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+Some times ago I had a very short conversation with
+[[https://twitter.com/maddingue][Maddingue]] about what could be the
+future of video games. Since then I've been thinking a little bit more
+about it.
+
+There's a possibility that things will change quickly and a lot for the
+consoles, and I believe that we will move toward streaming platforms
+quickly. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon have the resources to make
+this possible. This also shows why Facebook spent a lot of money on
+Oculus.
+
+Still, streaming has its own challenges (read
+[[http://www.dormando.me/2014/11/09/3ds_dqx/][dormando's post]] on what
+he had to do to get a smooth game experience with DQX on 3DS) : latency,
+lag, you need a fast and always on internet connection, etc.
+
+We already know that Nintendo is already exploring this market with
+remakes of some of its games on the DS. Sony tried with Gaikai,
+unsuccessfully so far. They service is running and available (at least
+in north America) but I don't know anyone using it.
+
+This generation of console (PS4 and xbox one) is growing faster than any
+previous generation. Sales for the PS4 are amazing, and even if
+Microsoft is lagging behind, the xbox one is selling extremely well
+compared to the xbox 360.
+
+But it might be hard for MS to catch up. Because there's already a lot
+of PS4 outside, some publishers might decide to focus on this platform
+instead. Developing a game to support two or three platforms is very
+expensive for them, and if the majority of players are on one platform,
+why bother. Also it seems that the PS4 is easier to develop on (it was
+not the case on the PS3, so Sony has learned from this error), and is
+more powerful.
+
+Now, MS also have the resources to announce in two years that they have
+a new and inexpensive console to play games streamed from their platform
+(Azure). We can even imagine that they offer it for free if you take a 2
+or 3 years subscription to the xbox live. In this scenario, Sony would
+not be able to compete: they don't have the cash, and I really doubt
+that Gaikai is going to be ready anytime soon.
+
+Let's take a look at the four other giants now: Google, Amazon, Facebook
+and Apple. They all build phones, tablets, and devices that you plug
+into your TV. They also have huge cloud infrastructure, and know how to
+distribute content that way.
+
+The thing that is not clear to me is how publisher would join. Right
+now, all the companies provide their own SDK and if you want your game
+to work on different devices, you have to develop different version of
+the games for each device. It's in the interest of the constructor/cloud
+providers, but not the publishers, and this can't scale. What they might
+end up doing is to provide a SDK to create a light client for each
+platform (android, iOS, windows, Oculus), and the publisher can get his
+game running on the cloud infrastructure of his choice (e.g: Google
+Compute or AWS). Cloud providers will compete on the infrastructure
+(fast platform, a lot of
+[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_presence][POP]], etc). This
+could also helps issues that we saw this year, where publishers are
+releasing a game but they don't have enough servers to accept all the
+players on day one.
+
+The [[https://www.oculus.com/][Oculus Rift]] is going to be a huge game
+changer, but for now it still requires a PC to play, and a lot of people
+either don't have one, or don't have one powerful enough to play games.
+If the game can be rendered in the cloud and just be streamed to the
+oculus, everybody with an internet connection can play games.
+
+This also “fix” an old an annoying problem for gamers:
+retrocompatibility. If we stop developing games for specific hardware,
+but instead just for PCs, either on Linux or Windows, and all we have is
+a stream, it should be easier to play a game in 10 years that it is
+today.
+
+I might be totally wrong on this. But my gut tells me that's where we're
+heading. We've already started to move all the computation in the cloud,
+video gaming is the next step (and it's one of the last because of it's
+complexity).
+
+Here's my prediction: the move will come from the new players
+(Google/Amazon/FB/Apple) and it will be there in less than 5 years.