The wandering scene will be the future trend free access to any terminal

THQ's CEO Brian Farrell told everyone at the US cloud Gaming conference this September that cloud gaming is the future.

"Game makers need not bother with the real media," Farrell said at the conference. "No warehousing, no price reduction, all the money consumers pay will be developers and distributors." ”

THQ is not the only one to hold this idea, and over the past two years, a growing number of publishers have embraced cloud technology to rethink traditional business models and the way people buy and play games.

The first time the cloud game became a reality was at the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (GDC), where the three companies Playcast, Gaikai and OnLive first demonstrated the possibility of offering optional game/on-demand games (Gaming-on-demand) services.

At the GDC2009 press conference, OnLive unveiled an online game service that took 7 years to complete. The goal of this service is to establish digital sales channels that are synchronized with retail channels for high-quality games for international publishers. Steve Perlman, OnLive's founder and former WebTV founder, revealed that the system would allow players to ignore hardware configurations and enjoy the highest quality games online on televisions and different operating system computers. Perlman calls OnLive "technology that will not go out of date", pointing out that in the future players no longer need to update anything to play the latest game. Instead, updates occur only at the terminal, and are periodically upgraded by the service provider to support server performance for online gaming.

Last June, OnLive officially sold in the United States, paying $14.95 a month (then to $10 a month) and supporting distributors including electronic Arts, Take-two, THQ, Ubisoft, Epic, Atari, Codemasters and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Earlier this year, OnLive also joined Facebook apps, allowing players to run games directly from social networking sites, and announced plans to integrate the ipad and Android mobile platforms into online gaming services in the US and Europe. Last month, OnLive officially sold in the UK and intends to step into other European countries.

Gaikai also enjoyed a similar success, but the company's founder David Perry carefully planned Gaikai and onlive different business models. According to Perry, OnLive's goal is to play in the living room, which will allow it to compete directly with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, but Gaikai's strategy is to attract new consumers through help, rather than competition, for distributors to offer first-party games.

Last April, the report from the Market Research Institute Screen Digest predicted that by 2014 online gaming services would receive $332 million trillion in North America, and Western Europe was expected to get a 90 million dollar market.

While many players still have concerns about the option game model, developers see the benefits of cloud gaming. Aside from the limitations of network bandwidth, many developers dream that one day the player will no longer be tied to the platform, but will be free to enter the game world from any terminal.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)