Square Enix President: Cloud Streaming Services Key to Future Growth - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 January 2019 / 2,220 Views
Square Enix President Yosuke Matsuda in a New Year's letter discussed cloud streaming services and how it is key to future growth in the gaming industry.
"Against this backdrop of significant change, the current generation of game consoles has entered the late stage, and the next generation of consoles has become a topic of discussion in the digital entertainment industry," said Matsuda.
"Meanwhile, cloud streaming services for gaming have at last begun to show signs of taking off. Streaming is likely to bring a number of new platform operators into the market in addition to the existing console providers, while platform holders are also joining the PC gaming space. These developments produce a growing number of avenues through which game publishers and developers can provide content.
"In particular, game streaming services will be the ultimate driver of a rapid transition from the sale of games in boxes to digital consumption. Streaming also lends itself to new subscription-based business models, so we believe deciding how to engage with these forthcoming trends will be key to future growth."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Again, as much as I hate to say it this will be a large part of the future of gaming. First it was nobody will get rid of physical, now digital is beginning to outpace physical. Now it's nobody wants cloud gaming (which I don't) but it will be a key sector in most gaming businesses in the future. I'll buy physical whenever I can, but there's no denying where the industry is going technology wise.
- Distant future
Digital is as far as I will go in gaming, if there is a time when it is streaming only, i'll find a new hobby. Maybe one day they will sort out the issues with latency and ping, streaming is garbage.
Square Enix makes RPGs those slow pace games are ok to stream
I really don't think global internet infrastructure is still anywhere near where it needs to be to overcome cloud gaming's inherent latency, connection reliability, and bandwidth issues. Local hardware and mobile hardware is likely going to outpace the development of cloud gaming and internet tech and be more enticing to consumers for a good long while, if not perpetually.
I feel the reason that publisher's like Square are keen on streaming is it offers them the potential to go direct to the consumer, so they see it being a way of going from content providers to having their own platform, this is still a long way from reality but it's a juicy carrot.
I mean, if you don't want my business, that's fine.
Well, that's the way business is going whether you like it or not. In another several years or so, it's going to be pretty difficult to play AAA games, or even AA games, , if you're going to refuse to stream them. In fact, I think the next generation is that last that will even offer physic media. And, even in the next generation of, it.looks.like there will be a lot of movement away from it. we're getting close to the point where you will have to choose to spend extra money on a version of your platform of choice that comes with a disk drive.
Well, digital vs physical media is different from what the article is talking about: cloud streaming services (which is, if you're not aware, a video feed of your game being streamed from powerful hardware off-site). It has inherent and unavoidable latency issues that I'm not certain can be overcome. I agree that physical media may be on its way out, though.
Yes, digital does not equal streaming. But, they certainly are related, and the news is all about movement towards streaming. As for latency, my understanding is that much of that can be overcome by doing some drywall f the other work on the local device, while most of it is handled by "the cloud" or wherever downstream.
Yeah some people just like to own what they love,but we always own the memory of the experience and its also a bit materialistic to have so much plastic laying around without using it.
Perhaps, but keep in mind that streaming services are powered by server farms that consume massive amounts of electricity and are often powered by dirty sources such as coal. So buying a bunch of plastic may actually be the more environmentally friendly option.
Firstly modern coalplants do not have to be bad for the environment, there is a possibility yes but i do not think buying plastic is ever better as it also needs to be made AND destroyed or reclycled so we could assume that more processing gives more waste and surely with the sourceproduct plastic has.
Also keep in mind that coalplants are getting rare and a lot of countries do not even have them anymore.
True, there's already more than enough plastic sitting in landfills. It would be nice if they found a way to make games biodegradable so we could use them as compost when we're done with them :P
Haha yeah that is a good way of thinking you got there,we are long from anything like that could be existing but it is a good hope to wish for.
I recently went on a tour of my local waste management facility and it left me feeling pretty hopeless about the future of humanity :(
is Cloud Streaming related to Cloud Strife? will we see him in the FF7 remake?
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