While delivering his keynote speech at Cloud Gaming USA in San Jose, THQ CEO Brian Farrell predicted that future game consoles will ditch disc drives in favor of cloud streaming. Note that he said “future” and not “net-gen.” The THQ boss did not specify when he believes this change will come, only that it is inevitable. Most gamers and industry people have already made the assumption that this transition will one day happen, so it was hardly the boldest of predictions.
Farrell came off sounding incredibly excited for the move to the cloud because of how much money it will save publishers like THQ. Cloud streaming would mean “no physical goods cost for game makers. No inventory, no markdowns, and all the money spent by the consumer would go to the developer or publisher.”
On top of that, he also sees the hardware manufacturers cutting out some expenses, because it “will result in a lower cost for the hardware manufacturer, which will result in a lower cost to consumers and therefore a lower entry point, thus driving more mass market adoption,” he said. So at least us gamers will be getting in on the money saving, too. Of course, that is assuming that the publishers set price points that reflect the lower production costs, which is far from being a lock.
Continuing, Farrell stated that an even higher focus on customer feedback thanks to everyone and everything being constantly connected will go hand-in-hand with the shift. “The box, ship and done model is transitioning to: observe, measure, and modify.” As such, he foresees a future in which games become “a service model where direct consumer feedback allows the ability to operate in this always on, always connected environment.”
His own company is already starting to lean more heavily towards digital distribution with an astounding 40 weeks of DLC planned for Saints Row: The Third. Farrell says that they “will grow and change the experience as the consumer engages with the game.”
It all sound well and good, and I have no doubt that we will one day be streaming everything; but color me skeptical when it comes to publishers passing the monetary savings onto us. We have already seen prices for both digital content and online play subscriptions rise significantly as this generation has proceeded. Couple that with the reality that prices on new releases of anything do not go down as the years roll on.
Sure, the pricing structure for older items dips as they become cheaper to produce and/or lose their popularity, but new media and tech does not become more affordable over time. It just does not happen. What reason is there to believe that that will actually change when the industry’s production costs fall off a cliff? Complaints about how difficult it is to recoup development and publishing costs surface all the time. Publishers would gladly save themselves money instead of consumers. And, really, who wouldn’t feel that way if it was their own money?
[Source: Games Industry Biz]
[Image via Edge.]
