The future of gaming consoles is always something to be speculated upon. How will they be better? Faster? Will they still use a readable media? CEO of THQ, Brian Farrell thinks not. He's got his head in the clouds. Cloud gaming, that is.
Cloud gaming isn't something that's a new practice anymore. OnLive has been running rather smoothly and is continuing to expand by releasing more and more big-name titles, including the just released Deus Ex: Human Revolution (check out our review), which did get them into a bit of hot water with GameStop. While the kinks are mostly worked out, the thing that would worry consumers most about cloud gaming is the streaming factor. Nobody likes to be intently playing a game to see it start lagging randomly because of some connection error. However, Farrell still thinks cloud gaming is the future of consoles, the key word being "future."
OnLive is also a firm believer that they can enable their service to run through both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. While the market for streaming games is starting to grow and grow, the idea that ALL consoles, and not just OnLive-enabled ones, will make the jump to exclusively streaming does sound very futuristic, if not a bit implausable. Let's set aside, for a moment, the animosity some people may have toward cloud gaming and hear what Farrell has to say:
"[No disc drives] will result in a lower cost for the hardware manufacturer, which will result in a lower cost to consumers and therefore a lower entry point, thus driving more mass market adoption... no physical goods cost for game makers. No inventory, no markdowns, and all the money spent by the consumer would go to the developer or publisher."
The immediate thing to think about is, as a consumer, games could actually go back down in price, and at the same time, both developer and publisher get paid. Obviously, this is all just speculation. Another thought to postulate is what would happen to businesses like GameStop or other retailers who sell used games? And is it stands, it doesn't look like Microsoft or Sony is going to be budging on their use of readable media. It could be said that Microsoft may eventually convert to Blu-ray discs on their next console iteration.
Do you think cloud gaming is going to be the wave of the future or are we still going to go to the store to buy our games?
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Source: Games Industry
