We couldn’t all watch the Champions League Final ”concurrently via the internet at HD-level” without encountering trouble, and that ”doesn’t include the level of interactivity” of games.
Samsung and Gaikai’s partnership won’t be the death knell for dedicated console platforms as the Internet infrastructure as it stands today just can’t cope with the demand.
”Cloud is a huge opportunity. And someday, yes, someday. But if you look at the internet capabilities today, it’s a challenge. Even, forget about games. If you said everybody was going to watch the Champions League Final concurrently via the internet at HD-level quality, the internet can’t handle that,” Phil Spencer said in an interview.
”And that’s just people watching a football game. That doesn’t include the level of interactivity of a game and a two-way pipe going back and forth.”
”So there’s just bandwidth issues in terms of metering and things that are out there. So I believe, yes, in the long run we’ll land in a spot where there’s cloud distribution of all content and Microsoft is clearly invested in that.”
Microsoft is already in the business of cloud and has extended such services to Xbox Live Gold subscribers by letting them park their game save data on the Internet instead of their consoles.
”I like the work that Gaikai does, I play games on Gaikai, and if I get the right bandwidth situation they’re actually good experiences. But today it’s not really up to scale. You’re still going to be pushing boxes out to people’s houses that they’re going to plug into the TV. That’s what they’re going to use to play their AAA games,” continued Spencer.
”And I think that’ll be the case for a while. But that’s not trying to downplay what Gaikai is doing, because I think that it’s great that they’re investing in it.”
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