This sponsored post is produced by Cloud Gaming USA.
Cloud gaming, originally conceived as a streaming service (the Netflix for video games) has evolved to enable advanced game design at the studio level.
William Rhys Dekle, the senior director of worldwide business development at Microsoft Game Studios, outlines the opportunity:
“Computationally intense tasks such as illumination, physics, destruction, AI, content generation — anything you could want during development — can be delivered potentially at a much lower cost through the cloud.
“On the console side, it will definitely help us control costs and boost innovation in this new generation.”
Dekle reveals the full potential of the cloud in a new interview with VGI; he is joined by Chris Early, the VP of digital distribution at Ubisoft. You can read the full article here.
Early breaks down the cloud gaming opportunity into three distinct areas: streaming, enabling services and utilities to allow games saves across a multitude of devices, and augmented processing. On the latter and possibly the most complex he describes:
“Augmented processing — essentially using computing/processing assets in the cloud to perform actions that would otherwise be impossible or at least very difficult to render locally — using the processing power of the cloud to aid in creating more complex games and extensive world environments.”
While the studio side is a relatively new progression, the potential of streaming has never been more pertinent. Dekle outlines how publishers can also stand to gain big wins:
“[They’re] able to reach more consumers on more devices; and these are users that you can grow to know more about over time, which has tremendous value both in terms of the games you build and your ability to sell back to consumers over time.”
That said Dekle warns: “Publishers who don’t spend time and money investing and experimenting with the cloud and learning how design for it today are going to find themselves increasingly behind their peers when compared to their competitors .”
These interviews are commissioned ahead of Cloud Gaming USA 2014 (Sept. 4-Sept. 5). Cloud Gaming USA is an industry-defining event for all games publishers, platforms, and developers to discuss cloud distribution, monetization, and development. For full details on this event go here.
For more information please contact Tom Pycraft on tpycraft@vgintel.com or telephone 1-800-814-3459 ext. 4321.
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