Future of gaming?

[JWeinCom]

spemanig said:

JWeinCom said:

The disadvantages of a pure streaming system outweigh the benefits.  It greatly limits the potential audience to those with fast enough internet for streaming.  In Netflix, buffering isn't that big of an inconvenience.  In gaming it is.  Multiplayer is a big barrier considering how much more data has to be transferred.  And streaming would require you to be always on which I believe people were upset about in the past.

The advantage of streaming is that you can get into a game quicker.  That's a bigger deal for movies than for games (as a game is going to last you longer, and people play fewer games over the course of the month than movies). 

Having data stored on the harddrive just makes more sense (unless there's some back end stuff I'm unaware of).  Companies are investing more in the PSNow type of system, but I think at somepoint someone will realize that just because it makes sense for movies and music does not mean it makes sense for gaming.

I think that in the coming years that audience will be plenty big enough to be the defacto business venture. People don't care about being always online. Like at all. Destiny and The Division are two of the most successful new IP of the generation, and they are both always online. No one who is opting into a streaming service cares that you need to be connected, the sameway no one playing multiplayer does.

I think that the tech is very young atm, but it is getting better, and I'm sure there will be ways to get around some of the inheret issue as early as 5 years from now, which is when streaming is actually expected to take off on a grander scale. The biggest issue is for fighting games, where latency will instantly make the games unfun. You can bet your bottom dollar they are working on fixing that as we speak though. Progress will be made, as it always does.

There is a difference between having a multiplayer focussed game be always online, vs needing your entire system being online.  Nobody who is playing multiplayer minds, because it's literally impossible to do it otherwise.  However, with a single player game, the restriction is unnecessary. 

I don't see the tech improving to where it needs to be that quickly.  With internet providers restricting internet speeds via price tiers, and continuing legal battles over net neutrality, and nations where internet access is still not ubiquitous.

Naturally I can be wrong, but I don't see streaming being a better option until more than ten years.