THQ boss Brian Farrell has joined Activision CEO Bobby Kotick in relishing a future where Xboxes and PlayStations don't exist.

Farrell has revealed that he is a "huge" supporter of Cloud gaming platforms - such as OnLive and Dave Perry's Gaikai.

And the exec isn't shy in showing his excitement for the day when consumers can bypass their disc-based hardware to dive straight into a server-based title.

"I am a huge believer in the concept of Cloud computing - huge," he told the latest episode of Game Industry TV.

He added: "The concept of lowering the entry barrier to consumers for gamers to get into our games by not having to shell out for the hardware is a tremendous potential opportunity.

"Why do we need a $1,000 [console]... that's what these boxes [or] consoles actually cost the manufacturers to make. Why do we need that computing power?"

Farrell's comments echo those of Hideo Kojima and EA founder Trip Hawkins - who have both expressed excitement over a 'play anywhere' future.

Meanwhile, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has regularly and unashamedly shown his impatience with a disc-based, console-reliant industry.

Other talking heads in this week's Game Industry TV - which focuses on the future of digital distribution - include GasPoweredGames boss Chris Taylor and PSN director Susan Panico. Check it out below.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/ar ... ?id=261541

...

The comments in the link are quite insightful - that's not a given at CVG either

This will grow and grow, but I can't see where it truly benefits the consumer over physical media, and that's even in the next ten years.

All the benefit is for the developers who, as we've seen recently especially, are often greedy morons. Well, the management anyway...

Oh, and people rather like their media-playing, storing, internet browsing, funky joypad consoles

Cloud games will never take off with capped broadband internet. They seem to ignore that fact. With many having fair use and caps during peak hours. That will deter many, and we certainly have no prospect of it improving, until after another generation of consoles.

Kongregate, Farmville, Miniclip

Yes they they are hardly the graphic intensive behemoths that console games are.

Because they aren't UK based. Capped broadband isn't very common. These are American companies and there are only limits on 3G data, wired broadband isn't capped, same in Germany, wired broadband isn't capped, 3G is capped at 5G, with the speed dropping to 64Kb/s after that...

A lot of US customers have banded connections with increasing caps. I think that broadband is the norm now but in the UK there are caps. I have a 20 Mbit service but get capped between 9 am and 9 pm. Even with out being naughty the service can slow down dramatically after 7pm with the high contention ratio. Hence I do my back up at 6pm before the slowdown. Then go to and do something else instead.

QuakeLive then

Just because a game isn't graphically intensive doesn't mean it's any less a game than a game that chugs along on a top of the range card, it just means the less intensive ones are aiming at a larger market.

So I suppose WOW wouldn't could because it can run on shared graphics

My favourite Game Civ 2 does not need a decent graphics card. 16 bit graphics if I am correct.