Cloud Gaming Will Grow in Coming Years

John Carmack, who is one of the founders of well-known developer id Software, has said that the cloud gaming phenomenon is one of the trends that will heavily influence the industry in the coming years.

The legendary developer has spoken to Industry Gamers and said, “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.”

Carmack believes that the move to cloud gaming cannot be avoided, but he made no attempt at saying how quickly it will be adopted by both gamers and by developers.

Other trends that Carmack believes will be important in the near future are, “Another console generation, big MMOs on PCs, more movement towards digital distribution, smartphones encroaching on dedicated gaming territory, and so on.”

The developer also believes that the increasing complexity of gaming devices is one of the biggest problems for developers, meaning that teams and costs will continue to increase for most high profile projects.

Carmack was the leading developers behind the new id Software-made engine, called rather unimaginatively id Tech 5, which pushes the edges of currently available hardware.

It will be first used in RAGE, the first-person shooter that also has vehicular sections and some light role-playing game elements.

The game is set to be launched on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the PC during September of this year.

id Software is now a part of the Bethesda family which means that once they use the id Tech 5 in RAGE, other development teams will have access to it and it might be used to power the next Fallout or other projects.