Game Streaming's Latency Problems Will Be Over in a Few Years, CEO Says (arstechnica.com)

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia conference last week, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says the rise of streaming gaming was an inevitability that was just waiting on the technology to power it at scale. While Zelnick acknowledged that the streaming game servers "have to be pretty close to where the consumer is" to address latency issues, he said there are a few large-scale companies "that have hyperscale data centers all around the world," and that infrastructure will be able to address that last remaining hurdle in a few years time. A report adds: Zelnick's comments come a few months after Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot suggested that streaming games will completely replace consoles after one more generation. Guillemot suggested that changeover would cause a revolution in the gaming market, which will explode in size and accessibility thanks to cheap, streaming-capable boxes delivering big-budget hits. Zelnick agreed that streaming will increase the size of the high-end, big-budget gaming market -- because "you don't need to buy a box in order to play our games" -- but stopped short of expecting a massive revolution. Even if streaming boxes end up much cheaper than current consoles and PCs for the same experience, there may not be that many additional potential players who don't currently have high-end gaming hardware. "I can't sit here and argue it will be a sea change in the business," Zelnick said of future streaming game services.

Comments

Why would it be over in a few years?

[Stormy Dragon]

Even if there's a technical solution to the problem, given the general lack of competition in the broadband internet market, what makes the author think that technology will be available to most consumers within a few years?

e.g. In my area Verizon won't upgrade beyond 2Mpbs DSL. What makes you think they care about latency?

Won't the lack of Net Neutrality

[rsilvergun]

pretty much kill this? My ISP just started metering the connections around here. I'm not going to be streaming a 1080p game when it costs me $20/gigabyte to go over my cap. And no parent in their right mind would. They do sell unlimited, but that's pushing $160/mo here. And all that's before we start talking about large swaths of the world that don't have fast enough broadband to do this.

Oh well, I guess I'll stick to indie games on Gog.

Rent everything, own nothing!

[Rick Schumann]

Do you all see where they want things to go? They want people to own nothing and rent everything instead.

Put up barriers to owning a home: rent instead (and put up with someone else's rules, and never build equity)
Make it prohibitively expensive to own a car: lease instead (and still pay for maintenance)
Fool people into believing 'streaming' all forms of entertainment is somehow cheaper than buying your own copies of music and movies
'OS and applications as a service' instead of actually owning copies of them (and pay, pay, pay forever)
..and the list goes on and on

It's the new feudalism; before too long you'll be told you're lucky to be allowed to own the clothes on your back.