With the launch of BioShock Infinite just days away, Irrational Games' creative director Ken Levine weighed in on the future of gaming. His opinion? It's all about being able to take your gaming with you.
Levine might be known for creating solitary, cinematic experiences but he thinks gamers want "more transportability".
"To me, the exciting thing is making sure that gamers are given the convenience of not locking them to one particular couch," Levine told TechRadar.
"That's the strength of the Vita streaming, and something I also like about the Wii U."
Infinite possibilities
Levine said that Steam could one day be that very service: "That portability is exciting. Down the road I can see them doing something where you just have a PC that sits in the centre of your house and puts out your games.
A bit like cloud gaming, then? "The problem with the cloud is that you have a latency problem," the BioShock man added. "But if it's on your PC locally in your house, those latency problems go away and it's pumping it out to receptors - your TV or your iPad or whatever it is."
It's also something that we could see in the Xbox 720, which will supposedly be fighting for the place of the living room 'all rounder' with SmartGlass adding a "transportable" element.
Levine said system developers could learn from services like Netflix, letting gamers stop playing in one place and pick up exactly where they left off somewhere else.
"The great thing about Netflix is that you have a movie and you can take it anywhere you want," he told us. "When going to sleep at night I like to put it on my iPhone."
Sony is pushing in this direction with the PS4 and Vita , but Levine thinks that the landscape has changed, and there needs to be more consideration about value for money when it comes to games.
"Consumers] don't necessarily want to pay for it or have it delivered in the way they have it delivered today," he said.
