Ubisoft CEO: Streaming Will Replace Consoles

[Steven Bogos]

Ubisoft CEO: Streaming Will Replace Consoles

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Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot thinks the next generation of consoles will be the last traditional hardware generation.

The console hardware landscape is changing. The idea of a big drastic "console generation" every 5-7 years just isn't cutting it these days with the advancements in technology, and players like Microsoft are looking at solutions such as OnLive [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/166666-Microsoft-to-Unify-Xbox-One-PC-Gaming]).

"We believe in streaming--it demands lots of bandwidth," he said. "We think it's going to grow but today, with the types of games we have, it will still take a bit of time to be more popular."

Guillemot believes "traditional" consoles have one more generation left in them before streaming takes over, stating that "my expectation is we will have another cycle of consoles before we go to streaming. I don't have dates or anything but what I see is the manufacturers would prefer to have again a new hardware to take up the potential of new possibilities that they can bring."

Interesting, especially considering the tragic fate [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/140339-OnLive-Shuts-Down-Sells-Assets-to-Sony] of the aforementioned OnLive streaming service. Perhaps it was just a bit ahead of its time? Guillemot certainly seems to think so.

Source: GameSpot [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/consoles-will-eventually-be-replaced-by-streaming-/1100-6439754/]

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[The Enquirer]

As much as I may despise Ubisoft, it's a really good point. Last generation consoles moved away from being mere gaming devices and this generation even more so. With the talks of upgradable hardware it is turning into the exact thing a gaming computer is.

This is furthered with the continued pushing of cross platform play. Soon it'll ultimately come down to a matter of "do you want short or long term costs reduced?"

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Until data caps are removed, and bandwidth is strong everywhere, I don't think this will happen yet. He brushes off the bandwidth cost, but that is a rather serious obstacle.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

And this is another example for the argument that game publishers and developers don't want to sell games to anyone but the most privileged idiots on the planet. Bandwidth restrictions are a big deal which is why gaming cannot be streaming yet. It's one thing for films and television like Netflix, HBO Go, and Hulu, but the programs those services stream are not as big as games are. It seems to me that game companies (Western ones in particular) live in this imaginary lala land where everyone has infinite internet, time, and money despite reality being anything but. And people wonder why companies were shuttering weekly last generation and why most of the ones who didn't ended it in the red.

 

[Elfgore]

Until data caps are removed, and bandwidth is strong everywhere, I don't think this will happen yet. He brushes off the bandwidth cost, but that is a rather serious obstacle.

Yeah, he really should not be brushing this off like it is nothing. It's literally the largest obstacle to seeing this happen. My dad has around 1.2 MB a second and a max of thirty GB a month. That is the best he can get and it is insanely expensive. He better hope internet in the U.S improves massively to see this theory become true.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I kind of prefer to own my stuff, thanks. Streaming is great for convince I suppose, but I like having actual discs. And displaying them on my shelves. Old fashion, I know, but I'm slowly starting to realize that gaming is moving away from me.

 

[robert022614]

the infrastructure is definitely not there yet at least in the US and big cable companies seem hesitant on fixing that. Financially they make tons off of providing the bare minimum while charging a high premium for tiers that would make streaming like that viable for the most part anyway.

 

[weirdee]

Even with the required infrastructure, it's not like we could trust any of these money grubbing assholes to charge fairly for that service.

 

[hentropy]

Well since the CEO of Ubisoft said it, you can put money on the exact opposite happening. Consoles forever, I guess.

Also, a console with upgradeable hardware? Pretty sure we call that a PC. Personal computer, for short.

 

[Madmatty]

I prefer to own my own games so I'll pass on these new consoles. I'll just stick to steam if you ask me

 

[ShakerSilver]

Streaming games is fucking awful for anything that does not require fast response time from the player. Action titles, Racing games, Fighting games, Shooters, etc are all gimped by network latency. There's no instantaneous internet speeds simply due to the the speed of light existing, so there's always going some latency, even on the fastest of internet speeds.

 

[Dr. Thrax]

People have already covered the complete lack of proper infrastructure to allow this to happen, but honestly, I'm in the camp of "Gimme a physical copy or a one-time download".
I don't want to have to worry about shitty weather or crap connection fucking with the streaming and causing my game to fuck up, if I wanted that, I'd go play an MMO or other online game.

 

[Saelune]

Streaming? No. Digital, maybe, sure, but not streaming, not anytime soon.

The big issue with consoles though is that they have begun forsaking all the pros they offered. I -was- one of the staunchest console defenders, but now I find myself gravitating to PC more, mostly cause PC is doing what I liked consoles for. I can play most games with a controller, and its usually quicker to download a game from Steam than install a game from disc. The fact I even have to is a pain, since one of the biggest console pros was pop in and play.

The Wii U is the only current console that still acts like it. Not that it gets appreciated for any of it.

 

[Joccaren]

Until data caps are removed, and bandwidth is strong everywhere, I don't think this will happen yet. He brushes off the bandwidth cost, but that is a rather serious obstacle.

To be fair he's expecting 10-20 years to solve that problem, not necessarily for everyone, but for a majority of consumers. And that's fairly reasonable. In the last 10 years my bandwidth cap has gone from 20Gb to 500Gb each month, give it another 10 at that rate and I'll have 12 and a half terrabytes bandwidth. Of course I doubt that'll happen 'cause my country can't handle its internet infrastructure for shit, but...
And in the last 20 years here we've gone from predominantly dial up to 20+Mb/s download in most major areas.

That said, he'll eventually be right. Whether its next generation, or the one after, the whole 'appeal' of consoles is starting to become obsolete. Easy access to AAA games? Handhelds are starting to be able to handle it, internet streaming means tablets can handle it, computers are able to do it, and almost as cheap as consoles. The entire world is moving towards that easy usability. Its not really unique any more. They still have a small convenience edge, but that's disappearing over time. Its why consoles have been pushing to be a solid media centre for all your entertainment needs, and tend to advertise on TV features and such half the time these days; gaming wise, they're core appeal isn't as impressive as it used to be. Making it a home entertainment platform means people might still buy it just so they have it all in one, but once TVs themselves handle that... There's not really anywhere for the console to go.

 

[The_Great_Galendo]

Consoles going obsolete? I believe it. They already don't really offer more than a computer in my opinion, though I suppose other opinions may differ.

Streaming becoming standard? I doubt it. Data caps/costs are a thing, and will continue to be a thing. Additionally, the idea of a company deciding to shut down the server when it's no longer profitable is off-putting to a lot of people, myself included. I'd rather have install files and not worry about the company's financial solvency or the speed of my Internet service at that particular moment.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

HAH HA HA HA.

If you want to run the best games you're going to have a powerful system to even run them, THEN you need to render more frames than necessary in case the player does X in the next few frames so you need a system even MORE powerful than that. Then you need a really good, constant internet connection on both ends and a low ping and EVEN THEN the ping will be such that for even slightly faster games(even something like TF2) you will have your ass handed to you by somebody running a normal computer.

And again you're going to have to have a shitton of data centers all around the country for better pings and what happens when they have to run a center in somewhere like Alaska? If these streaming consoles have replaced all consoles pretty much everybody there is either going to have horrible pings OR the company is going to have to eat the cost of a data center for a relatively small population.(I'm using Alaska as an example here but I'm pretty sure a lot of Canada has a similar problem with low population density and bad ISPs) Don't even get me started on Australia.

Or DDOS attacks, or publishers shutting down the servers because they aren't profitable anymore, or day one users annihilating the servers like they do with every single day one launch of Ubisoft's authentication servers(and those are just authentication servers they don't have to actually render anything).

 

[Quellist]

It's like they don't want us to own anything anymore so that they can continue to have something to sell us.

Exactly! He'd love it to happen because that way no-one will really have anything concerete. Everything will be gated off and Ubi would be able to pull games whenever they felt like it.

The next step would probably be to only sell limited time licences for a game so you'd have to keep paying to keep playing

 

[Fox12]

Didn't they say that last generation?

As much as I hate to say it, though, he may be right. I'm sure the companies would love the DRM and lack of ownership that would come with something like this.

 

[Estarc]

I doubt it. There are plenty of streaming advocates, they keep being proven wrong. It might become a thing one day, but the only people that want it to happen are corporations. Streaming games is even less consumer friendly than what we have now.