This seems to be going back to the original idea of console games.
The article also states "the services will go beyond social games from Zynga and casual games to include action games from big-name game makers such as Electronic Arts," and that these two companies would like to implement their gaming cloud service in the next year.
My thoughts: I'm not holding my breath. I am also curious if there would be any lag for these games, and how much storage they would take up if these companies decided to go with a cloud server to select games, but a downloading model to get to play them on your television.
Will we be seeing Pay TV companies offering gaming packages soon?
They probably will, because some people won't be able to resist playing Road Rash 3 With Friends or whatever on their TV (as if they can't already).
ReplyDeleteMy concerns are the costs that would be incurred just to get the service - if the games suck up as much bandwidth as someone in the article suggested, then people would have to upgrade their internet plans just to make them fast or robust enough to support all the activity. On top of that, probably not everyone already has a TV that would be compatible with the technology, so some would need to buy new TVs. And what about the controllers? Will they be rented like modems, or able to be purchased, or will the systems be compatible with certain types of controllers already on the market? And the cloud - how would charging for storage work on that?
To me, this sounds like a lot of money spent just to get it all working; but then again, I have a SNES.