Despite my misgivings, though, cloud gaming does have promise. Worldwide roll outs are now so rapid that in five or 10 years, a large percentage of the developed world will have fiber to the home or cabinet. It will take time, but with enough pressure from console makers and publishers, developers will eventually fine-tune their game engines, too.
What then? What will happen when there is no logical reason to keep a console in your living room? With the PS4, Xbox 720, and Wii U all coming down the line, cloud gaming isn’t going to take off in the near term — but what about the nextgeneration of consoles?
It is entirely possible that the Xbox 1080 will simply be a dumb little box, with four gamepad sockets on the front, and HDMI and power on the back; it could even be built into a Microsoft TV. Microsoft already has a huge cloud presence, too — and really, streaming games isn’t all that different from streaming movies.
The appeal of cloud gaming to companies such as Microsoft and Sony is immense. In an instant, short of breaking into the local data center, software piracy goes out the window. With the expensive console out of the way, their pool of prospective gamers (and customers) immediately swells. By default, the Xbox 1080 service might be completely free — but just like today’s free-to-play games, Microsoft could charge you for additional levels and in-game items, as well as the ability to connect multiple gamepads, output at higher resolution, unlock higher framerates, and so on.
Cloud gaming is completely cross-platform, too: There’s no functional difference between a PC monitor, TV, smartphone, or tablet. Imagine being able to pause a game at home, and then continue it on your tablet or office computer. Imagine multiplayer games where you’re in front of the TV, but your friend is on the other side of the world, playing from a Facebook window on his laptop.
The flip side, of course, is that Microsoft (or EA) could charge you for excessive use (“you have exceeded our fair-use policy…”) — and what happens if you get banned? Do you lose access to all of the games you’ve purchased? Will you have the option of storing saved games locally, or will they all be in the cloud?
Ultimately, though, in much the same way that cloud computing and storage has exploded in the last few years, cloud gaming will follow suit. Cloud gaming, like cloud computing, digital downloads, and streaming video, simply has too many benefits to ignore.
source : View the original article here
0 comments:
Post a Comment