14 DAY TRIAL // PC Gamer reports that during the Broadband World Forum 2012, Ian Livingstone, the president of their Eidos division inside Square Enix, pointed to lack of broadband expansion as the biggest problem when it came to the video games development as an entertainment medium.
Livingstone stated, “Games are now moving from a product to a service.”
He added, “We’re still having to fight bandwidth to avoid latency. Big games need big broadband. It’s kind of crazy that we’re fighting broadband the whole time in our industry. You’re kind of holding us back in many respects. We want to do more.”
The executive cites figures that show that gaming is the biggest entertainment industry in the world, currently worth more than 50 billion dollars (382 billion Euro) and the figures will increase significantly to about 90 billion dollars (688 million Euro).
Gamers are among the Internet users that demand the best services and the most broadband, both in order to be able to download video games and in order to engage in multiplayer matches.
Livingstone believes that all Internet Service Providers will have to focus on expanding their service as much as they can and make sure that they are prepared for the way the gamers of the future will try and use the Internet to power their experiences.
Eidos was one of the biggest European publishers before hitting a rough patch that lead to it being acquired by Square Enix.
The biggest asset of the company is Tomb Raider, which is set to get a reboot during 2013.
The PC has once again become one of the core gaming platforms, especially because of expanding free-to-play MMO titles from major publishers and because developers are taking advantage of its power in order to create games that offer a better experience than on home consoles.