Cloud computing is coming to the video-gaming business
云计算正在进入电子游戏行业
More than 70,000 gamers, developers and publishers descended on Los Angeles to goggle at each other’s wares and show off their own at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (e3), which began on June 11th. This year big publishers like Ubisoft and Square Enix used the annual videogame jamboree to show off previews of new games. Keanu Reeves, an actor, hyped up “Cyberpunk 2077”, a hotly anticipated title in which he plays a big role.
6月11日，超过7万名游戏玩家、开发商和出版商齐聚洛杉矶，在电子娱乐博览会上互相观并展示自己的产品。今年，育碧游戏官方网站和史克威尔·艾尼克斯软件公司等大型发行商利用一年一度的电子游戏盛会来展示新游戏。演员基努•里维斯大肆宣传了《赛博朋克2077》，这是一个备受期待的名字，他在其中扮演了一个重要角色。
One of the most significant announcements at the show was also one of the briefest. Towards the end of a two-hour presentation, Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s gaming division, offered a few more details about Project xCloud, Microsoft’s foray into cloud gaming. The service will be available in October, he said, before letting gamers loose to try a demo version in the conference centre.
展会上最重要的公告之一也是最简短的公告之一。在两个小时的演示接近尾声时，微软游戏部门主管菲尔•斯宾塞就微软进军云游戏领域的xCloud项目透漏了更多细节。他表示这项服务将于10月份推出，然后让玩家在会议中心试用一个演示版本。
Cloud gaming aims to do for video games what companies like Spotify and Netflix have done for music and films— make them available on any device with an internet connection. For the $140bn gaming industry, that would be a revolution. The consoles and beefy pcs required to run modern games cost several hundred dollars. Cloud gaming aims to shift the computational heavy lifting into data-centres and to pipe the results to users over the internet. That would allow gamers to play cutting-edge titles on nearly any screen with an internet connection, no matter how feeble the underlying hardware.
云游戏的目标是像Spotify和Netflix等公司为音乐和电影所做的那样，为视频游戏提供服务——让它们可以在任何有互联网连接的设备上使用。对于规模1400亿美元的游戏行业而言，这将是一场革命。运行现代游戏所需的游戏机和结实的个人电脑售价数百美元。云游戏的目标是将计算重担转移到数据中心，并将结果通过互联网传输给用户。这将允许玩家在几乎任何有互联网连接的屏幕上玩尖端游戏，不管底层硬件有多弱。
Microsoft is well-placed to make cloud gaming work, says Piers Harding-Rolls of IHS Markit, a research firm. It has a 20-year pedigree through its xbox series of consoles, and its Azure cloud platform is the world’s second-biggest, after Amazon Web Services. But it is not the only tech giant interested in the idea. A few days before e3, Google, which also runs a big cloud business, gave more details about Stadia, its own cloud-gaming product, which is due to launch in November. Industry rumours suggest that Amazon is mulling a similar business. The threat from the cloud giants helped to persuade Sony, which makes the PlayStation series of consoles, to jump into bed with its arch-rival. It already runs a cloud-gaming service called PlayStation but in May Sony signed a deal to employ Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform in its future endeavours.
研究公司IHS Markit的皮尔斯•哈丁-罗尔斯表示，微软在让云游戏发挥作用方面处于有利地位。它的xbox系列游戏机已有20年的历史，其Azure云平台是仅次于亚马逊网络服务的全球第二大云平台。在e3开幕的前几天，谷歌也在运营着一家大型云业务，谷歌透漏了更多关于Stadia的细节，这是谷歌自己的云游戏产品，将于11月推出。业内传言称，亚马逊也在考虑类似的业务。来自云计算巨头的威胁帮助说服了PlayStation系列游戏机的制造商索尼与其主要竞争对手一起合作。它已经运行了一个名为PlayStation的云游戏服务，但在5月份，索尼签署了一项协议，将在未来尽量使用微软的Azure云平台。
来源：经济学人
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