Square's Wada talks digital: "20 years from now I see cloud as dominant"

Square-Enix president Yoichi Wada has discussed the publisher's plans for its new digital store front CoreOnline, and why he believes the cloud is the way forward - and no, it's not because it shares a name with Cloud from Final Fantasy VII.

In an interview with MCV, Wada described the industry's transition to cloud gaming as a 'pendulum' - swinging between hosting clients on your device and hosting them on servers - continually across the past 30-40 years.

He believes cloud gaming is the end point, "Currently only the CPU and the GPU remains on the computer side. But in the next five years or so, give or take a few years, there is a chance you won’t even need the CPU and GPU on the client side."

When Wada was asked if his pendulum analogy would swing back to consoles again over time he replied, "I think there are two scenarios that will live in tandem. In one scenario, yes, the client [console] becomes more heavy. But also the server becomes more heavy. As an overall direction? It’s a shift to the server. 20 years from now I see cloud as dominant."

Wada then backed up his strong stance with some rationale, "I own around 10 computers. One at work, one for business trips, three game consoles, two smartphones, an iPad, another tablet. All GPU, CPU and storage – that’s such a waste of resource."

"If everything in those can be on one server, that’s much more environmentally friendly," he concluded, "Of course there is a demand for a faster broadband infrastructure, but I think that will end up cheaper over time. Globally, as a trend, that points towards the server side."

What do you think? Is the cloud the way to go? Let us know below.

Thanks again MCV.