Taking Games To The Cloud

September 8 2011, 5:23pm

Cloud gaming is a new trend in the technology industry with startups like Onlive, Gaikai, and Otoy already leading the way. Speaking at the Cloud Gaming USA Conference, Brian Farrell of video game making giant, THQ, names cloud gaming as the upcoming hot topic and potential prospect for the future of gaming. He proposes that cloud gaming could potentially make console makers obsolete as game consumers move into a streaming environment. If not obsolete, cloud gaming could also drive console costs down, allowing the ease of online to lower costs and streamline delivery methods. Cloud gaming also proposes questions about storage, latency, and privacy issues. An all-online network could potentially suffer from service provider’s stringent bandwidth caps. Hackers also could pose security risks for publishers. We certainly see a huge benefit from cloud gaming, in terms of distribution and access, and it’s one of the major reasons we broke ground on HTML5 gaming with GameSalad Arcade. What do you think? This certainly seems to go beyond the standard physical media vs. digital distribution argument, moving more into an battle between downloadable and streaming content. Source: GamesBeat