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Ubisoft CEO: Cloud Gaming Will Replace Consoles After the Next Generation (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Better start saving up for that PlayStation 5, Xbox Two, or Nintendo Swatch (that last follow-up name idea is a freebie, by the way). That generation of consoles might be the last one ever, according to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. After that, he predicts cheap local boxes could provide easier access to ever-evolving high-end gaming streamed to the masses from cloud-based servers. "I think we will see another generation, but there is a good chance that step-by-step we will see less and less hardware," Guillemot said in a recent interview with Variety. "With time, I think streaming will become more accessible to many players and make it not necessary to have big hardware at home. There will be one more console generation and then after that, we will be streaming, all of us."
So here we go again. Anyone think it will actually work this time?
You will pay us fees to access the same content, forever and ever and ever.
Streaming games might be dandy for flight sims or RTS but any game that's sensitive to latency will be complete shit.
Consoles are not going to be "replaced" by cloud game streams. It's not surprising that this CEO has forgotten that there are many gamers, all over the world, who do not have access to high-speed internet connections that are required for an online-only service. An average console generation is approximately 5 years. We are not 5 years away from ubiquitous high-speed internet connections in rural and undeveloped areas of the world.
Microsoft tried making this mistake with the X-Box One, and they were so short-sighted that they almost went to market with it, before they realized that by making their console online-only they will deny themselves many thousands of valuable customers.
Cloud game streams will evolve as a subscription model to supplement (and for some people) replace the gaming console. Just like Netflix supplements cable television for many, and replaces it for some.
Eventually we may have cable set-top boxes or television sets with the "Xbox" app and the "Playstation" app and the "Nintendo" app built into them so that we can download and play games through these boxes instead of buying a dedicated console. However, consoles will still be necessary and still exist for the people who want to take their gaming with them on the road, or when they deploy overseas, or if they live in an area without broadband.
There'll be vintage games. There'll be the latest you can stream. And there'll be a boatload of "server no longer available" in between.
So they found a way to ignore the laws of physics?
Current consoles already have a lag problem. With wireless controllers, a TV that does all sort of processing to the image before displaying it, all of this is adding a small amount of delay that is already perceptible.
Adding the delay of sending the actions I do on my controller to the server over the internet and receiving the generated frames to display on the TV will add way too much lag.
But the younger generation seems to be unaware of the growing lag problem in the current world. It seems to me that as more and more of our technology is being driven by software instead of hardware, everything responds slowly to inputs. It used to be that changing a TV channel or changing volume was almost instantaneous, now you wait half a second for the damn thing to respond to your button press. I'm so tired of having to deal with laggy unresponsive touch screens, it's spreading like cancer in the technological world.
Now get off my lawn!
Try it! Library of Babel
And hit your download cap how fast?
If anyone is wondering why VR needs local hardware it's because even very tiny amounts of latency between your head movements and the rendered image will make you nauseated.