Every weekend, the VGH crew answers a few follow-up questions from that week’s episode, then turns the floor over to you! This is VGHomework.
We dove a bit into some gaming news this week on the show, first speculating about what Sony will do with their Gaikai purchase, and then getting all misty over some promising games that never saw release.
Q: Have you tried a cloud gaming service like Gaikai or OnLive? Could you ever foresee trading your disc-based/digital download console for one?
Paul (@spaulsandhu): I’ve never tried a cloud gaming service before but when we were spitballing on the show the idea of a Netflix style service but for games came up. I would definitely be interested in a service like that especially if it gave us access to a library of classic games! Man I really hope that comes to pass…
Matt (@mkernan): I’ve dabbled with OnLive a little bit in the past. I came away pretty impressed overall with the responsiveness of the system and the fact that I could play popular PC games on my Mac. I think I could eventually see myself moving to an all-streaming situation, but for the time being I’ll stick with my traditional consoles.
Q: What’s the best way Sony could incorporate the cloud into the PlayStation 4 or Vita?
Matt: I think the current conditions with broadband penetration and speeds in the US mean that there’s not a chance in hell of the PlayStation 4 being all-streaming, but I’d really like to see Sony use Gaikai’s technology to implement 100% backward compatibility. Heck, maybe even just use it to give the users the ability to start playing new games instantly–start off by streaming the game to us, while the full game itself is slowly downloading in the background. I’d be happy to temporarily put up with an ever-so-slight latency and slightly-degraded visuals in a PS4 game just to be able to jump directly into it the moment I’ve purchased it. The technology could make demos far easier to swallow too.
Aside from that, I’d like to see them use the streaming technology to create a much more fluid experience where I can play all of my PlayStation games on any device I own.
Q: What canceled game were you most looking forward to playing and why?
D.J. (@metaly): I mentioned it on the show, but Front Mission 5 and Monster Hunter Portable 3rd are the two biggest casualties in terms of Japanese games that never got their chance in the West. I guess they weren’t technically canceled since they did see an overseas release, but I’d love to be able to play games without having to futz with a fan translation patch.
Q: If StarCraft: Ghost actually came out, what game(s) should it be most similar to?
D.J.: I’d love to see a campaign with a little more deliberately paced stealth, like Splinter Cell pre-
Is there cloud gaming in your future? What are some canned titles you wish you could play right now? Let us know in the comments!