David Perry, founder of streaming service Gaikai, talked about the importance of Facebook to his business at Cloud Gaming Europe. He confirmed that a deal is done with Facebook, which will put streaming PC game demos on the social network soon.

“Our next big launch is on Facebook and we’ve been working with them for some time,” confirmed Perry, who demonstrated World of Warcraft running on the service. “Facebook already owns the category of casual gaming, we’re going to help them own core games. A click and boom, you’re playing World of Warcraft.”

Perry noted that friction was a large impediment to consumers online. He gave an example of Steam, where he said that there were several hoops to jump through including answering questions about internet speed, signing terms of service and so on.

“Bring the game to the gamer, don’t move people, move games,” he noted. “Zynga has figured out that you put the customer first, very aggressively. You click once and you get to play for free, you share it with your friends and then you pay Zynga if you love it. It’s a pro-consumer as you can get and that why their valuation has skyrocketed. Some of the traditional publishers who have ignored all of this are falling off a cliff. Look at their stock prices, it’s not good.”

As for games consoles, he thinks that the smarter that TVs get and the more diversified game systems get with their abilities, their downfall may be inevitable. “Consoles are in an interesting place right now. If you look at Sony it has a saying that ‘It Only Does Everything’. I think that one statement says that consoles are going to go away,” said Perry. “This next cycle you’re going to see them turn into media devices, media boxes, I don’t even think they’re going to be called consoles. They won’t want to be associated with that word because it just means games. ”

“Steve Jobs showed that the trick is not to make money of the hardware but to monetize the devices. Everyone that pays for stuff on their iPhone makes more and more money for Apple. Why should I buy a $1000 TV and then a $500 box when all I need is a TV By revealing what their goals are they’re basically setting the end game for consoles as we know it,” he added.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz