Cloud Gaming Primarily SaaS for Players, Uses All Three Cloud Service Layers

Cloud gaming delivers games that run on remote GPU servers and streams video to a player’s device. For the end‑user, the service functions as Software‑as‑a‑Service (SaaS): the player selects a game, starts a session, sends input, and receives video and audio, while the provider manages the underlying hardware and software.

Publishers and platform operators may also rely on Platform‑as‑a‑Service (PaaS) components to deploy and stream games, and the operators themselves build the service on Infrastructure‑as‑a‑Service (IaaS) resources such as virtual machines, GPU compute, storage and networking. Examples include Xbox Cloud Gaming for players, Amazon GameLift Streams for publishers, and Amazon EC2 for the underlying infrastructure. Thus cloud gaming encompasses SaaS for users, PaaS‑like services for developers, and IaaS resources for the service providers.