Hideo Kojima, father of the Metal Gear Solid series, has expressed his concerns over the current distribution of games and said the future of games is on the networks and not on the consoles.
At a news conference in Tokyo, Kojima said,
In the near future, we’ll have games that don’t depend on any platform. Gamers should be able to take the experience with them in their living rooms, on the go, when they travel — wherever they are and whenever they want to play. It should be the same software and the same experience.
A prediction from one of their own boys and long-time partner Hideo Kojima didn’t go very well with a Sony Executive present during the conference. He nervously said,
It’s a bold prediction. We hope he continues to develop for platforms, but we deeply respect his sense of taking on a challenge.
Kojima later added that he hoped that the development experience garnered by his team from the latest installment in the MGS series on a portable platform(PSP), Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, will go down as good preparation for his vision of gaming on demand where games run in the cloud over the internet.
Kojima said,
I looked at this(Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker) in part as an experiment aimed at the future.
Is it possible that the Kojima is looking at services like Onlive and others which will be offering real-time gaming in the cloud, for his future projects. It seems that he is probably impressed by these new services and sees some major potential for the future but these services will probably take another 5-6 years to really take off so there is no need to panic.