Nvidia Sees Video Game Streaming as a Major Gaming Platform in Several Years

From X-bit Labs: Cloud video game streaming services are pretty widespread these days and are definitely a topic that is considered by various companies, including game publishers, rental services and even telecommunication providers. However, the technology yet has to be widely adopted by the end-users. According to Nvidia Corp., in five years time cloud video game streaming may become very significant and in ten may even dominant way of playing games.

"We will see [cloud gaming] gain momentum throughout next year. But if I look out five years, I think it could be a significant portion of the way people play games. [...] There is still a gap to that [GeForce] GTX experience for the hardcore gamer. I think it will be 10 years before we have to worry about [hardcore gamers] switching over to the cloud. They are pretty particular about their gaming experience. I do not think we have to worry too much about that right now," said Phil Eisler, the general manager of GeForce Grid cloud gaming at Nvidia, in an interview with VentureBeat web-site.

At present, there are two huge problems that cloud video game streaming services have to solve: minimization of latencies (the time between input by gamers and response of the game) amid maximization of graphics quality as well as distribution of data centers. In a couple of years both are projected to be solved and therefore the cloud streaming technology will become the one that will be "hugely disruptive" and hard to ignore.

Technical and economical problems associated with datacenters will be resolved relatively easily and quickly as hardware becomes more powerful every year. Over time, Nvidia's Phil Eisler believes, cloud video game streaming services will not be able to just compete with leading-edge game consoles head-to-head, but to provide even better experience thanks to lack of optical media.

"There may be a few people who would want to buy a console for [4K resolution allegedly supported by PlayStation 4 and Xbox Next]. 1080p at 60Hz is a pretty awesome experience. The thing about the consoles … they say this is the last console, and I am certainly a believer in that. [...] You can put out multiple Blu-ray discs, but who wants to jockey discs anymore? People don’t want discs in their lives anymore. They want to download everything, and when you’re downloading that kind of stuff, it takes a long time. So we’re also pushing the ability, of course, to play instantly. You don’t have to download anything. You don’t have to update any patches. It’s all maintained for you. You just play," said Mr. Eisler.

View: Article @ Source Site