Hey there,
I warn you that this thread will appeal to gamers more than anyone else 
I stumbled across this today:
More techy and in-depth presentation
If you can’t be bothered to watch it, basically this company is trying to apply cloud computing to gaming. This means that games are played on a server somewhere in a data centre within a radius of 1000 miles. Your computer only needs to have an internet connection, input devices, and a way to display video. You can play Crysis on a low-end mac with such a system. They think they can manage to get the latency below 80 ms, the threshold of human perception, so that there is no perceptible lag between a player selecting an action, and there being a response on the screen. Video games are now to be stored on the servers too, so one needs not acquire physical media or to download it (as with Steam) in order to play. There are no buffer times, etc.
I’m not going to argue about whether this will work or not, as I am not competent enough to know, but assuming it will, this may be a very important precedent in the development of realistic cloud computing for intense applications. Here’s what I see as immediate and eventual consequences: (it’s worth noting this will probably compete with traditional methods for a time, and may never becomes universally appealing)
- Upgrade costs of computer hardware for PC gamers goes down to zero. All upgrades are done in the data centre. These costs will be much lower than the aggregate of individuals buying their own gaming PCs because of economies of scale and time, e.g. the average gamer underutilizes their gaming platform. They buy a PC that is idle for most of the day, or at least not playing games. With a data centre system, more minutes are being used. When you log off, someone else takes your place. This works because of time zone differences, although it still won’t be perfect. Moreover, the issue of hardware wearing out due to increased use isn’t really there as gaming hardware often becomes obsolete before it breaks.
- Consoles manufactured by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will become obsolete. Not only will platform differences disappear that cause some games to be console exclusive; but the microconsole they advertise will cost a tiny fraction of buying today’s consoles. Again, consumers save money.
- The retail structure for distributing games largely disappears. Costs are again cut, resources saved, publishers get more of their sales as a percentage and can then invest more of that money into developing new games and technologies.
- Games will be more marketable that would not even feasibly run on home hardware due to cost constraints of the typical family.
- More consequences of cloud computing unrelated to games would include the possibility of replacing expensive laptops and PCs with cheap thin clients, thus saving people money.
- Privacy however may become an issue when we think outside of the scope of games. Nobody needs to hack your computer to access files, they’re all stored elsewhere. The government would probably have priority access to this.
- You won’t own the games anymore, so there is risk involved. Then again, this is already the case with services such as Steam, and that hasn’t deterred lots of people so far. Plus, I think they intend to allow you to rent games.
So basically: efficiency, lower costs, potential loss of privacy.
Anybody else think of any consequences if cloud computing were to become a reality? Anybody think this is realistic or is interested by the prospect?
Best wishes,
Fred