An example for overwhelmingly successful trend in gaming was digital distribution on the PC and there’s no reason why it won’t be just as successful on consoles. More importantly, the main reason people game on console is because of convenience.
But what could be more convenient than cloud gaming? There is no hardware to worry about, no updates to wait for, no discs to deal with, no upgrading to a new console and no worrying about hardware failures.
As soon as the tech catches up to the point where the cloud experience is similar to the native experience, cloud gaming will likely kill console gaming as we know it. And it doesn’t look like it will take too long for cloud gaming to reach that point.
An example for this can be attributed to the incident which occurred recently with the Sony buying the cloud gaming service, Gaikai, for $380 million. Microsoft, as we all know is a prime rival to Sony in the industry and they have spoken in response to the purchase.
It’s a no-brainer that Microsoft had been eyeing cloud gaming, evident in its leaked Xbox 720 Road Map document and even goes as far as to indicate a potential buyout of a cloud gaming service provider such as OnLive. Microsoft has responded to Sony’s Gaikai acquisition by saying that they value the cloud tech a lot and have been providing such services to 40 million Xbox Live members.
According to a Microsoft spokesperson, the cloud has been a key component of MS’s strategy and a big area of investment with Xbox for many years. Through Xbox LIVE Microsoft is serving up gaming and entertainment in the cloud to more than 40 million people.
He also quoted that MS is committed in delivering extraordinary entertainment experiences across devices in a uniquely connected way through Xbox, Windows Phone, Windows 8 and other popular devices, and they are looking forward to continuing to innovate in this area in the foreseeable future too. Anyhow, the gaming world is ready to cop up with the drastic advancements that are yet to come and personally I believe in new ways of gaming, which could deliver a life like performance to come into use in near future.
Also, it will be very interesting to see Sony doing its work in integrating cloud gaming to their PS3 and PS4 along with enabling backward generation compatibility.
