Matt Spall, a gaming industry veteran, has been speaking recently about upcoming next gen gaming consoles. His views are that gaming will move in to the cloud when the next generation is here in a few years time. He claims that “we will never see another ‘traditional’ console coming to the market.
”. It’s certainly an interesting view in light of how Google has recently announced the Chome OS which will be cloud based. Will next gen consoles follow the pattern that Google is trying to set? or is cloud technology still too far in it’s infancy for such a big task?
It’s a great idea and depending on how the system will work could certainly be a way forwards. Of course there are downsides in that not everybody has a suitable internet connection (but that could easily change in 3 or so years time) and how much of the data will be stored in the cloud? Will the PS4 be just a standard type terminal that when powered up, downloads the firmware and the system boots up giving you access to any game you want?
“I think the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii will be purely browser-based systems,” he told the audience. “Things will change a great deal.”
If the technology works then it opens up a lot of possibilities as games could be updated when needed, bugs quickly fixed by just rebooting your machine and the access to every game ever launched as they would work as a digital download. Maybe 3 years isn’t enough time to accomplish all this as it all will pretty much fail on who has access to the net and at what speed. Basically, if your connection is not up to it then forget about playing the latest gen games.
The last downside is that it will probably make modding consoles a thing of the past.
Your thoughts?
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I don’t reckon the next gen consoles will be in ‘the cloud’, primarily due to internet connections like you stated. I currently use the Google G1 phone, which uses a similar aspect in that all information is stored in the cloud. This has some nice features, such as when I update my firmware, or reflash my phone I don’t have to swap my contacts over…the G1 does that for me. It is a nice idea, but I don’t feel that the next gen will be cloud based. Sony will be limiting their customer base, not something they would want to do with MS and Nintendo in the market.