More games moving to the cloud
<i>Spore</i> may be coming to Steam. Cloud-based games let players simply drop in whenever and wherever they have the time, and tap into on-demand storage.
The Shack reports that Electronic Arts might be moving Spore to the Steam cloud-based gaming platform. An EA end-user license agreement showed up on Steam demonstrating that if nothing else, the company is testing out the idea.
Spore was the most pirated game of 2008, and if you are EA, you have to look at other ways to deliver games to the masses. With Steam, EA not only increases its distribution possibilities, but it also gets a better platform with a more user-friendly DRM function.
Spore would be the first internally developed EA game on the platform, but there are many other obvious candidates, such as The Sims and Warhammer Online--games that go on, even when you are not playing them in real time. That type of game design is ideal for a cloud-based service that lets players simply drop in whenever and wherever they have the time.
Another reason why the cloud makes sense is to take advantage of infinite scale for storage and computing power. It becomes a lot less appealing to pay a premium for additional storage on a PC or console when you can tap into on-demand storage.
It's also much more appealing to be able to purchase games and applications digitally, as even Microsoft will begin to sell as part of its Windows Live Marketplace.
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