It's never wise to say never, but I think cloud gaming will never go far with gaming. Physics means there's going to be input latency. So it simply won't work for VR where you really need at least 90FPS with no input latency. Of course the year of VR seems to be coming just about after the year of Linux, so maybe that doesn't matter. But even for normal games, the input latency is major. This [1] article shows input latency of more than 1/4th a second on one game ran at 4k. Then there's reduced visuals and of course recent times have also demonstrated beyond any doubt that the whole argument that the cloud won't go down, or won't lose your data, are both marketing fictions.
[1] - https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-stadias-input-lag-compares...
As doubtful as I am about the viability of cloud streaming, this IS going to cause a bigger push into live service functionality where maybe you have a light client but the server is authoritative over more and more aspects of the game. Even then, AI can write its own server, so it needs to be full of FOMO if you're not on the official server.
Ugh I know the answer but it’s just sad. I don’t want all media to become cotton candy.
For example, ever since roughly the mid 2010s when I finished Star Trek: Enterprise, I've been thinking about someone using some sort of generative AI to complete this series, once its good enough to be entirely convincing.
Two quotes from Star Trek "The Ultimate Computer" - a very prescient episode.
KIRK There are certain things men must do to remain men. Your computer would take that away.
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BONES Compassion. That's the one thing no machine ever had. Maybe it's the one thing that keeps men ahead of them. Care to debate that, Spock?
SPOCK No, Doctor. I simply maintain that computers are more efficient than human beings, not better.
It's dumb and derivative and isn't getting a lot of laughs from me, but at the same time, it is freakishly realistic, and absolutely ripping off every character and scene and locale of the Lucas series.
I don't know how long it will last against Disney's DMCA juggernaut, but the "Imperial HR Lady" is way funnier and she just has to throw on a turquoise necklace and grating accent.
Speaking of self-vibe-coding games, I wouldn't see the point. When I was a younger boy, I did write games for myself, and it was an arduous project that was mostly aimed at teaching myself programming rather than gaming per se. And eventually the big didactic moments were hacking someone else's game code in terms of debugging and extending it, and that was more exciting than building my own from scratch.
Also, copyright is an issue! If consumer AI could ignore copyright and just code me, say, "Freecell but it's Harry Potter" or "Put me in the cockpit of a Y-Wing video game!" then it'd be exciting. People pay big bucks and invest big bucks for in-universe games of certain franchises like that. But AI won't provide for the consumer in this way, ever.
Much of the joy of gaming for me, is seeing a polished product that is well-balanced in terms of rules and fairness, and has good sound/graphic assets, and challenges or surprises me in novel ways as I go along. I don't think I would mind if someone else vibe-codes a game for me to play, if it's good enough and engaging, but it seems that designing/coding one for myself would feel empty and unfulfilling. And I wouldn't apply the same principle to utility software, but really I'd rather not invest a lot of time in building an office suite for myself, rather than just grabbing it off the shelf.
Considering the economics, the graphics rendering would have to be shifted to the server too and output as video
Sony's greed has been incredible, let's just accelerate tbh
I have only had success with single player games.
How does the equation change?
I am saying I'd rather enjoy POSSIBLY human content, than AI generated ones. And if cloud gaming cannot deliver on this, I'd rather stop gaming altogether. The idea of consuming AI generated content is completely disgusting to me.
Also if that's what you believe, players who start after day 1 will not have mystery. Even players who start day 1 but can't dedicate all of their time to the game will inevitably spoil themselves when they have to do anything else, meaning someone will progress farther than they and will share that info.
Funnily enough I ended a recent blog post on this topic with "You will own nothing and you will be kinda pissed off about it."
Regarding your post: I think the future of RE of server-side bound software will be something like 1. Point your AI robot with eyes and ears to an interface designed for you (the human customer). 2. Make it explore software at massive speeds, map and record every possible behavior, closely construct/approximate the human-computer interaction model. 3. Rewrite it completely in Rust. 4. Profit.
There will be no moat. Popular non-FOSS will be laughed at and rewritten by its users in hours/days. Proletariat will finally own the means of production, and the Stallman dream will finally become real.
I think the self hosting moment will gather steam and maybe prove itself superior for certain cases
High quality games were never the point, look at Roblox
Nobody wants 15 year lead times for sequels that cant innovate because its too risky. Their audience will also have a major backlash towards any generative AI use or known agentic workflows in development
All while indie developers wont be constrained by any of this and can even do a full voice suite thats more immersive and even dynamic, in a smaller payload because there wont be audio files, just the voice model
I think streaming vs downloadable is a red herring, AAA games are on their last breath. The indie developers that break through will be the AAA experiences if the market chooses a title enough times
Eg. https://torrentfreak.com/nintendo-wipes-out-400-switch-emula...
Edit: wrong link
This project is the first hint I’ve seen of the complete destruction of all copy protection schemes. Scary times for any industry that relies on those!
The Goldilocks zone for earning revenue for movies & games were always: Day 1 earnings = Week 1 earnings = Year 1 earnings
The revenue in this case is heavily protected by your IP NOT being copied in a single day, and that people want to experience the product together with their friends.
When people talk about convenience, is there really any inconvenience in downloading a pirated game/movie on release day?
Consumers want _access_ to their games/content. For example, netflix made it easy to "rent" or stream content. But as they slowly clawback those features (multi-streaming, password sharing, incorporate ads, increase prices beyond inflation). Then access to content decreases, visibility decreases.
There’s also a big factual error in the submission title because the project readme has this caveat
> System libraries: percentage of the functions known to the project so far (declared in core/libs/prx), not of every PS5 system function. The total grows as more functions are declared.
It’s only recently (earlier this year) that the _last gen_ of xbox was cracked.