Gaikai ("Open Cloud Gaming Platform")

[PeteJ]

You could be right. If so, then the future will be entirely PC based as the home console-owning market will shrink considerably.

Time will tell, but I think Sony or Microsoft could take advantage of this...Nintendo are currently too far behind in the online arena. I would love to see the Xbox Indie scene become completely virtual, so I can just quickly access a list of games and instantly start playing. Include the price of indie titles in the monthly Live subscription, Microsoft could then pass on the 'sales' via a 'per-click' basis. It would also make it easier to let people shift between console and mobile handset easier.

[Matt]

If this does appeal to Joe Average Gamer, there'll be no incentive for console manufacturers to make consoles anymore - yes, they'll sell cheap as chips interfaces, but no processing power to speak of [other than decoding video - so basically a Sky box would do it].

Console manufacturers live and die by their licensing. ?10 per retail sale, whatever it is. So with dwindling sales of "real" consoles as people move to Cloud, the few people left buying retail/paying this won't be enough to cover the manufacturers selling their Real consoles at a loss.

So it's goodbye Dedicated Gaming Console, hello Cloud Box!

But why have a Cloud Box when a PC can do cloud gaming and so much more? Or your Sky Box can do cloud gaming?

Where do Sony and MS move to? Their own dedicated hardware in a Cloud. What's the point of them having proprietary (yikes, been a long day) hardware that's not compatible with anything else at that stage? Developers will go for the simple PC platform. So Sony and MS have PC hardware being a branded Cloud?

I don't see what the appeal is for developers to work on Sony Only Hardware or MS Only Hardware and do multiple versions of a title when Cloud gaming basically opens up the possibility of gaming on any device anywhere.

It's so different to what we're used to, I don't think anyone really knows what's going to happen, going forwards. If Sky get in on the act in the next year or two, then the market is closed. That's it. Sony and MS will get shut out.

This would actually be a good thing. We'd effectively have a single platform universe. Want to just game? Then you Cloud. Want the best experience with better graphics and quicker control? Get a PC. It won't matter, both PC and Cloud will be playing exactly the same version of the game.

I quite like that future as it happens

[Flabio]

But what about all the countries that don't have suitable broadband infrastructure to make it work? What about those people in the *UK* that still don't look like getting the kind of connection you need for this?

Does that mean no proper games for them unless they want to buy a big PC?

The home console market isn't going away. It'll change, considerably, but there's too many people who simply won't be able to use these cloud services for it to be a complete replacement.

[Matt]

Lower cost, lower powered consoles maybe? Because the manufacturers will need to turn a profit from day one on the hardware with a smaller market. And they'll likely just be PCs in a box because developers will flock to the Cloud system where the same code can be released on a PC / PC console.

I don't know. I'm not sold on Cloud at all, but if Charles is right about it dividing the console market between Cloud Gamers and Dedicated Gamers (not an appropriate phrase, but you know what I mean) then they'll need to be some kind of unification between the two.

There certainly wouldn't seem to be, in such a marketplace, enough retail consumers for developers to split their resources across multiple platforms, or even for multiple platforms to exist. The PC strikes me as the quick, easy solution. Cloud works on it now, and for Dedicated Gamers you can buy the same title from the Cloud and play it entirely locally.

I can't see what MS or Sony could bring to that market.

Part of the Cloud's appealing is ever improving visuals without the need for the consumer to upgrade hardware their end. Again, how does a fixed console platform cope with that? Take Skyrim for example, no doubt the PC version will look far, far better than the console versions. It's not a twitch game, input latency shouldn't hurt it too much. Assuming there are no encoding / decoding artifacts and a high screen resolution that looks identical to playing it locally (not currently possible, but say in 5 to 10 years with increased bandwidth and better codecs), why would anyone choose to play it locally on an "old" console when they can get a better visual experience via the Cloud? And for the true hardcore gamer, you'd put a couple of hundred quid into your PC every year to keep that up to spec.

I don't see Cloud as a complete replacement. If it did I'd be horrified as I the latency issue is of huge concern to me. I'll be a Local Gamer for as long as possible. But I can't see a future with high powered dedicated home consoles if Cloud does take off. In which case, us hardcore gamers would migrate to the PC as the last refuge for high end local gaming.

[charlesr]

It's almost impossible to envisage how this is going to pan out. The entire industry must be having kittens. If they aren't they should be.

[Fader209]

Bah, internet is shockingly bad around these parts so I can't even try this out
I like the idea of it but in reality it's going to be a long time before our lines get upgraded enough to handle this kind of thing so I kind of don't get that excited for it.

[cutmymilk]

Works really well on my 2 meg connection. I'm actually impressed! It is in 4:3 for some reason though. Didn't try settings.

[SmokeMeAKipper]

I'm on Sky Broadband and usually get around 5mb speeds when I check with SpeedTest.net but it didn't work for me. Will try again later. Though I think this is the future of gaming, the infrastructure needs to be in place first.

[Flabio]

The entire industry must be having kittens. If they aren't they should be.

To be honest, this is just one more thing on an increasingly long list that the industry is having kittens about at the moment.

Smart phones, facebook, social gaming, cloud storage, cloud gaming, the slow realisation that Moore's Law is going to stop being true soon, anything other than blockbuster sequels flopping at retail, always online, micro-transactions, hacking, hacktivism, pay-per-play, the decline of subscription based gaming, brain drain of dev talent away from the UK, poor standards of math education, lack of properly qualified graduates, changes to the rating system, being scapegoated for all of society's ills...

Yeah, it ain't a fun place to work at the moment.