Cloud gaming is currently in its infancy, with the likes of OnLive and Gaikai pushing the technology. Detractors would say that latency is still a problem (especially in FPS titles), that the visuals can't quite match playing directly off a disc or hard drive, and that the broadband infrastructure still isn't strong enough to support heavy cloud gaming. All these issues aside, id Software's John Carmack believes many gamers will embrace cloud gaming and that it'll take off in the future.
Speaking as part of a special "Better Know" Q&A on IndustryGamers, the id co-founder noted that ultimately convenience always wins out with consumers, and even if the quality takes a small hit, it won't matter. [MP3s compared to music CDs is a great example of that - Ed.]
"I'll go out a little bit on a limb and say that I think cloud gaming will eventually be a significant part of the landscape. Consumers have shown over and over again that convenience can often more than offset some quality issues, and there will be significant convenience wins possible there over optical media or digital downloads. I think this is inevitable, but I wouldn't really want to be placing a bet on what the adoption rate is going to be," he commented.
This isn't the first time Carmack has talked positively about cloud gaming either. Nearly a year ago, Carmack remarked that "there's no question that eventually that will be the model a lot of people will play games with."
