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[March Climber]

tell yoshi-p they already did that, it was called stadia, it failed miserably

You're proving his point. Google likes to do a lot of things first that seem like a dumb idea at inception, but it turns out all they had to do was wait around 10 years.

For the most recent example of this, see Google Glass in the 2010s compared to what the new Raybans are doing today.

 

[spons]

I have gigabit internet with low latency to game streaming servers.... and it's still shit. Xcloud is so bitrate-starved you can literally see the blocking on screen. How the hell does anything think this is the future? PS Plus streaming is also atrocious with the same issues. Honestly, Stadia was the least worst from a technical perspective. It just worked.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

Just stick to FF XIV bruh. You had your chance and you blew it. No need to hear statements from a dude who made a dud game.

 

[Fredrik]

tell yoshi-p they already did that, it was called stadia, it failed miserably

In 10 years if Sony and Microsoft take this path it’ll be much better. Things are moving fast. Might not be suitable for esport and fighting games etc but I know people who already play Starfield through streaming and I played Control through GFN when my graphics card was old.

Stadia failed because of the limited games library, weak hardware, lacking internet infrastructure at many places, plus a widespread concern that Google would eventually kill it (which they did).

Functionally it was still better at my area than every other streaming alternative, including GFN which has great hardware but a queue problem when big releases are dropping. I played through the Tomb Raider trilogy on Stadia at 60fps with zero issues.

 

[Majukun]

You're proving his point. Google likes to do a lot of things first that seem like a dumb idea at inception, but it turns out all they had to do was wait around 10 years.

For the most recent example of this, see Google Glass in the 2010s compared to what the new Raybans are doing today.

you mean the same rayban glasses that nobody is buying ?

WSJ News Exclusive | Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses Fail to Catch On

The company plans the release of the second generation as less than 10% of the devices purchased are used monthly, an internal company document shows.

www.wsj.com

 

[darrylgorn]

So, capitalism will be disbanded and we will have communism in less than a decade.

You heard it here first, folks!

 

[Majukun]

In 10 years if Sony and Microsoft take this path it’ll be much better. Things are moving fast. Might not be suitable for esport and fighting games etc but I know people who already play Starfield through streaming and I played Control through GFN when my graphics card was old.

Stadia failed because of the limited games library, weak hardware, lacking internet infrastructure at many places, plus a widespread concern that Google would eventually kill it (which they did).

Functionally it was still better at my area than every other streaming alternative, including GFN which has great hardware but a queue problem when big releases are dropping. I played through the Tomb Raider trilogy on Stadia at 60fps with zero issues.

you said yourself, your area.

even if users were willing to abandon en masse the current business model (and seems like trhey are not), the infrastructure is not there in most parts of the world

 

[nemiroff]

Just an informal (possibly disjointed) guess from my side:

Bespoke hardware platforms for this particular purpose will definitely go away eventually.

But they will most likely not be replaced with traditional video streaming.

They will probably be replaced with an unified walled-garden-ready backend network (thus MS, Sony, Nintendo will live on) coupled with a hardware standard (standalone or PC built in) for AI generated graphics (replacing traditional renderers) in the frontend.

 

[Synless]

unless you are telling me i can access the games everywhere without a single issue like disconnecting, latency, lag, thats not going to happen.

Games will be accessed through cloud sure, due to convenience, but removing actual platforms would be a very stupid thing to do.

PS remote does not even work properly with my ps5 in the same room, let alone the cloud

Remote play works great for me. It’s has its moments, but I was playing tekken 8 demo just the other day, it was great.

 

[March Climber]

you mean the same rayban glasses that nobody is buying ?

WSJ News Exclusive | Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses Fail to Catch On

The company plans the release of the second generation as less than 10% of the devices purchased are used monthly, an internal company document shows.

www.wsj.com

Ok, to be as clear as possible since you're not seeing it:

In the 2010s Google makes google glass. There is no one else making any sort of similar device.

10 years later, there are now multiple smart glasses competitors:

Best smart glasses in 2024

Add some flair to your style with these great smart glasses

www.androidpolice.com

What matters here is that there are multiple competitors in this space, not that one set didn't sell massively. VR headsets also aren't selling at console level amounts, but that doesn't mean these companies are not making anymore/not improving the tech, because they are. It's clear that these companies see something in the future that we don't. Even in your article it states that they are planning a second generation of these glasses.

 

[ManaByte]

you mean the same rayban glasses that nobody is buying ?

WSJ News Exclusive | Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses Fail to Catch On

The company plans the release of the second generation as less than 10% of the devices purchased are used monthly, an internal company document shows.

www.wsj.com

That's from August. They're flying off the shelves now.

 

[reinking]

Ok, to be as clear as possible since you're not seeing it:

In the 2010s Google makes google glass. There is no one else making any sort of similar device.

10 years later, there are now multiple smart glasses competitors:

Best smart glasses in 2024

Add some flair to your style with these great smart glasses

www.androidpolice.com

What matters here is that there are multiple competitors in this space, not that one set didn't sell massively. VR headsets also aren't selling at console level amounts, but that doesn't mean these companies are not making anymore/not improving the tech, because they are. It's clear that these companies see something in the future that we don't. Even in your article it states that they are planning a second generation of these glasses.

There are also failures even when multiple competitors are in a space. It wasn't that long ago 3DTV was going to be a thing. Just because companies invest in tech does not mean it will take off with the mainstream. Companies pivot when things do not catch on with consumers, not the other way around.

 

[Zuzu]

I tried Terminator Resistance on GeforceNow a few weeks ago and the lag was noticeable and detrimental to the experience. Going back to playing on my computer was significantly better. And I believe there is a server in my City so it wasn’t like I was a long way away. I was playing it via the TV app so maybe that was a problem. But if not, well, there’s still a way to go to make it viable for me. GeforceNow is very expensive as well for the top tier service.

 

[Hanzaki]

It doesn't make any sense...

He thinks that 10 years from now everyone will play streamed games and the "console war" will be over? How? Sony and Nintendo lost to MS and everyone will uses the MS cloud/GamePass? Even the PC players? Why would they do that what is the incentive?
If he means losing the hardware only then that doesn't mean the end of the console war at all... They still have to make several versions of their games for the platform holders.

Is he high or what? Maybe there will be a one platform future but its definately not within 10 years...

 

[March Climber]

There are also failures even when multiple competitors are in a space. It wasn't that long ago 3DTV was going to be a thing. Just because companies invest in tech does not mean it will take off with the mainstream. Companies pivot when things do not catch on with consumers, not the other way around.

True about 3DTVs, however too soon to tell about the glasses, especially in a generation that loves to film everything. I guess we will wait and see what happens.

"This didn't work before, so it will never work" is a very short-sighted way of looking at tech though.

 

[DaleinCalgary]

I don't agree

 

[FoxMcChief]

Of course cloud gaming is the natural progression.

 

[MagiusNecros]

In 10 years the only thing that will be in the Cloud is Yoshi P's head.

Also in 10 years there will probably be a better MMO to play.

Maybe one day the world will have a VR MMO to lose themselves in.

 

[FoxMcChief]

I played Fortnite via Xbox cloud in my Quest 3 last night. Ran and performed wonderfully.

 

[reinking]

True about 3DTVs, however too soon to tell about the glasses, especially in a generation that loves to film everything. I guess we will wait and see what happens.

"This didn't work before, so it will never work" is a very short-sighted way of looking at tech though.

You can't say it is too soon to tell and then tell someone they are being short-sighted. I was just stating that because multiple companies invest in tech it doesn't automatically make it a success and gave a recent example. I have no idea if streaming is the future. I doubt it, but nothing surprises me these days.

As for the AR glasses. I have been contemplating picking up a pair myself. I do believe there is a really good real-world use for something like that in the future. I would like to see a digital prescription adjustment that would adjust focus when the user is reading vs watching a movie. I would hope technology is evolving that way.

 

[coffinbirth]

It won't work as an exclusive or even primary way of accessing games. Imagine the infrastructure needed to support hundreds of millions of cloud players at the same time. Both on the client and server sides.

The only comment that is rooted in reality is right here.

 

[Shin-Ra]

Cant wait to watch advertisements while I queue up for a game stream with multiple subscription tiers for varying levels of shit lossy quality, then get booted from my increasingly rare new single player game because apparently I told someone to fuck off in a multiplayer game that I didn’t even play but there’s one customer service human per 50,000 players so I can’t get my account unbanned unless I kick up a stink on social media/forums/contact Tim Cook personally.

 

[Celine]

Nintendo: * laughs *

There will always be multi game platforms as long as there are incentives from the likes of Nintendo and Sony to release them to control and profit from the ecosystem and incentives to independent software providers (in the form of marketing deals, exclusive deals etc.) and consumers (in the form of subsidies and exclusive software to push the platform penetration) by the platform holders which wants to succeed.
The other aspect is that, while it's true that there is a rampant push for the commoditization of videogame, custom hardware could be successfully leveraged as a unique selling point to achieve great popularity as often shown by Nintendo.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

So, capitalism will be disbanded and we will have communism in less than a decade.

You heard it here first, folks!

 

[existensmaximum]

Well then I simply wouldn't play new games anymore fuck that.

 

[March Climber]

You can't say it is too soon to tell and then tell someone they are being short-sighted.

Yes, I can, because it is short sighted to imply 'this won't work' and point to the one example that didn't work in the past when A. The tech around it wasn't ready to adopt it yet and B. We're talking about the future here. Future tech will always be uncertain but it's important to see what these companies are doing because they're looking 5-10-20 years ahead of us in terms of ideas.

I was just stating that because multiple companies invest in tech it doesn't automatically make it a success and gave a recent example. I have no idea if streaming is the future. I doubt it, but nothing surprises me these days.

We are in agreement here. Nothing is absolutely certain, not even in tech, so that should mean that we shouldn't brush an entire section off due to one thing failing. That's not how any of this works.

As for the AR glasses. I have been contemplating picking up a pair myself. I do believe there is a really good real-world use for something like that in the future. I would like to see a digital prescription adjustment that would adjust focus when the user is reading vs watching a movie. I would hope technology is evolving that way.

I agree and I think we are slowly evolving to that standard. I think that the 'Tony Stark glasses' are what every AR/VR company are trying to head towards. They're eventually going to meet somewhere in the middle but we haven't reached that point yet.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Platform agnostic gaming is shit!

Platforms provide consistency across the gaming experience for all players. In everything from:

• Single hardware target minimizes time spent in optimization and bug fixing
• Unified controller interface
• Unified performance profile for every player
• Unified platform features for player interaction, e.g. voice chat

Moving to a platform-agnostic gaming paradigm creates issues with all of the above, making for an objectively inferior gameplay experience.

I don't need to be able to play the same game across mobile, PC and console. I don't even want to play the same types of games across those three platforms.

Mobile is for byte sized, fun, repetitive games. PC is for simulation, RTS and strategy games (for me personally) and everything else I play is on console, on my nice comfy couch.

Trading a shitter gameplay experience just to be able to play across all those platforms is not trade I'm willing to make. Not at all.

 

[ReBurn]

Gamers sure don't like the idea of change.

 

[kruis]

He's not wrong, the average consumer will play games via the cloud 10+ years from now and they will willingly go digital/cloud because it's super convenient and fast.
Even if consumer CPU/GPUs keep up and have revolutionary performance gains, MS, Sony & Nintendo will still go with cloud gaming because it's so much cheaper and gives them full control of product & consumers. Consoles will be reduced to an app on your phone or TV, the only physical you'll order from them are branded lifestyle products, controllers and other peripherals.

The future console warrior will wear his colours proudly.

How will cloud gaming ever be cheaper and more profitable for MS, Sony & Nintendo than the current setup?

Look at Sony. They've now sold 50 million PS5 consoles with a total value of 20 billion dollars to consumers and either broke even or made money from selling all of those hw boxes. Their customers are now locked into the Playstation ecosystem and will buy both 1st games (direct revenues) and 3rd party games (licensing revenues), buy PS peripherals and a very substantial number of those customers will subscribe to PS+ Essential/Extra/Premium.

Cloud gaming is a much riskier financial setup because it completely shifts the costs of playing games from the user to the manufacturer/publisher. Instead of selling tens of millions of PS5s to consumers at a profit, Sony would now have to invest 10+ billion dollars into dedicated PS5 cloud gaming servers and build their own server farms all over the world. Unlike movie streaming where one streaming server can service thousands of video data streams at the same time, cloud gaming with PS5 visuals needs a dedicated PS5 in the cloud for every online gamer. Sony can't simply rent generic AWS or Azure cloud servers, they need that dedicated PS5 hardware with a superfast SSD, 16 GBs of shared video/system RAM and an AMD APU to run just that one game for that one player. The more people play, the more servers Sony needs to build, deploy and pay for upfront. And then they'd have to recoup those multi billion dollar investments through $10 monthly subscription fees afterwards

Of course, without the ecosytem lock-in of the traditional console business model, there's absolutely no guarantee that PS5 Cloud gamers will remain loyal customers for years to come. In the world of cloud gaming fickle customers can cancel their PS+ cloud gaming subscription anytime they want and switch to XCloud, Geforce Now or whatever else there is. What's stopping a cloud gamer who loves Fortnite or FIFA from switching services? Nothing at all.

The financial risks of cloud gaming are HUGE for any company. The only reason they're all dabbling with cloud gaming is the fear that a competitor might go full in on cloud gaming irrespective of the financial risks and destroy the current business model. Sony and MS want to be there when this happens, because they don't want to be left when their industry experiences a seismic shift. But they also know that when this happens, it's going to completely kill their business.

 

[jcorb]

unless you are telling me i can access the games everywhere without a single issue like disconnecting, latency, lag, thats not going to happen.

Games will be accessed through cloud sure, due to convenience, but removing actual platforms would be a very stupid thing to do.

PS remote does not even work properly with my ps5 in the same room, let alone the cloud

Agreed. I think there is definitely a growing demand for cloud-based gaming, but there are always going to be network issues and outages, and being that video games are a form of *entertainment*, I think we'll see a continued demand for physical products.

People are clearly okay with digital purchases (even if I'd certainly preach to exercise caution, given how frequently we see digital marketplaces close), but to go entirely cloud-based will inevitably lead to frustrations.

Hell, that's assuming there are even enough servers to go around. We're using an astronomical amount of data, and it is only snowballing into greater data usages. It seems ironic to hear this from Yoshi-P, given only a few years ago he spoke on the issues of being able to acquire enough servers to continue adding content for the game. There was a great video from Corridor Crew recently(?) about the amount of data we use, and it seems pretty clear that our digital "demands" are quickly outgrowing our means of producing adequate storage.

 

[FalsettoVibe]

Things will eventually move to cloud gaming. Whether it be 10 years or 20. It's happening.
I can still see a place for hardware for those who have bad Internet but the majority will probably move to cloud once all the kinks are ironed out and it's usable for most people.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Gamers sure don't like the idea of change.

Yet the gaming industry out of all the major entertainment industries is the one that changes the most?

Oh it’s another of those “I don’t know what I’m talking about”

 

[LordCBH]

Gamers sure don't like the idea of change.

No. we don’t like the idea of BAD change, which is what this is.

 

[FalsettoVibe]

Of course, without the ecosytem lock-in of the traditional console business model, there's absolutely no guarantee that PS5 Cloud gamers will remain loyal customers for years to come. In the world of cloud gaming fickle customers can cancel their PS+ cloud gaming subscription anytime they want and switch to XCloud, Geforce Now or whatever else there is. What's stopping a cloud gamer who loves Fortnite or FIFA from switching services? Nothing at all.

Yeah...I have to totally disagree with this part. You are looking at cloud gaming as if people won't purchase games separately. If I buy a game in Xbox's of PlayStation's ecosystem, my game remains there. I can't buy FIFA on PS store, decide to switch to Xcloud/Game Pass and magically have it there.

 

[UltimaKilo]

Someday? Sure, it’s the future. In 10 years? There’s very little chance of that, in July opinion; there’s simply too much latency issues and the majority of people don’t have access to good enough infrastructure. 20-25 years? Perhaps.

 

[MagiusNecros]

Cloud gaming just paves the way to make all gaming a paid service. The rise of Games as a Service(GaaS) that all gamers claim they hate(and they should).

Which doesn't surprise me this is coming out of a MMO development lead's mouth spewing out his company propaganda.

 

[ShadowLag]

Multiple problems with this:

• By the time the technology is good enough and accessible to everyone, the technology will also be good enough to run the games previously thought "impossible" in your own living room, making it useless for everyone but CEOs.
• Even if that wasn't the case, the only people benefitting from the arrangement is CEOs. Say the wrong thing on social media? Fuck you, your rental to our singleplayer game Final Fantasy XVIII we let you play is revoked. Our servers went down? Fuck you, our game we let you temporarily play is inaccessible. Someone used your account to say such horrible and offensive things like "damn that was retarded bro" in voice chat on our cloud service? Oh well, your account is banned forever. Our company got bought out or has new leadership? ... you get the idea.
• There's content in a game licensed by BigDickCorporationUniversal Inc. and the license agreement expired? Oops, chunks of content disappear from the game overnight and you can never go back to see it again because the game runs entirely in the cloud and you have no control over what version of the game you're playing.
• Similar to the previous point, say good-fucking-bye to modding and all forms of user generated content (new maps, etc.), forever.
• If you think they won't raise the monthly cost steadily over time (to the point where you've eventually paid $120+ to keep playing your $60 game) you're naive.

People really gotta learn to see more than an inch beyond their own noses.

 

[Fredrik]

you said yourself, your area.

even if users were willing to abandon en masse the current business model (and seems like trhey are not), the infrastructure is not there in most parts of the world

Not yet, no. But in 10 years? I’m thinking bandwidth and speed issues will be a none issue by then. And there are lots of things happening in this area, Amazon, Nvidia, Sony, Microsoft are already doing streaming, Valve will do it as well, and we’ll have more devices like PS Portal focusing on streaming.

 

[X-Wing]

Some of us have been around the block. In this industry we get a “welcome to the future, the past is dead” every couple of years.

Predicting the future is apparently very hard. It will get easier with quantum computers.

The fact people continue to overlook the stone cold fact that people have to learn how to play games, and that games can get very complex to your normal person, says a lot about how miopic a lot of people are. Let alone all the rest.

Not sure what your point is. The "welcome to the future" was also right a lot of times. 3D became the future (as in the standard over 2D), CD and DVD became the future over cartridges and now digital is taking over, and so on.

The gaming industry doesn't exist isolated from the rest of the tech industry. I'm a software developer and we are migrating everything to the cloud. This trend is happening all across the tech industry because the advantages of the cloud and distributed computing far outweigh the disadvantages, with all the latency related issues slowly disappearing the switch to the cloud and streaming is a no brainer to game developers and publishers - with a decent connection you can already have an almost native experience in several services.

And yes, I understand that there are disadvantages on the consumer side, but only core consumers care about that and we know that those are not the ones carrying the industry financially so...

 

[Klosshufvud]

Multiple problems with this:

• By the time the technology is good enough and accessible to everyone, the technology will also be good enough to run the games previously thought "impossible" in your own living room, making it useless for everyone but CEOs.
• Even if that wasn't the case, the only people benefitting from the arrangement is CEOs. Say the wrong thing on social media? Fuck you, your rental to our singleplayer game Final Fantasy XVIII we let you play is revoked. Our servers went down? Fuck you, our game we let you temporarily play is inaccessible. Someone used your account to say such horrible and offensive things like "damn that was retarded bro" in voice chat on our cloud service? Oh well, your account is banned forever. Our company got bought out or has new leadership? ... you get the idea.
• There's content in a game licensed by BigDickCorporationUniversal Inc. and the license agreement expired? Oops, chunks of content disappear from the game overnight and you can never go back to see it again because the game runs entirely in the cloud and you have no control over what version of the game you're playing.
• Similar to the previous point, say good-fucking-bye to modding and all forms of user generated content (new maps, etc.), forever.
• If you think they won't raise the monthly cost steadily over time (to the point where you've eventually paid $120+ to keep playing your $60 game) you're naive.

People really gotta learn to see more than inch beyond their own nose.

This. Only a complete moron would entrust their game libraries to the "cloud". There is a reason why attempts to push cloud gaming keeps failing. People know the real price of being tied to a corporation's balls.

 

[ShadowLag]

3D became the future (as in the standard over 2D), CD and DVD became the future over cartridges and now digital is taking over, and so on.

Digital what? Video games have always been digital.

Anyway, subscription cloud services for hosting games aren't a tech upgrade - they're a business model change. Not equivalent to a new piece of consumer hardware supporting 3D graphics and DVDs when the previous one didn't. I'm a game developer too, with access to gigabit fiber at home - and I would never want anyone to be forced to play my games from a cloud.

As for casuals who don't know any better carrying the industry financially, that may be right, but I seem to remember talk about the hardcore/early adopters being the ones that ignite the spark to get the casuals interested in the first place, so they should never be neglected. We see what kinds of movements can spring up online from a small fraction of the hardcore crowd that are capable of causing some meaningful dents; it's never a good idea to act like the hardcore audience has no value or sway.

 

[X-Wing]

Digital what? Video games have always been digital.

Digital distribution versus distribution in physical medium.

Anyway, subscription cloud services for hosting games aren't a tech upgrade - they're a business model change.

The switch to the cloud is, of course, a tech upgrade. There is a lot more power to tap in the cloud than in local hardware that has to have a relatively low manufacturing price so it can be sold to consumers. Especially considering how flexible the cloud is, how resources can be balanced depending on the number of people accessing the services or the specific necessities of a specific software.

 

[stickkidsam]

Welp.

He’s only human lol

 

[Thirty7ven]

Not yet, no. But in 10 years? I’m thinking bandwidth and speed issues will be a none issue by then. And there are lots of things happening in this area, Amazon, Nvidia, Sony, Microsoft are already doing streaming, Valve will do it as well, and we’ll have more devices like PS Portal focusing on streaming.

Is Cloud Gaming the Future?

In this feature, we look at what some of the industry's top development minds have to say about the rise of cloud gaming.

www.gamespot.com

 

[Boss Mog]

Only the blind don’t see it

And only the fools cheer for it.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Not sure what your point is. The "welcome to the future" was also right a lot of times. 3D became the future (as in the standard over 2D), CD and DVD became the future over cartridges and now digital is taking over, and so on.

The gaming industry doesn't exist isolated from the rest of the tech industry. I'm a software developer and we are migrating everything to the cloud. This trend is happening all across the tech industry because the advantages of the cloud and distributed computing far outweigh the disadvantages, with all the latency related issues slowly disappearing the switch to the cloud and streaming is a no brainer to game developers and publishers - with a decent connection you can already have an almost native experience in several services.

And yes, I understand that there are disadvantages on the consumer side, but only core consumers care about that and we know that those are not the ones carrying the industry financially so...

Latency issues disappearing? Almost native?

Just what kind of software do you work on and why do you think it’s the same as games?

Nobody ever denied storage improvements being the future. Or 3D. Just absolutely insane comparisons really. Digital neither. Online gaming etc

 

[Crayon]

At best, the games with the highest hardware requirements will be played mostly streaming. Some will still want their own hardware and everything else will run on your phone so what's the point.

5 years ago I thought streaming would already be big by now. But now seeing the pace things are going and the major stumbling block of mobile gamers being not interested, I think the window is closing before diminishing returns and game scalability makes offloading processing to the cloud mostly redundant.

 

[FalsettoVibe]

Multiple problems with this:

• By the time the technology is good enough and accessible to everyone, the technology will also be good enough to run the games previously thought "impossible" in your own living room, making it useless for everyone but CEOs.
• Even if that wasn't the case, the only people benefitting from the arrangement is CEOs. Say the wrong thing on social media? Fuck you, your rental to our singleplayer game Final Fantasy XVIII we let you play is revoked. Our servers went down? Fuck you, our game we let you temporarily play is inaccessible. Someone used your account to say such horrible and offensive things like "damn that was retarded bro" in voice chat on our cloud service? Oh well, your account is banned forever. Our company got bought out or has new leadership? ... you get the idea.
• There's content in a game licensed by BigDickCorporationUniversal Inc. and the license agreement expired? Oops, chunks of content disappear from the game overnight and you can never go back to see it again because the game runs entirely in the cloud and you have no control over what version of the game you're playing.
• Similar to the previous point, say good-fucking-bye to modding and all forms of user generated content (new maps, etc.), forever.
• If you think they won't raise the monthly cost steadily over time (to the point where you've eventually paid $120+ to keep playing your $60 game) you're naive.

People really gotta learn to see more than an inch beyond their own noses.

I agree with this. But none of these issues will stop it from happening.

This. Only a complete moron would entrust their game libraries to the "cloud". There is a reason why attempts to push cloud gaming keeps failing. People know the real price of being tied to a corporation's balls.

That's not the reason it has failed in the past. It has failed due to technology limitations and accessibility. The closer we are to fixing those issues, the closer cloud gaming becomes a real reality. Whether we like it or not.

Also, people who are all digital are already sort of "entrusting" their libraries to the cloud. Are they all morons?

 

[Zephyranthes]

I think he's half right. The TV, film, and music industries have already shown us the way that media consumption is going: the technology and infrastructure aren't quite there yet for gaming to make the transition, but profit motive is sufficient enough that those barriers will be overcome eventually.

Where I think he is wrong is in thinking that there will be "one platform", or that the change is going to make everybody happy. The subscription-based cloud model is already becoming a pain for TV/film/music consumers as the number of streaming platforms fighting for IPs is rapidly increasing, and there's no reason to think that gaming won't have the same problem.

 

[Robb]

I’m not sure anymore tbh. Movies and music transitioned fairly fast to the subscription models. I thought we’d be waaay further along for games at this point in time, so maybe this industry is a different beast entirely.

Not to mention the movie subscription industry doesn’t seem to be doing all that well. Not to throw around the word ‘unsustainable’, but it does seem to be very risky unless you’re the biggest player and there’s very little competition.