Current technological developments point to a future where you won’t physically own games as much as subscribe to them; streaming them live to your home PC or TV screens from remote ‘Cloud’ computer services. Microsoft isn’t especially worried about such competition at the moment, though.

“Streaming technology is something that the industry is betting on longer term,” European Xbox LIVE boss Jerry Johnson tells his audience at the recent London Games Conference.

“Right now I don't believe that technology can scale out against the experience we can offer on a local machine.”

“The technology will continue to improve. As an industry we'll have to accept that and move with it – but I don't think it's on an accelerated timeline for the foreseeable future.”

Well, Johnson may well be correct at this particular moment in time, although the technology currently in development at Online and Gaikai may be arriving sooner than he thinks. The latter operation, headed by former Shiny Entertainment supremo Dave Perry, is about to enter the public beta testing phase and, as a video demonstration shows, looks like it might actually work!

See Gaikai.com for more info and beta signup details, and prepare to consign your old-fashioned games discs to the cupboard under stairs forever more. You might want to start thinking about what you’ll do with all that extra shelf space too...