Slide notes also address Apple, Google, Sony and Nintendo competition

by Kyle Orland - June 16 2012, ARS TECHNICA

There are a whole lot of juicy details included in the recently leaked document that purportedly details Microsoft’s plans for its follow up to the Xbox 360. But one of the juiciest bits deals not with the system itself but with competitive cloud gaming service OnLive, which the company supposedly saw as a “potential acquisition target.”

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Are the days of traditional video game consoles and gaming PCs numbered? Microchip meterologist Rik Myslewski sees game-filled clouds on the horizon.

Today, the best gaming experiences are found on big-screen TVs hooked up to gaming consoles from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, or on the displays of PCs tricked out with the latest and greatest graphics cards. That’s about to change, say the graphics gurus at Nvidia, who have announced a new server-based platform that will handle all the game-graphics heavy lifting up in the cloud, then send gaming goodness over the internet to your smart TV, Mac, iPad, iPhone, or whatever device your little heart desires, irrespective or what operating system that game was originally designed for.

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Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune

Why did they call it “The Cloud”?

Couldn’t they have chosen a better metaphor? Clouds burst. Clouds darken. Clouds disappear.

But then, I have problem with The Cloud — with that vague digital ether where our books and music and movies increasingly reside, always available, unshackled from the bonds of physicality, hard format or even a home computer. It doesn’t matter if it’s Apple’s new iCloud, Amazon’s cloud-based media storage, or the streaming service offered by Netflix. Each does basically the same thing — they provide me with digital real estate to store music, movies and books I own, freeing up space on my hard drive. And each has undermined how much I actually care about watching, listening and reading those same bits of media.

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