EA's Executive VP of Strategic Growth Matt Bilbey said in an interview to gamesindustry.biz that he expects game streaming to be an unavoidable fact of our lives, replacing traditional consoles and gaming-specific devices with smartphone-based solutions or Smart TV apps. Matt Bilbey spoke on how scaling bandwidth and latency is paramount to this streaming future, and likely one of the reasons streaming services up to now have struggled for acceptance - and even survival.

"(...) today, that [bandwidth and latency issues] is still a challenge. But I think over the next year to two years, that barrier will drop. Not for everyone, but for a lot of people. Bandwidth capabilities will go up so the business model around streaming a game becomes more viable. If you buy into a streaming solution and the experience is laggy half the time, you're going to stop and not do it again, which is the challenge some of the companies previously had. I think there's now a solution where we can deliver on the promise, and we're working with a lot of the companies who create the server infrastructure, and there are a lot of innovative solutions from a lot of big companies we're working with that will actually allow us to bring this to life."It all goes back to telemetry, data, and exploration of users' interests and gaming profiles though, and Matt bilbey says that is an integral part of any new investment. trying to bring the investment/profit ratio as high as it can possibly go is the goal of many companies - and EA is certainly not the exception. Matt Bilbey said that being able to collect these telemetry tidbits is paramount to future experiences:

"By having this across our entire catalog, it allows us to curate their experience, to not start offering them trials when they're deep into a single-player mode on something else. So that's a big part of what we talk about internally as our 'player network.' It's the value proposition we can use to ensure they get the most value out of the game they're playing."

And your next-gen games might be made entirely by algorithm, much like Netflix's approach:

There's definitely an opportunity we have there that we don't talk about, about how we could create your entertainment experience. I'd like to think as well there's insight we will get out of how those people are playing games, when they're playing, how long they're playing for, who they're playing with, that will arguably write the concept for your next game.

That last part brings back memories of this one little piece that used images of Bioware's upcoming Anthem video game...