CLOUD GAMING AND OTHER VISIONS:
WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU HAVE INSTALLED A COMPUTERGAME?
Alexandre Macris (Founder @ Spawnapps, Paris)
The Computer Game industry is experiencing radical shifts since a couple of years now: The retail distribution has been marginalized in favor of the digital distribution. This shift meets another one, the conversion of casual gamers to social gamers. Meanwhile, the MMO games conquered the Asian market (and beyond). To complete the picture we need of course to mention the irruption of new gaming platforms and devices: Smartphones, Tablets, Smart TVs and Kinect.
All these changes have one common point: they all have focused on solving the accessibility issue. Smashing of technical, practical and financial barriers to entry has been a key factor of these successful shifts.
The “friction-less user experience” is a new holy grail for the gaming industry just like it is for any other e-commerce market. Which from the Application Stores, the Cloud Gaming or the HTML5 will first reach this goal? Except if one from the Flash3D, the Chrome Native Client or virtualization technologies oversteps them? Whoever the winner is, you will never have to install a computer game anymore.
Moderation: Robert Glashüttner (ORF)