When you press jump in a cloud-streamed game, the press leaves your house, reaches a data center that may be hundreds of kilometres away, changes a game running on someone else’s hardware and comes back as video. On a good wired connection, that entire round trip can finish in less than a tenth of a second.
Following one button press from start to finish is the clearest way to see what cloud gaming actually does. It also shows why the console has not vanished so much as moved into a rack somewhere else.
The Press Leaves Your Hands
The trip starts at the controller, which sends the press to your phone, laptop or TV over Bluetooth or a cable, exactly as it would with a console. The difference is what the device does next, because instead of running the game it wraps the input into a tiny network packet and hands it to your router.
From there the packet competes with everything else on the home network, so NVIDIA advises a wired Ethernet connection or a strong 5 GHz Wi-Fi signal for GeForce Now. Microsoft gave similar advice when Xbox Cloud Gaming reached Australia in October 2021.
The same split, with the action far away and only video and inputs crossing the internet, already powers live-dealer tables. At an online casino such as crownpokies casino, a live roulette wheel spins in a studio while your bet travels back, so what matters is a betting window that allows for stream delay, video that softens instead of freezing, and clear rules for dropped connections.
Six Stops on a Round Trip
Once the packet leaves the router, the press passes through six distinct stages before its result reaches your eyes. Each one adds a slice of delay, and the slowest stage usually decides how responsive the game feels. The table below follows the order of the trip.
| Stage | Where it happens | What slows it down |
| 1. Input capture | Controller and your device | Bluetooth lag, a busy phone or smart TV |
| 2. Upload | Home network and internet provider | Weak Wi-Fi, congestion, distance to the server |
| 3. Game update | Server in the data center | A demanding scene or a low frame rate |
| 4. Video encoding | Graphics hardware on the server | Higher resolution and quality settings |
| 5. Download | Internet provider and home network | Limited bandwidth and packet loss |
| 6. Decode and display | Your device and screen | A slow decoder or TV picture processing |
The upload and download legs share the same physical path, so a congested connection is penalized twice on every press. The middle stages, by contrast, run on professional hardware and are the part of the chain the player cannot influence at all.
Across the Network to a Data Centre
Distance is the one delay no amount of hardware can remove. Light in optical fiber covers roughly 200,000 kilometres per second, which works out to about one millisecond of round-trip time for every 100 kilometres between you and the server, before routing adds its share.
That arithmetic shapes cloud gaming in Australia more than in most countries. Perth sits more than 3,000 kilometers from Sydney, so a western player routed east would spend over 30 milliseconds on physics alone. For that reason, the local GeForce Now service, run by Perth company Pentanet under its CloudGG brand, uses infrastructure in both cities.
NVIDIA’s own advice is to stay under 80 milliseconds of network latency to its data center, with under 40 milliseconds preferred. PCWorld’s 2023 test of the RTX 4080 tier measured a typical 18 to 25 milliseconds, showing how much a nearby server helps.
The Server Runs the Frame
When the packet arrives, the server treats it exactly as a console would treat a press from a controller in the same room. The game updates its world, the graphics processor renders the next frame, and from the game’s point of view nothing unusual has happened.
Microsoft runs Xbox Cloud Gaming on server blades built around Xbox Series X hardware in its Azure data centers, so the game still runs on console chips, just inside a rack. NVIDIA uses its own RTX graphics cards and began moving its top tier to RTX 5080-class Blackwell servers in September 2025, quoting up to 5K at 120 frames per second.
Frame rate matters here because each frame is a fixed slice of time. At 60 frames per second the server finishes a new image every 16.7 milliseconds, while at 120 it needs only about 8.3, so a faster stream shortens the wait before your press can appear on screen.
Squeezed Into Video and Sent Home
A finished frame is far too large to send raw, so the server’s hardware encoder compresses it into a video stream using codecs such as H.264, HEVC or AV1, depending on what your device can decode. How sharp that video looks depends mostly on the bandwidth you can give it, and NVIDIA publishes clear minimums for GeForce Now:
- 720p at 60 fps: at least 15 Mbps, the entry point for phones and small screens.
- 1080p at 60 fps: 25 Mbps, the usual target for laptops and monitors.
- 1440p at 120 fps: 35 Mbps for sharper displays with faster refresh rates.
- 4K at 60 fps: 40 Mbps on supported TVs and streaming devices.
- 4K at 120 fps: 45 Mbps, available on compatible smart TVs.
Bandwidth also turns directly into data use. A stream running flat out at 25 Mbps would get through roughly 11 GB an hour, a real cost on mobile plans and capped connections.
When the Network Hiccups
The return trip is where cloud gaming shows its weak spots. NVIDIA’s connection test asks for packet loss below 1% because every lost packet is a missing piece of video, and PCWorld noted that even a minor network hiccup causes a visible hitch in the stream.
Streaming services handle a shrinking connection by lowering the bitrate, which keeps the game playable but softens the picture and can bring back blocky artefacts in fast scenes. A console in the living room has no such failure mode, since a slow connection there only affects online play.
Shared home connections add another layer, because a video call or a large download in another room competes for the same bandwidth. The hardware in the data center is better than most players own, but the experience is only as steady as the weakest link between server and screen.
What the Round Trip Costs in Milliseconds
Independent testing puts numbers on the whole journey. In a 2020 PC Gamer test on a wired desktop, Destiny 2 responded in 51 milliseconds when played locally and 75 milliseconds through GeForce Now, while Metro Exodus went from 46 to 96 milliseconds.
The same test showed how quickly a weak connection hurts. Capping bandwidth at 5 Mbps pushed the GeForce Now result for Metro Exodus to 138 milliseconds, and Google’s now-closed Stadia measured 179 milliseconds for that game even on a fast line.
Hardware and networks have improved since then, and newer tiers target lower delay, but the basic finding holds. Cloud play adds a few dozen milliseconds that casual and single-player games hide easily, while competitive shooters and fighting games feel the difference most.
The Bottom Line
Cloud gaming does not remove the console so much as relocate it, turning your device into a screen and controller linked to hardware in a distant data center. Every press makes a round trip through six stages, and distance, bandwidth and packet loss decide how invisible that trip feels.
For Australian players, a nearby server, a wired or 5 GHz connection and a realistic view of data use matter more than the headline resolution. If streamed games share a device with betting apps, Gambling Help Online offers free, confidential support whenever play stops feeling like fun.
FAQ
Do you need a console or gaming PC for cloud gaming?
No, because the game runs on hardware in a data center and your device only decodes video and sends inputs. A phone, laptop, smart TV or streaming stick with a controller is usually enough.
What internet speed do you need for cloud gaming?
NVIDIA recommends at least 15 Mbps for 720p and 25 Mbps for 1080p at 60 fps, with 4K needing 40 to 45 Mbps. Latency to the data center matters as much as raw speed.
Why does cloud gaming sometimes feel laggy?
Every press must travel to the server and return as video, so distance, Wi-Fi interference and packet loss all add delay. A wired connection and a nearby data center usually make the biggest difference.
How much data does cloud gaming use?
It depends on resolution and frame rate, but a 1080p stream near 25 Mbps works out to roughly 11 GB per hour. Higher settings use more, so capped plans fill up quickly.