Enlarge / A high-level concept diagram of how cloud gaming works. (credit: Venngage)
Better start saving up for that PlayStation 5, Xbox Two, or Nintendo Swatch (that last follow-up name idea is a freebie, by the way). That generation of consoles might be the last one ever, according to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. After that, he predicts cheap local boxes could provide easier access to ever-evolving high-end gaming streamed to the masses from cloud-based servers.
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“I think we will see another generation, but there is a good chance that step-by-step we will see less and less hardware,” Guillemot said in a recent interview with Variety. “With time, I think streaming will become more accessible to many players and make it not necessary to have big hardware at home. There will be one more console generation and then after that, we will be streaming, all of us.”
That relatively quick shift to a streaming-centric gaming marketplace might seem hard to believe from the vantage point of 2018, where even streaming a high-end game from a console inside your own house comes with plenty of headaches. And while workable streaming services like PlayStation Now and GeForce Now have their niches, they don’t seem in imminent danger of replacing high-end local gaming hardware altogether any time soon
