What’s going to be big in the next generation of game consoles? The cloud, reckons Square Enix‘s worldwide tech boss Julien Merceron.
“When it comes down to future hardware platforms, and official home consoles, I think its going to be instrumental,” he told GamesIndustry.biz in an interview.
“I think it has tremendous benefits. I don’t see any good reason not to investigate for platform holders how they could actually think about cloud storage and cloud computing for their next platforms.”
Both Sony and Microsoft have already rolled out cloud storage for saved games, as well as Xbox Gamertags on Xbox LIVE, although this service is available only to premium subscribers on both networks.
Merceron sees much more potential in the cloud than just storage, though.
“If you imagine a platform that would basically have cloud computing capabilities, for example, then why would you eventually need to change the hardware? Because actually what you then just do is basically change the back end to be more powerful.”
Which is pretty much what cloud gaming service providers Gaikai and OnLive are doing already, although problems inherent in streaming technology – most significantly lag and high data consumption – remain an obstacle for many, if not most gamers.
Until cloud gaming technology manages to alter the way fundamental physics work, these problems won’t be resolved.
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