EA's Project Atlas Vs. Google Stadia: What You Need To Know

The last point for us to consider as we move inevitably closer to a future in the cloud, is the way that ongoing support for games will affect how they're produced.

EA mentioned in their Project Atlas announcement that their new service will allow them to innovate on the Frostbite Engine, due to fewer limitations, in order to deliver smoother games that can be updated and patched with far more ease than they are on current systems. This is great news for gamers who are open to moving to cloud-based products, but could be damning for those who prefer physical media.

Whilst Sony and Microsoft have both promised that their next consoles will still provide the option to use discs, physical copies of games are undoubtedly on their last legs. What we may find is that the physical versions of games, initially designed for the cloud, will be of sub-par quality in comparison and receive fewer updates and patches as time goes on. We’ve seen similar practices when games have released at the beginning of a console's life-cycle and lesser versions of those games have also been released for the previous console.

Unfortunately, hardware can only take us so far and we’ll have to accept that we’re probably entering the last generation of physical media. This will have a negative impact on second-hand stores and on gamers’ collections, but will considerably reduce production costs and should lead to a better gaming experience, with online support being far more regular and accessible.

We should remain positive and embrace this as an exciting time in technological experimentation, but we should also approach these innovations with a reasonable amount of scepticism and make sure these companies know our wants and fears in regard to cloud-based gaming.

That’s pretty much all of the information we have on the Stadia and Project Atlas at the moment, but keep an eye out for Apple’s latest project, Skynet, dropping in 2022. We’ve heard it’ll change the world.