During a panel at the on-going Eurogamer Expo, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President Phil Harrison talked about how Cloud computing would improve the visual experience in console games over the years.
“It’s also about cloud processing and AI. This is where some of the computational effort of a game can be offloaded to the dedicated CPUs on the cloud, to make your game experience even better, better graphics, better lighting, better physics. This is an example of where we think the the cloud is going to push the next generation of game development in new and creative ways, that will make the experience even more better.”
Harrison also believed that the Cloud will help keep consoles relevant, even as PCs become more powerful. Will Microsoft’s server farms be enough to support visual improvements for so many consoles and games over several years at a time? That remains to be seen, but at the very least, you won’t need to worry about games looking visually inferior down the line.