Unless you consider it impossible to evaluate anything prior to building and trying it, the fact the cloud isn't being used in a console now isn't a barrier to understanding potential, at least some. Smart phones were easily predictable, for example, and though some aspects like everyone using them constantly while out for a meal may not have been expected, possibilities for their users like taking and sharing photos and using little functional applications and playing games were obvious long before smart-phones existed as we know them now.
I'd argue that smart phones were not easily predictable either in what they were capable of or would be capable of doing. Take Apple, what is the name of their software that serves as their app hub and do everything portal? It's called iTunes. That's right iTunes. Now I ask you, why would they call it iTunes when it deals with Apps and all sorts of other stuff? Think about it for a bit.
Look at discussion on this board around what could be done with new tech like Wii and sixaxis and Kinect, and how without any experience whatsoever, people can come up with ideas how to use them (most of which the games companies failed to implement).
Yeah let's talk about all of those. Wii included standard, universal and mandated motion controls. Now, in spite of whatever technical failings or limits it may have had, does anyone on this forum dispute how it single handedly accelerated acceptance of alternate control schemes, how it accelerated future r&d in that department, and how it increased the console gaming audience? If the Wii-mote was optional and the Wii was just another console that played yet more games, would the resultant acceleration in the field of alternate controls have been the same? I'd argue not a chance. Would Kinect 1.0 have come out at the time it did if not for the Wiimote being standard on the Wii? Or to cut to the chase, would we have seen the cool Kinect 2.0 stuff at this years e3 if it were not for the Wii having motion controls standard all those years ago rather than optional? In that particular field, being "standard" rather than "optional" accelerated progress dramatically.
EDIT: I realized I missed part of your question...it's far easier for people to think of ideas and uses for motion controllers like Kinect and Wiimote because of the whole you are the controller marketing campaign. So right away people think hey I'd like to actually be boxing in a boxing game, or pitch in that baseball game, run and jump in that fitness game, etc, it's easier to come up with initial ideas for those devices. Cloud is a different beast, it's not immediately apparent where it can best be used.
If you can't look at the cloud's remote compute and storage and envision how they could make for new games, how's about approaching it from another direction. Pick a game style that isn't represented in the current crop of publisher output and see how it cannot be done on the new consoles (or old consoles for that matter) and then how the cloud could maybe enable it. Looking at the masses of game styles across the ages, the golden days of Amiga variety, and the current indie scene explosion, there's not really a dearth of game styles possible - it's just that the major players don't want to make them. In which case, what makes you think they'll want to embrace new cloud-enabled gameplay when they weren't willing to embrace old, cloudless gameplay. The limiting factor is the devs, the publishers, and possibly the market too (Journey only recently broke profitability). I find it reassuring that Cerny is
with me on this and he expects more variety thanks to lower cost of entry
The limiting factor is the devs because yes you have to lower the barrier to entry as much as possible. However that goes to all aspects of it though meaning the tools need to be there, the api needs to be there, the audience needs to be there, the financials need to be there, all of that needs to be guaranteed and in place if you want devs to make the leap. Or I really should say publishers and not devs, because devs love to play with new stuff, it's the publishers and bean counters that have to be satisfied. Having a feature be standard goes a supremely long way to lowering the barrier right there, but even that alone isn't enough. We can look at Nintendo, their online may be standard but to call it horrid would be an understatement so devs are still likely to ignore that "standard" element in the Nintendo world. The effort that Microsoft took to put all the pieces in place to me is unprecedented. They didn't just throw together an api and let devs sort out the servers and tools themselves. They didn't just supply servers and then ignore a standard platform wide api. They didn't just make cool tools and compiler hooks and then supply underpowered servers. They didn't supply good servers, good tools and good api and then make it all unaffordable. They didn't just supply good servers, tools api and pricing and then make it an optional neglected Sega 32x type peripheral. That's just the thing, they put all the pieces together, guaranteed tools, guaranteed api, guaranteed server power, guaranteed audience, affordable pricing, no one else to date as done that, not Apple, not Google, not Sony, no one. It's a first! That is how they in my mind are the first company to truly lower the barrier to entry to cloud with regards to game development. All other companies as far as I'm concerned don't get it because they don't understand games enough, they don't realize the technical difficulty and scope of creating games to begin with so they offer piecemeal cloud solutions which, to no ones surprise, have been largely ignored. Microsoft had all the pieces, with 'had" being the operative word as that little thing called the internet connection is no longer guaranteed.
No more obvious that FMV and better sounds/voice acting
