Sony demonstrates fast PlayStation 5 load times, hints at cloud gaming future
theverge.com
theverge.com
On one hand, I appreciate having older games be avilable for download after the companies decide to cease physical production. It allows for older games to still be enjoyed without having to deal with the ridiculous markup on the original cartridges.
On the other hand, the question of ownership still has yet to be answered. Even for platforms like the Wii that allowed you to buy/download games to permanently keep on the console via the Wii Shop, after a while it was still shut down. Now no one can access it, regardless of whether they purchased products or not. And with game streaming, this problem only gets worse because you completely rely on the servers to host/process the game for you.
What happens if (when) Google decides to shut down Stadia after years of regular use? Will subscribers be allowed to download the full game to run independently on their own machines? Can/should this be legally enforced?
These questions haven't been answered, and I think they ought to be before I would ever consider game streaming "ready". I'll stick to physical media on dedicated hardware in the mean time.
Personally I say it will depend on the business model for Stadia when it releases. Will it follow a all you can eat subscription model or a pay for what use use model or even a pay as you go model.
For the subscription and pay as you go model you are paying for access for a period of time and not the game directly. So when the platform shutdown so does your access to the games.
Steam / valve supposedly has end of the world preparations in place in case they go out of business so consumers won’t lose their game library but have never said publicly what those plans were (and not talked about such plans in a while so who knows if those doomsday plans are even still in place).
What other cloud gaming platforms that are already running now (Shadow) are offering is basically renting access to computer hardware with them handling maintenance, updates and upgrades but you bring your own library of games to the platform. If you leave or the service shuts down you are able to take your library of games with you.
What I’m more concerned about is the exclusives. See it doesn’t bother me too much if one platform goes away as long as I can get the title on another platform. Which is the same be it music, movies, tv shows or games. As I’ll just “acquire” the lost game, another service/platform and depending on price and how many use i intend to use it I might jut purchase it again (think upgrading from vhs to dvd or dvd to boy-ray). But honestly their would only be a few titles that I would personally repurchase.
Now atm fast internet isn’t as everywhere as we would like to think it is. I only have to go a couple of miles down to road and I go from having access to low latency, unlimited 80/20 or even 350/20 (VDSL or DOCSIS) to having slow, unreliable, high error correcting (because those lines are on the far limits of there connection back to the exchange) ADSL or higher speed but higher latency mobile broadband (with a unloaded connection still having a 60-75ms ping back to services hosted within the ISPs network). To a few miles in the other direction and getting Gigabit fibre to the premises.
So personally I don’t foresee game streaming to be much of a threat to digital downloads just yet which lands us in the same place we are in now.
But exclusives are what trouble me. Not because I won’t get to play them (actually I can see it being the opposite and might just drop in and out of the service when their is an exclusive I want to play, like what I do with Netflix), but because I fear those games may just get lost in the void when such services shutter.
There is a strong retro scene preserving older games and hardware. As hardware ages current hardware is more able to emulate older systems and keep those games playable and alive. Even recent consoles such as Wii are getting emulated but newer generation console such as the 360/PS3 got their DRM busted open and will allow “transferring of licenses” long after the supported platforms are shuttered (aslong as the hardware itself doesn’t die coughREODcough).
But with exclusive titles on streaming platforms who’s code might never leave the dev house it’s created in or the data centre it’s ran on will anyone get the chance to preserve that content for generations to come? Will I be able to share the experiences I get from such titles with my kids or grandkids or will someday those titles simply disappear into the ether never to be seen again like some past Doctor Who episodes?