Not a fan of streaming video games over the cloud? Too bad, as that’s something gamers should start getting used to, according to Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft’s chief executive, who was recently interviewed by Financial Times (alternative link) and told the publication that streaming is set to transform the video games industry just like Netflix did for television and cinema. Guillemot, who helped co-found Ubisoft with his brothers way back in 1986, shared his belief that most games will be streamed and produced in the cloud within the next 5 to 10 years—an idea that has prompted Ubisoft to take on recent deals that include acquiring Activision Blizzard games for streaming on Ubisoft+ as part of an agreement with Microsoft. Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and Skull and Bones are just a few of the Ubisoft games that will be available to play over the cloud, via Amazon’s Luna platform.
“When Netflix first said it was going to go into streaming, their shares fell a lot and they were widely criticised,” Guillemot told the Financial Times. “Today we see what they have become. It’s going to be the same with video games but it will take time. But when it takes off, it will happen very quickly.”
“We strongly believe in the next five to 10 years, many games will be streamed and will also be produced in the cloud,” Guillemot added. “That’s what pushed us to go forward with the [Microsoft] deal.”
Microsoft’s move to hand off a large portion of Activision’s cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft won its $75bn deal an initial nod from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority last week. Approval would pave the way for the gaming industry’s biggest-ever acquisition to be finalised next month. A final decision from the UK regulator is pending.
Guillemot said those streaming rights — plus the launch of more powerful mobile technology such as Apple’s latest iPhone 15 — will be key to increasing Ubisoft’s market penetration in fast-growing regions outside Europe and the US, where console gaming is not as entrenched.
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →Hey, what a coincidence. I expect to decrease my gaming in the next 5 to 10 years as well.
Im with ya, unless someone make it alot more enticing from a cost/playability perspective thats a no thank you!
Yeah I feel a decline on my part already which I guess comes with age (early 50's). The building part is more fun to me then actually gaming on the build at times.
This is the truth, this is what will happen. I expect with most computing. Countries need to up their connectivity thats for sure. And they will.
Not saying I like it, but " voting with your wallet" is hogwash that will not do squat. I got out voted by trillions ? when it comes to micro transactions games.. I don't know how much money it would be after all the years I said no since they started but the current yearly amount of money in MTs is mind bending.
This will be the exact same issue, and while there will be a period of co existance, streaming will be it going forward, and only streaming. Surely it will take longer than 10 for 100℅, but 20 years we will be very close, and I think 10 years, yes it will be above 50% with multiple companies no longer offering options.
Pc gamig will remain a market. But as I joked in another thread instead of gpus we will just have cards that provide render scaling at some point.
They threatened this with a lot of things. Remember when Office and Windows were going to be entirely cloud based? You could go all the way back to the old "mainframe vs workstation" debates that existed decades ago, and we just seem to kind of oscillate between the two (you can replace "mainframe" with cloud or datacenter today, but similar concept), but neither one ever entirely wins out.
Sometimes you just can't get around the reality of physics - not everyone has high speed, low latency internet. And even those that do, there is still a significant latency issue that exists.
You ~can~ use a lot of those things in the cloud, but they still haven't abandoned the actual physical release. I think the same will stay true with gaming. I don't see any publisher going "streaming only" and staying in business too long. At least in the near future.
Sure mate, wasn't ubisoft just saying NFTs are the future of gaming and gamers are just too dumb to understand the benefits?
What does it even mean to produce games in the cloud? This dumbo doesn't know how games are made yet he is a CEO of a gaming company.
I'd not be so sure of that. They've been saying PC gaming is dying for 25 years. And yet it is still here, not just here, but bigger than ever, and console exclusives are being released on PC with smaller and smaller delays. This would've been completely unthinkable just 5 years ago.
I don't think its s close enough comparison. Can't think of anything too close, but death of physical media might be it, though to be honest streaming of games is like a continuation of it. Its basically technology allowing for less ownership and less control, both of which companies looooove, and will take advantage of every single step
Except the technology does not exist to support it, unless they secretly invented FTL communications. Especially on mobile. My downstream ping is 200ms average with highs of 600ms right now in the evening when 99% of people are at home and probably not using mobile data. And this is to the most ideal test server closest to my location, not to a random game streaming cloud server that's likely not even on the same area.
Netflix works because for streaming media buffering and response time doesn't matter. As long as the buffer is not emptied it works. For game streaming you can't even think about a buffer, it must be instantaneous. Plus imagine the extra load on ISPs it would cause. Cloud is just using someone else's computer on remote desktop. It'd not be just a bad experience, but bad for the environment as well artificially boosting bandwith demand and demand for cloud providers.
Well why couldn't they just stream the parts of the map your in... you know... like that great twitch game second life...
That's the thing, it does work, I have used it, on a not so great connection, and its was a good while ago too. As much as I wanted to say, ah this crap will never work, nah it worked just fine. The visuals were a little off, but thats was it.
This tech is.here, its probably being implemented significantly and I am.thinking shifts are coming, First discounts for the streaming versions of individual games, then library monthly access then then streaming exclusives be it extra content or straight up stream only version and nothing else. Another advantage ia other than a cliemt of sorts no need for different version of a game for.different console and so on
The advantages are many. AND this will let them charge more for those that want 'local' versions because of the 'additional' development work needed. When in reality it's just all going to be PC based and adding functionality for additional video cards.
What matters is what is being passed down. If they stop passing render data meaning you're just streaming the screen then the need for video cards disappears. Unless you're doing local development work the need for local powerful hardware just simply disappears.
The industry will fight with itself on this topic. The monitor makers want to sell you a 4k or an 8k monitor, and that isn't compatible with everyone streaming. Growth of eSports where latency is king is also at conflict with everything moving to the cloud.
Lets see... if we go streaming.... what do we loose the need for.
1. High refresh rate monitors. Twitch gaming and 'smooth' performance are important but ultra high rate refresh rates simply stop being a thing.
2. Local 3d accelerating video cards of high power. The low end will be all people need to stream. Even if streaming is a 16k or whatever bullshit number they decide to throw out.
3. Local storage. no need to have storage on your local system. Just enough for a base OS and some cached data the rest is streamed.
4. High power CPU's. That 15 year old 4 core should be fine for streaming really. Maybe a bit more if you want to have discord open as well. Unless discord is your streaming client. Who knows... maybe?
So everyone can transition to a tablet or laptop of less than what we would consider moderate spec. 8 gig of ram. 4 cores, some trash tier video card, and a nice display. Everything else is in the cloud and a monthly service fee... that is probably lower than the yearly spend people like members of this forum do on their own personal systems.
On average I'm probably spending 1200 a year replacing parts and pieces for my tower. A streaming service that lets me run on low tier 10 year old hardware would all be eliminate my need for a desktop. My work laptop with a streaming client connected to a good KB and Mouse with nice displays that it can barely sustain the resolution on would in essence be plenty. Lets say that's uhh... 20 bucks a month? My cost... 240 a year.
I don't really WANT that. But you could market the Xbox Streamer... the last Xbox you'll ever need. Then all the game companies could negotiate an RMR with the streaming services and boom done. Because RMR is what generates IPO values.