Cloud services to be adopted by 3.6 billion by 2018 - Juniper
While streaming music services are claiming the bulk of revenues, Juniper sees a "renaissance" for cloud gaming
Cloud gaming still hasn't been the market changing technology many had hoped it would be, but that doesn't mean the cloud's importance has been diminished. The technology is becoming more widely used online for a variety of services, and a new report from Juniper Research forecasts that 3.6 billion people will be using the cloud worldwide by 2018. Juniper said that there were an estimated 2.4 billion using cloud services in 2013.
"The cloud games market, where game computation is located entirely in the cloud, is experiencing somewhat of a renaissance following the re-launch of OnLive and the market entry of PlayStation," the firm said referring to Sony's impending launch of PlayStation Now. "Nevertheless, with games effectively being streamed from the cloud, latency may hamper the success of this opportunity."
Sony just recently talked about the launch of PlayStation Now potentially boosting the Vita's profile, as cloud technology will soon allow players to stream AAA PS3 titles on the portable. It remains to be seen how much that will help Vita's hardware sales.
While games are continuing to migrate online and become more like services themselves, it's music that's been driving cloud technology the most, with streaming platforms like Pandora and Spotify claiming the "lion's share" of the revenues, according to Juniper.