The future is always uncertain, no matter how much we think we know what it will hold. In the case of the gaming industry, it seems inevitable that cloud-based streaming is going to take top billing relatively soon. Some people are pretty excited about that, though there’s reasons to be skeptical. One person who seems firmly in that first category is David Cage of Quantic Dream, who thinks that the entire industry is due for a big change.
In an interview with DualShockers, the infamous game director talked at length about upcoming services based on streaming, such as Google’s Stadia project. While he says there may be some pitfalls, it’s going to change the scope of video games for both players and developers by giving each quicker and easier access to the best technology anywhere at anytime, making things more open for players and helping resource management for developers.
“Cloud Play is going to be the next revolution in gaming, and I hope it will be a competitive landscape,” said Cage. “Games are going to look stunning no matter what screen you play on, and developers will only have to focus on one platform, which means that dev money will go into quality instead of compatibility.”
On Stadia, he also said that Google has a lot of potential with the service, but they have to remember that with this new service, content, more so than ever before, is going to be king.
“Google Stadia is an interesting attempt at breaking this new ground,” he said. “They definitely have the resources and technology to make it happen, but like their competitors, they will need to convince developers and publishers to make their platform unique. Content is king: the platform with the most exclusive content will win.”
Quantic Dream is in the process of transitioning to being a third party publisher, so no doubt Cage and his studio has a two-fold interest in streaming. There’s still a lot of challenges to the idea, but either way, the industry is going to make a big go at streaming. We’ll just have to see how it all plays out.
