In an unprecedented move to popularise cloud based gaming, Gaikai has partnered with Samsung to bring high-quality games to consumers all around the world.
What do you guys think? Is cloud gaming the next step? It's certainly a great move against the three big gaming giants and those pesky retailers and that's always a plus in my book
press release
i was going to talk about this and sony's possible "partnership" with gakai during e3.for good or evil this didnt pan out.but i think that the biggest hindrance to this tech are the internet speeds and bandwith.asia,specially korea and japan are ready for this but here in the states we have millions of people like me with slow broadband connections or just plain dial up haha
I think Cloud gaming definitely has a future. Once fiber connections become pretty standard (lol America), latency shouldn't be a significant issue.
But I think it's going to bring a number of negatives along with it that people already associate with digital distribution, plus a number of it's own. In all likelyhood, the service is going to be subscription-based. Not per-game based. They'll probably also find some way to tier it, like cable/satellite TV, so you'll have a monthly bill to have access to certain things. Games will probably come and go as licenses lapse, and due to the nature of cloud/streaming games, it will be gone for good, and you as a consumer won't technically "lose" anything, because you didn't pay for that game, you paid for the service.
Traditional publishing will likely go the way of the dodo if it ever becomes the standard. Companies like XSEED, Atlus, Aksys, and the like will still be able to exist as middlemen between regions/languages, but otherwise studios will be able to work directly with the distributor to get their content available. However, such a system will only continue to push the "middle class game" out of existence, as distributors are going to be hesitant to support games that don't bring in much money, and even if they do, unless people play the games a lot (thus resulting in the distributor paying the studio/middleman publisher more money) the studios won't make enough money to support themselves.
I've largely painted this as a negative thing, so you'd wonder just why the heck it would have a future or even possibly become the standard someday. The reason is ease of use, and price. The days of buying new consoles would be over, in fact, it's entirely likely that "the box" would be free with your subscription. Unlike consoles, this box would never need to be upgraded or replaced. And instead of buying games and dealing with discs/cartridges, you can simply start up the system and select a game from the list as easily as you select a TV channel to watch. For the average individual, this is where gaming becomes a form of entertainment that is truly on par with TV, music, or movies due to it's simplicity and relatively low cost of entry.
And I specify consoles, because it's unlikely to impact the PC significantly due to the nature of PC gaming. Consoles are what would be in danger in that situation.
That's just my thoughts on the matter, a future we could be living in 10-15 years from now.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote