At present, many gaming services are apparently making a great move into cloud gaming. OnLive, being one of the most prominent names in the cloud gaming market, has about 1800 users at peak times.

Surprisingly, OnLive runs extremely well even under the extreme technological limitations associated with cloud gaming. Although perfect image and latency issues are visible, they aren't as poor as one might think.

Considering the recent developments and breakthroughs in the cloud gaming arena, we have discussed the future prospects and growth of cloud based gaming in this article. The purpose of this article is to provide a positive outlook of the emerging gaming technology in the upcoming years.

OnLive and Gakai- A Long way to go!

With a stream of gaming apps currently in operation, OnLive and Gaikai both have a lasting, prosperous way to go. If you've ever tried downloading OnLive's client, the popular cloud gaming vendor has incorporated some great features for the gamers. Players can have a free full version trial of each game for 30 minutes, which makes it easy for the gamers to judge OnLive's performance.

On the other hand, Gaikai - OnLive‘s biggest corporate rival, used a more convenient way to attract the gamers. The service provides free online streaming of game demos that can be played within your browsers, without making you download the complete game. However, this feature has been currently removed due to the Gaikai's acquisition by Sony in 2012.

Sony is expected to come up with great plans with the Gaikai's support. The company has already given a sneak preview of its current plans, which are likely to be initiated officially in the beginning of 2014. According to one of the gaming programmers, the company is aiming to have one-of-its-kind gaming distribution technology that will enable the players to stream from the server directly to the PS4 consoles, which would later on migrate to PS Vita. Sony's purchase of Gaikai indicates that cloud gaming will take a new, yet progressive turn in future. ⁱ

NVIDIA in News

NVIDIA became prominent in the limelight recently with its upcoming venture Project Shield. An Android based gaming console which will be able to stream PC games from your PC having NVIDIA's powerful graphic card support. In this way, the players can have a solo gaming PC, and can use its hardware to play games wireless on a gaming console or even on their TV sets. However, we are waiting to see how NVIDIA manages the latency issues, as the latency would become very low due to live streaming from a home based network. NVIDIA developers plan to do something related to this issue and we wish them all the best for their upcoming invention. ⁱⁱ

Orange's Approach to Cloud Gaming

Like other big names, Orange online gaming service is also making its space in cloud gaming. The company has recently introduced a series of video games, which uses cloud as the processing server and doesn't work on a console or a computer. According to the head of gaming at Orange, Jean-François Rodriguez Cloud gaming allows the players to play complex games which aren't supported via normal boxes. The biggest advantage of playing games over the cloud is that it doesn't need you to upgrade your PC constantly in order to match the needs of the newly introduced games.

The reports state that Orange has undertaken agreements with some big names of the gaming industry mainly including Gameloft, Ubisoft, Konami and Warner. Rodriguez expects to work with all the popular gaming studios by the end of 2014. The company is currently aiming to make some big improvements in the service, and also planning to incorporate social aspects.

While disclosing about the cloud games, Rodriguez claimed that gaming consoles relatively offer better quality for complex games. However, other games work exactly the same on cloud as they work with traditional gaming systems. PES 2014 is the first game to be released out on both consoles and Orange cloud gaming server. The quality and performance remains the same on both systems.

Bitcoin Gambling Over the Cloud in Future

Cloud gambling is making a bit less noise than cloud gaming. Despite this an international leader in casino gaming and systems technology has recently announced that its IGT cloud is now operating live across the Aspers Group estate of four gambling points. The cloud service links around 103 machines across the two largest casinos of United Kingdom located in Milton Keynes, Stratford, Newcastle and Northampton.

Moreover, games purchases from the cloud services offered by Amazon and Google on mobile devices are more likely to roam around casino apps. People tend to get busy for hours to play bitcoin casino games. This points towards a progressive growth of bitcoin cloud based gambling in the near future.

Despite the latest cloud technology, the future of bitcoin cloud gambling lies in the hands of the gamblers. If they aren't able to trust a cloud system, then there is a small chance that casino gaming services will adopt this new methodology. However, as far as games are interesting and catchy, players will hardly care if the servers are located over the cloud or anywhere else!

Prediction Time!

It is fairly impossible to predict exactly what future has in store for the cloud based gaming. OnLive doesn't seem to kill the traditional console based gaming at present. However, with the Sony's investment of $380 million on the purchase of Gaikai, we see some great cloud gaming features coming up in PS4. Cloud Gaming is anticipated to introduce some good, profitable opportunities for the gaming service providers. The Cloud Gaming Report estimates that there is a nine time increase in cloud gaming industry by the year 2017, which means that subscription based gaming services are expected to get more popularity. Apart from that, the recent efforts employed by Microsoft and Square Enix makes it quite obvious that cloud has a lasting, bright future in gaming.

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i) Extremetech.com. PS4's Gaikai game streaming service to launch in 2014, Microsoft mum on retaliation.
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/171957-ps4s-gakai-game-streaming-service-to-launch-in-2014-microsoft-mum-on-retaliation

ii) NVIDIA. Project Shield. https://www2.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/