“Cloud gaming could completely change how the video games industry works,” [EEDAR CEO Greg Short] said. “Why would you play FarmVille when you can play World of Warcraft on the same machine?”

via EEDAR: Cloud gaming could kill Farmville | Games Industry | MCV.

No, Greg. Let’s not confuse a delivery mechanism for an audience. A huge part of the audience that likes social games doesn’t like World of Warcraft. I know this is shocking and bizarre to hear, so let me reiterate it. They don’t like the games you do.

It is true that cloud gaming offers higher levels of presentation right now. What it doesn’t offer is the right sort of content for the mass market audience.

Could you deliver a social game that has broad appeal via cloud gaming service? Sure. You could have done it via a Playstation 3 too. But nobody did it because of the audience mismatch. And the cloud gaming services’ prime selling point is that they deliver high-end graphics.

We are already seeing social gaming move onto mobile devices that have plenty of power to deliver fancier graphics. And when we do, we see that it isn’t the graphics that make the difference. It’s the gameplay. And the fact is that overall, and granting that there is plenty of evolution to come, social games have the right gameplay for the mass market.