Recently, something happened in the gaming industry that got only a modest amount of attention, but was actually very significant to the future of the medium. On April 2, 2015, Sony bought the struggling game streaming service OnLive, and promptly shut it down. While on the one hand, this development might seem like evidence that Cloud Gaming is a lost cause, the reality of it though is quite the opposite. As Sony has clearly begun to realize, Cloud Gaming is, in fact, the future of this industry, whether we want to admit it or not. The console has had a long and glorious run, but its days might be numbered. Why? The reason is two-fold: hard-drive space is shrinking and piracy is growing.
Games Are Just Getting Too Damn Big
In our rush to go out and buy the latest generation consoles, most of us were motivated by one thing: experiencing the huge leap in graphical quality that the PS4 and Xbox One promised. And we have not been disappointed – even the earliest titles, from GTA V to Far Cry 4, have already relegated our old consoles to dust-collectors. But, as you might have noticed after buying even a few titles and installing them on your shiny new machine, there is already a bit of a problem: the hard disk space is filling up really fast.
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“I am looking at a fate that I never contemplated with my PS3: having to decide which of my beloved titles to erase when I run out of space! What is this, communism?!”
When I bought my PS4, I scoffed at the mere idea of ever running out of space, thinking its massive 500GB hard drive would last me for years, maybe forever (ok, that was probably naïve, I admit). But after installing mega-titles such as Battlefield and Bloodborne on it, many at over 50GB each, I am already starting to sweat. I am looking at a fate that I never contemplated with my PS3: having to decide which of my beloved titles to erase when I run out of space! What is this, communism?!
And I am not alone. In February, IGN’s Jenna Pitcher wrote about this phenomenon, and how it is quickly becoming an issue for many gamers on the latest-gen consoles. As Pitcher points out, game size is getting to be a problem, and the PS4 and Xbox One have even made it worse with their newly-added ability to record in-game footage. She concludes that the small hard-drive of today’s consoles is “a short-sighted restriction” that will eventually be a crisis. Could it be that we are reaching a tipping-point, in which the games we play are getting to be too massive for our machines? Have we possibly outgrown consoles?
Some in the industry are starting to sense this, it seems. Microsoft has made the Xbox One compatible with USB-connected portable hard-drives. This will give Xbox users a bit of a reprieve from their space-crisis. And while Sony has not officially introduced any add-on to expand the memory of the PS4, the void will soon be filled by third-party solutions such as the DataBank by Nyko. This add-on fits onto the PS4, drawing power from the console’s own AC power port in the back. It allows for the use of 3.5 inch desktop drives on the PS4. However, all of these proposed solutions are only stop-gap measures, because the capacity of external drives is still not all that large as some may want.
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“The increasing size of games, especially AAA titles, will outstrip the capacities of even our most-upgraded units.”
As desperately as we try to find extra space in our consoles, we can only put off the inevitable for so long – the increasing size of games, especially AAA titles, and our new love of sharing in-game footage, will outstrip the capacities of even our most-upgraded units. This is not even including some of the new technologies that may change gaming, such as Virtual Reality. As VR matures, we could easily see software developed for it that dwarfs the sizes of current-gen games. Clearly, then, we are fast approaching a space-crisis in gaming – so what can we do?
The unavoidable truth is that Cloud Gaming is the best solution to our space problem. As games in the future continue to grow exponentially in size – to 100GB, 1TB, who knows – it becomes clear that there is no way that we can expect consoles to keep providing the necessary storage space. It is a matter of when we move to Cloud Gaming, not if. Streaming games remotely frees the user from consoles completely, and allows for limitless file sizes. The only variable we will then face is the strength and speed of our Internet connections. According to Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat, streaming games on a cloud server allows for gamers to play very large games on devices and consoles that otherwise would not be able to handle them. That’s because the graphics-processing is done mostly at the data center, freeing-up the device or console greatly. The fact is, unless you want to have massive hard-drive towers sitting beside your Xbox One or PS4, Cloud Gaming is really the only solution to the space problem.
Piracy Is Only Getting Worse
Piracy of video games is growing – and it doesn’t just affect mobile apps; console makers have every reason to be very worried. The Entertainment Software Association of Canada estimates that video game piracy costs U.S. and Canadian software companies more than $3.5 billion annually. Piracy of PC games is something everyone is aware of, but a famous example of console piracy was the estimated 1 million XBox 360 owners playing on “modded” units, prompting Microsoft to take the unprecedented measure of banning said units from its network. And although the numbers of hacked PS3s are not as well-documented, there was enough piracy on that system for Sony to issue a stern warning in 2011 to anyone “jailbreaking” their PS3 – hack your console and be banned from PSN.
There is also the example of the Sony PSP; piracy was a major problem for the VITA’s predecessor. In 2008, Sony’s Peter Dille stated that the level of piracy on the PSP was “sickening,” and that it was a major concern for both Sony and the console’s third-party developers. Dille stated that piracy was so bad on the PSP that it was actually scaring away developers from making games for it. Despite Sony’s efforts to fight back by opting for the UMD optical media delivery method, and its (much-maligned) proprietary memory cards, many gamers found ways of getting pirated software onto their modded PSP consoles. Piracy is widely regarded as one of the major reasons Sony chose to move to the PS VITA.
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“As much as the gaming community loves games, and creates games purely for the love of doing it, the sad fact is that, if there is no profit, most games will eventually cease to be made.”
The PSP is only one, particularly grim, example of what all the consoles have faced. Console makers are facing continued jailbreaking, hacking, and modding, and are coming to the sober conclusion that no matter how games are sold – whether it be on a CD, a Bluray, or a Digital Download – the act of transferring the game’s information opens up the door for piracy, and that means increasingly diminished returns. As much as the gaming community loves games, and creates games purely for the love of doing it, the sad fact is that, if there is no profit, most games will eventually cease to be made. The console makers, and all of us as well, are quickly coming to a watershed moment – either face the issue, or suffer the same fate as music and movie publishers.
Cloud Gaming might be the best solution to piracy. It would allow the distributor to store the hardware and software at a central location, preventing the actual media product from being transferred to the user. As is already being offered through such services as PlayStation Now (and has long been the model on Netflix), users would pay a monthly access fee to have a library of games to choose from. Whether or not these Cloud Gaming services would fully emulate the Netflix model, and allow unlimited play with one monthly payment, remains to be seen. Currently, though, Playstation Now subscribers can opt for either a monthly fee or a pay-per-play plan. Either way, with centrally stored, tightly controlled media products, and controlled distribution, the possibilities for piracy are greatly reduced. And yes, I am sure that at some point in the future,hackers will find a way around even this hurdle, but until then, it is the best solution to piracy that there is.
We can argue about whether a future dominated by Cloud Gaming will be good for gamers, for developers, and for hardware makers – that’s a whole other article, for another time. But like it or not, a solution such as streaming games over the internet is almost inevitable. Space will continue to be a problem, and piracy is only growing over time. So, enjoy that Xbox One or PS4 while you can; it may well be the last console you ever buy.