In an interview with a Japanese educational television program and originally reported in English by Japanese creator Genki, Naoki Yoshida explained that he believes cloud gaming could end “console wars” and make games accessible to all players. He hopes that players don’t need to worry about having specific pieces of gaming hardware like consoles in order to play what they’d like.
However, while he holds some optimism, it’s clear it won’t be happening this generation, or even the next. Yoshida goes on to explain that the technology isn’t quite there yet, as it would require large swathes of servers and far better connection around—a common critique for cloud gaming’s current state.
The concept and execution of cloud gaming has had a bit of a stop-and-go history. Many publishers utilize the technology at the moment, including Playstation Plus’s game library and Square Enix for their Kingdom Hearts Nintendo Switch collection. However, the failure of Google’s streamed game platform Stadia has caused major doubts across the industry, especially as it claimed to do much of what Yoshida hopes for. As he mentions in the interview, any internet slowness can make action games particularly stressful to partake in (which any cross-continental MMORPG raider could agree with).
Yoshida has spoken about cloud gaming in the past in regards to Final Fantasy 14, the MMORPG that he helped to “revive” with a 2.0 version. Before the release of Endwalker, he and co-producer Toshio “Foxicon” Murouchi discussed their research into cloud servers at the time, which they concluded would be too much of an effort to implement given the state of the technology.
It seems their stance has shifted in the two-plus years since. This past November, the FFXIV team ran cloud server tests, giving player leveling and currency incentives to do so. Developers also held scheduled stress tests in certain areas. The sudden expedited research may come in part due to the Endwalker server strain that was so bad with hours-long waiting times that the team implemented thirty-minute inactivity timeouts and gave players two extra weeks of free playtime.
The cloud gaming declaration may also come as frustration to many players who were upset that Final Fantasy 16 is a Playstation 5 exclusive at the moment. That’s just business, we guess.
