The logical conclusion of piracy and AI reverse engineering is that mire and more games will become streaming exclusives

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bluescrn 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, there'll just be fewer big-budget games. Streaming is always going to be a sub-par experience (latency and video compression). And the mess that AI made of the hardware market has likely killed off (or at least indefinitely postponed) the next generation of games consoles

But we've got 4-5 decades of games to enjoy.

Part of the reason that the games industry is struggling is that there's been no real generational leaps for a long time. Gaming used to be driven by those technological leaps, but these days we just get incremental improvements. 10-15yr old games are just as entertaining as brand new releases and often don't look too dated.

Also, ever more people are getting into retro gaming, enjoying the classics from the 80s and 90s, from well before microtransactions and hyper-competitive online multiplayer.

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BoxwoodSeed 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nevermind the generational leaps, there has been a lack of creativity and a flood of low quality titles that make it harder and harder to find the few good games among them.

I've had better luck finding great games I didn't know about from the 1990s than from the past twenty years.

	▲	mlok an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It seems to me that the indie games scene has shown quite a lot of creativity.

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an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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jnsie 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is this a logical conclusion or is this correlation in a time when companies in myriad industries are pushing rent over buying because margins are so much better?

Piracy has been present since the advent of the personal computer and I think it's accepted by most that some people will pay, and others just won't. I'm not sure that AI reverse engineering changes this picture.

	▲	entropi 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>Is this a logical conclusion or is this correlation in a time when companies in myriad industries are pushing rent over buying because margins are so much better? I think both, I would argue that right now, giving hardware into the hands of your customer presents a much bigger risk nowadays. Streaming is obviously the better option for margins, and now it is basically the only option to keep the product under control. Also now that consumer GPU/memory is getting more and more expensive, I think it has become realistically the only way forward.

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easyThrowaway 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This, and the next generation of consoles being no less than 1600$/€ on day one.

Given they're moving to digital-only future I fully expect them to sell a "50$ + monthly subscription" dongle-like version of ps6 and xbox where you can play the game you buy as a streaming solution, or pay the aforementioned price for a "locally hosted" device on a console.

	▲	bluescrn 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I can't see the next generation ever launching unless the market recovers. And I'm not sure we're ever going to see cheap RAM or GPUs again. There's clearly more money to be made at current price levels, and not much potential for competition to fix the market.

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joenot443 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The majority of console play time these days is spent in online multiplayer games. I don’t think AI reverse engineering will change that.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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password54321 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Your "logical conclusion" ignores that many popular games rely on online content anyway. You still need their servers without needing it to be streamed.

	▲	Chris2048 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Your "logical conclusion" ignores that Why did you have to phrase it like this, instead of just bringing up your own counterpoint? Also, I'd see the concern here as where the code runs: if there is a dependency on the server to pull down code/assets, but it still runs it locally, then there is still an opportunity to pirate it locally - So this isn't a point about cloud-dependence, but AI/piracy specifically pushing execution to the server side.

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izacus 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can you walk us though your thought process here? Is piracy actually a problem? How is taking away ability to play offline a "logical conclusion"? Based on what evidence?

	▲	matheusmoreira 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Corporations are monopolists and they are very angry about the fact you can just decompile any game and even port it to new platforms with AI.

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Hamuko 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They can certainly try but I'm not convinced that gamers are gonna latch onto the idea. Sure, a new GTA game might be able to do it to a certain level of success, but I'm not sure a Gears of War: E-Day will be able to get people to pay a constant subscription to stream it. Indie games will almost certainly not go streaming exclusive, so you'll now be competing even more fiercely with indies and older games.