Ubisoft is convinced that game streaming will eventually gain popularity, and this will happen very quickly

The publisher of Assassin's Creed recently agreed to acquire the rights for cloud gaming for all Activision Blizzard games released in the next 15 years outside the European Economic Area, pending the successful completion of Microsoft's expected $69 billion deal to acquire the creator of Call of Duty.

While more detailed terms of the deal have not been disclosed, Guillemot told the Financial Times that the agreement between Ubisoft and Microsoft includes a "one-time payment" from Microsoft.

"When Netflix first announced their plans for streaming, their stocks plummeted, and they faced widespread criticism," he noted.

"Today, we see that they've succeeded. The same will happen with games, but it will take time. However, when it does happen, it will happen very quickly."

Research group Omdia forecasts that the cloud gaming market will reach $3.2 billion in 2023, accounting for two percent of total consumer spending on games, but this figure is expected to double at least in the next five years.

"We firmly believe that in the next five to ten years, many games will be streamed and created in the cloud," Guillemot emphasized. "That's what motivated us to move forward with the deal with Microsoft."

With the increasing adoption of more powerful mobile technology, Guillemot expects game streaming to gain traction in emerging markets where console gaming has not yet established a strong presence.

"Countries that need to progress rapidly often leap to new technologies and bypass old methods and systems," he said. "Therefore, we believe that will transition to streaming and cloud gaming more quickly than others."

In their recent smartphone models unveiled earlier this month, Apple announced that their upcoming iPhone 15 Pro will be capable of running games at console-level quality.

One of the first games aiming to validate this claim is Capcom's port of Resident Evil 4 for the iPhone 15 Pro, which will be available this year for $60/£58.

Leaked Microsoft documents from last week list "hybrid cloud gaming" as a key innovation planned for the next generation of the company's Xbox console, which is expected to be released by 2028.

According to the leaked information, the company envisions "developing a next-generation hybrid gaming platform capable of harnessing the combined power of client and cloud to achieve deeper immersion and entirely new types of gaming experiences."

He added: "Optimized for real-time gaming and creators, we will enable new levels of performance beyond what client-only hardware can offer."