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Nintendo: Cloud is not the future of gaming, dedicated platforms will stay relevant

Iwata says Cloud gaming has major issues.

Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, was asked by investors about the future of dedicated gaming platforms, and whether they would be negatively affected by newer gaming solutions, like Cloud gaming services. Needless to say, he dismissed the notion right away, pointing out that Cloud gaming has some inherent problems.



"For some highly interactive games, action games in particular, the time required to reflect the push of a button on the screen is critical and the frame rate determines the fluidity of the movements," he said, referring to the latency issues of online cloud gaming services.

"This means that there are some types of games that can be put on the Internet and others that cannot. There are many things that cloud gaming cannot do by design, but this fact has not been communicated well to the public, and I find it strange that many people claim that cloud gaming is the future."

He said that Nintendo's stance is that dedicated gaming platforms will not die out, and denied suggestions that Nintendo was going to integrate its home and portable devices into one in the near future.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 5 Feb 2013 16:07

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• 5 comments

• o0cynix0o

  He has a point...but at the same time he also has blinders on.
  

  “Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this... and attaining enlightenment is the least of your problems.”
  –Zen Judaism by Someone Clever

  5.2.2013 17:05 #1

• Qliphah

  He obviously doesn't know how cloud gaming works. For most games a frontend is downloaded to the console that handles the stuff that needs low latency, the graphics are drawn in around this structure. So there may be some blurryness but controls should still be spot on. Now some early services just streamed a video signal of a remote controlled system playing the game... that is probably what iwata was thinking of.
  

  5.2.2013 17:07 #2

• o0cynix0o

  Originally posted by Qliphah: He obviously doesn't know how cloud gaming works. For most games a frontend is downloaded to the console that handles the stuff that needs low latency, the graphics are drawn in around this structure. So there may be some blurryness but controls should still be spot on. Now some early services just streamed a video signal of a remote controlled system playing the game... that is probably what iwata was thinking of. Good point.... Now that I think about it. Steam works just fine, and adding in the USB Xbox controller I have my own version of an Xbox 360.
  

  “Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this... and attaining enlightenment is the least of your problems.”
  –Zen Judaism by Someone Clever

  5.2.2013 17:24 #3

• A5J4DX

  Originally posted by o0cynix0o: He has a point...but at the same time he also has blinders on. haha agree
  

  6.2.2013 12:33 #4

• IguanaC64

  Steam isn't cloud gaming. You still play all the games on your local machine...and for those that you don't (ie, online FPS games...which still aren't technically cloud games any moreso than Quake 1 was) your control response times are dictated by your latency. I think Onlive is closer to the cloud gaming paradigm that Mr. Iwata was talking about. I've never used Onlive, so I have no idea how crisp the controls are.

  8.2.2013 14:44 #5