‘Crucial Time’ for Cloud Gaming, Which Wants to Change How You Play

Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon are ramping up offerings on a platform that lets people enjoy high-quality games on any device.

Imagine video gamers, untethered from their computers and consoles, playing crystal-clear versions of their favorite games anywhere. They might traverse the futuristic world of the sci-fi shooter game Halo on their mobile phones while riding the subway, or dust off old MacBook computers and hop straight into the jungle of the battle arena game League of Legends. That’s the rosy future promised by cloud gaming, a nascent technology that could reshape how people play games. And depending on whom you ask, that future might have arrived already. On Thursday, Facebook announced that it had expanded the reach of its cloud gaming platform, which was released last fall, to cover 98 percent of the mainland United States. Also this week, Microsoft made its cloud gaming service available on more devices. And Amazon broadened access to its burgeoning cloud service, giving Prime members a free trial version during its Prime Day last month.