounts of network and input lag when playing games. Because of increased player counts, and possibly reduced ability for companies to manage their online services while employees work from home, cloud gaming services could be pushed to their limits over the next few weeks.

It remains to be seen if the effect is as bad with other services as it apparently is with GeForce Now, so we'll keep our eyes open and update this space when we get more information.

Have you been noticing any increased network or online issues in the last few weeks? What services have been affected? Let us know in the comments below!

Zachary Boddy
Staff Writer

Zachary Boddy (They / Them) is a Staff Writer for Windows Central, primarily focused on covering the latest news in tech and gaming, the best Xbox and PC games, and the most interesting Windows and Xbox hardware. They have been gaming and writing for most of their life starting with the original Xbox, and started out as a freelancer for Windows Central and its sister sites in 2019. Now a full-fledged Staff Writer, Zachary has expanded from only writing about all things Minecraft to covering practically everything on which Windows Central is an expert, especially when it comes to Microsoft. You can find Zachary on Twitter @BoddyZachary.