I'm not sure I would get back on one of these. I used OnLive back in the day, but now I can't play those games any more. It was a subscription with lock-in, and now that it's out of business I can't even choose to be locked in.
Now, I have recently started playing on GeForce NOW, nVidia's offering. However there it's much closer to an EC2 model: I'm renting a machine, and I log into my Steam profile and play games that I purchased there. If I want to move that to my own PC, I can. I like that pattern much more.
I'm an avid cloud gamer. I used GeForce NOW at first, but it had limited game selection.
I use Shadow now and it is much better. I have full control over the PC/VM, and install whatever I want from anywhere. I'm also super impressed with the latency - I can play multiplayer competitive games no problem.
I'm on a Mac so cloud gaming makes sense for me. I was going to build a PC but the cost was too high. Much cheaper to just pay ~$15/month.
This sounds like an ad, so to get back on topic -- if Amazon's Luna doesn't let you install whatever you want, it wont be able to compete.
I have tons of PC games I "own" but can't play anymore. One of my favorite tycoon games was Sid Meier's Railroads, but it can't run stable on any machine with more than 4GB of RAM. Sure I could spin up a Windows XP VM but that's not a reasonable solution in any way. Same thing with Full Spectrum Warrior, just doesn't run on modern OSes. I can play Unreal Tournament 2003 or older Call of Duty games or... if I can find someone to play with, playing the maps and modes I want to play. I also have more than a handful of online and MMO games that I "own" but can't play because the servers are shut off.
The days of owning a game and playing it forever are so far gone that there are adults graduating college who don't remember a time when you could expect to own a game and play it forever.
If you've used GFN, then you know that most game use Steam Cloud so your saves aren't locked in. Stadia has also claimed they let you export your save files.
The price looks really good compared to Stadia, and being able to use a dirt cheap Fire Stick that many already have instead of a $100 hardware investment is a huge plus. To really drive adoption they could cut the price of the controller and make some games available for Prime members.
That said, I think there's a tendency to pooh-pooh the "gamer" concerns about streaming far too much in the rush to declare that the state of technology couldn't possibly be an obstacle to launching a product. Just from this year two of the most popular games with non-gamer audiences were a samurai adventure that sells itself on its HDR visuals that wouldn't look so great compressed (Ghost of Tsushima) and a party game where you wouldn't need to be a stereotypical FPS gamer to notice and be infuriated by relatively small amounts of input lag (Fall Guys). Yes, people who don't play games all the time will be less demanding, but don't forget we're still talking about them playing games.
I agree that we should not declare it as without obstacles. But neither as useless because it doesn't meet the demand of "gamers"
I used to be a gamer, playing hours competing online every day around the Diablo 2/Warcraft 3 times but have since largely lost interest in it as a hobby.
These days I'm more interested in killing a half hour here and there, sometimes a rainy sunday afternoon. Almost exlusively more narative driven or not very mechanically demanding single player, often turn based games and couch coop.
I'm pretty happy with my Switch as the only gaming device, but I find it a hassle to look up which games are out, check reviews to see if their worth buying, maybe wait for a discount and wait for download. Then feeling bad for not having finished most.
So a service which I can just pull up when I feel like it, and click on a random game and immediately start playing for a while then either move on or come back is very attractive to me, and unlike other streaming services I don't care much about owning the product.
That said, I have never tried cloud gaming service, but for the convenience I'd be willing to make quite some concessions. E.g. keeping the Switch for the 2-3 fast paced party games I play.
The current monthly price is just for early access. It says on the page that the price will change on the full launch, but does not say what it will change to.
I don’t know, I got playstation now a year ago and played a bunch of games in the cloud with my playstation and it worked pretty flawlessly. I was surprised.
>The price looks really good compared to Stadia, and being able to use a dirt cheap Fire Stick that many already have instead of a $100 hardware investment is a huge plus.
I don't get this statement. Don't you need to purchase an Amazon Controller for $50 and if you want a good SoC and 4K capability you'll also need to purchase a Fire Stick 4K at about $50 which brings the total to $100.
As for Stadia - there's no need to purchase a Stadia controller or Chromecast 4K. I've used an Xbox controller and Chrome to play just fine.
The Venn diagram for target audience and situational use cases of these services has always seemed very small to me.
At least the subscription model and game selection seems better than Stadia.
edit: Also, it seems to me like the target audience is for the same sort (and I’m not trying to denigrate) that watch movies on their TV with internal speakers or can’t fathom why you’d pay more than 30 bucks for headphones or earbuds. Some people just don’t care about the latency, hiccups, or compression artifacts. And that’s fine, but I’m not part of that group.
Bear in mind: While very few consumers benefit from cloud-based gaming, the outcome of dragging consumers over to it for businesses is huge.
Why sell software and hardware once when you can sell software, the hardware it's hosted on, and the support and services to manage that software and hardware every single month. It's why companies like Adobe and Microsoft have tried to push their main, relatively static[1] software packages like Office and Creative Suite over to a rent-seeking model. And it's why selling cloud services is all the rage.
It's not a good way to do things, it's not good for any consumer or user of those things, but it prints money on a stable and continuous basis in perpetuity, because people lose everything they paid for when they stop paying.
That's why cloud gaming is going to keep coming up year after year, no matter how impractical or stupid it is.
[1] For the vast majority of users, the difference between any given version of Office or Creative Suite and one released five or six years prior is nearly zero. Almost nobody needs to continually buy these.
At this point, even after Stadia, if Amazon is getting into, and i trust Amazon biz and market analytics more than Google or Xbox, the only conclusion I can come to is that they know the venn diagram is small but they must have data showing that it's getting bigger. They must be targeting people growing up just playing on their phones already paying subscription who want to play those cool AAA games with the smallest investment possible. That's me backing into this conclusion. I'll look forward to see what the next Deconstructor of Fun podcast says about this. They focus on the biz/money part of games and have been appropriately bearish on streaming (Stadia) in the past.
The latency is the only “situational use case” to care about. This has been mitigated more and more. The rest is just gatekeeping gamers imagining what a larger group of wallets would care about and being strong. Chronic problem in that community. Isnt the biggest protest amongst enthusiast gamers based around at what point they will pay the company anyway? Hard to take any stance there seriously when there is zero power over what happens, companies dont get cancelled, 2% of their audience just doesnt preorder the thing they were going to buy anyway, amazing.
Hiccups and artifacts are largely solved and where they aren't, the market tolerates it just fine.
There has been a whole decade of this stuff. The arguments are literally from last decade and they weren’t issues even with the inferior infrastructure then.
I dont think any of these services have proven themselves as a profitable endeavor on their own yet, but as far as advertising or a competitive ecosystem for a larger brand, theyve done really well.
First, you have people who are "real" gamers. Whatever that means, but we'll define it as owning some piece of hardware that was bought for the purpose of gaming (PS4, Xbox, Switch, PC). This number is between 250-500 million people.
Yes. Its that high. PS4 sold ~115M units. XB1 ~50M. Switch ~70M. Steam has ~100M MAUs. There's overlap in those, and those numbers also really under-represent China and the huge PC gaming scene there, but I think we're in the right magnitude.
By and large, this group's interest in cloud gaming would only significantly extend to being able to access the games they already play on the hardware they have, when out and about. Xbox, Nvidia, PlayStation, and whatever Valve releases will own this group. They're not re-buying games on Stadia or Luna and locking themselves into that platform, nor dealing with locked cross-saves, cross-achievements, cross-social, its just not happening.
Second group: Lets say iOS users. Representing 1.5 billion people worldwide, significant overlap with the previous group. These users probably wont get too heavily invested into any cloud streaming service, because they are all inaccessible on their mobile device. Yeah, there's a Luna web app: I'm sure it'll be horrible.
Third group: People with bad or no internet. 160 million Americans lack broadband. Some of them still buy game consoles and suffer through weeks of downloading updates. Most don't. Online play sucks, but 150 ping is manageable. You learn to play with the ping. These people will never use any cloud streaming service.
We could go on, but the point I'm reaching is: I, too, have no clue who will be signing up for these services. It really feels like these cloud companies just have graphics cards laying around and are supremely uncreative with how to get value from them. Or, they want to own the world and its taken them thirty fucking years to recognize that, hey, gaming is a thing and boy are they late to the party.
Gaming hardware is not expensive. A Switch costs $200; a brand spanking new Xbox Series S, $300. You don't need a two thousand dollar PC to play all the great games out there. Stadia and Luna want you to buy their controllers and their dongles, the upfront cost is not zero, and consumers are not blind to the ongoing cost and expensive games (Game Pass anyone?! Its a fucking steal! And it practically comes with xCloud! Why do people still think Amazon and Google can compete with this?)
If there was some investment vehicle which allowed me to specifically short Stadia and Luna, I would put every cent in my savings and retirement into it, down to the last penny. Cloud streaming has a future, but it won't be via these two products.
I used to care about those things and then I had kids and my priorities changed and I just want real quick access to 45 mins of media or games.
I bet that will change yet again when they get older.
I really like your perspective: there’s millions of consumers out there with different priorities. You don’t have to “get” it you just have to appreciate that they exist.
I disagree, I think pay once for a game probably matches better with the VEnn diagram of the target audience, which probably are people who don't game enough to buy a whole console/PC, but want to try the latest NBA or big game like Cyberpunk. Paying a one time 60$ for one game seems better than subscription if you play a few hours a week.
being able to game while also being cheap laptop only is something huge numbers of teens with disposable pocket money have. These services (fortnite, csgo, etc) want the billions all those pocket money slices add up to.
Apple modified Safari so that Amazon was able to launch Luna on iOS:
> “We worked with the Safari team to ensure that some of the things that weren't there are there, and that allowed us to kind of get to where we are today,” Luna head of engineering and technology George Tsipolitis said.
I was really surprised to see "iOS" in the promotional stuff, considering game streaming on AppStore has been a huge issue in the past few months. Turns out, another Apple team has been helping them bypass the AppStore entirely!
I'm surprised Stadia on iOS is not out yet, considering iOS 14 adds vp9 and by some account, it actually works right now if you spoof your user agent. Maybe very soon.
Curious what it is. I'm guessing it's not WebGL cause the game isn't running locally. Maybe they're treating it as some kind of special real-time video stream?
Has anyone tried a Stadia before? I've remained doubtful about game streaming because it seems like the latency is such a hard problem to overcome. In any game that requires even a bit of precision and fast reaction, 30-100ms of latency can feel pretty bad.
Seems to me like the only way this could possibly work is if the games are designed with streaming in mind, but even then it seems hard... Remote Desktop in Windows, for example, feels laggy even on LAN (connecting to another computer in the same house).
This feels like an appropriate place to rant on something that’s been bothering me for a while.
It’s really disappointing to me to see every single form of entertainment becoming a subscription service. It’s also the same problem you see with various apps/software trying the SaaS model, even when it doesn’t make sense.
Are we going to have exclusive games requiring multiple subscriptions to enjoy the content you want? Will we move away from being able to purchase games to run them locally?
Moreover, if Games as a Service (GaaS) becomes the de facto way to release games, is it going to encourage longer titles with lots of grinding/farming to ensure people stay engaged for months at a time? Will it slowly kill off sub-20h, more story-focused experiences that can be completed in a fraction of one month’s subscription price?
Also, it really bothers me to see that almost every single one of the FAANGs feels the need hop on the bandwagon. First it was music streaming, then movies/TVs, and now it looks like gaming is next. You can argue that competition is good but really we just have exclusive content siloed across various services and priced in such a way that likely only the large tech companies can subside it with their other offerings (e.g., ad revenue or premium phone sales).
I feel the gaming industry is segmented in a few universes these days. There's the universe of high budget AAA games, where decisions made by corporate execs often ruin great ideas, or you get the same exact game re-released every 1 or 2 years under slightly different name. There's the world of mobile gaming, where every single game seems to be the same gacha experience that trains you to open the app every minute to get timer-based dopamine drops. There's the indie games, where great ideas are implemented on low budget. There is the retro game universe. And others.
I feel that streaming can't really take over all of these universes. Sure it may dominate some of the AAA titles I don't care about where latency is not an issue, but I can't see it taking over everything. And for it to become even remotely popular we'll probably also need some breakthroughs in terms of latency.
Some gaming communities even have a lot of power in terms of pushback for bad things. Look at the fighting game community (FGC) where they basically boycotted Street Fighter x Tekken, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite and other titles there were either doing crappy stuff.
I'm honestly most bothered by the fact that this is yet another slice of media that gets the "you rent it, you don't own it" treatment. I want to own my games, damn it, I don't want to rent it for a month. It's not about me feeling like I'm paying too much for games if I stay on a subscription for years just to play a game. It's about me wanting a hard (or digital) copy of a game I love because one day they might introduce an awful patch or licensing issues might push the game out of the service and, by proxy, my reach. I'm gonna keep supporting services like GOG and itchio that let me have games that I paid for because those seem optimal to me.
I hate this as well. This is not just software: it's becoming increasingly difficult to acquire DRM-free digital goods (i.e. products that I can guarantee I will be able to use in 10-15 years), and in some cases, video in particular, I don't think that there has ever been a marketplace where I could legally buy DRM-free products (there are niche sites, of course, but I mean a generic store, like a bandcamp for movies). Music is an exception, fortunately. For now.
SaaS, and streaming in general, is very much anti-consumer, especially for those of us who value reliability over quantity. It's sad, but in most cases piracy really is the most pro-consumer option, even without considering the price (although in my case I usually just don't bother and go for other forms of entertainment).
The next generation of consoles already seems to include two versions, one with support for discs and another one (cheaper, of course) which is digital only. I'm tempted to rant about how this is a ploy to incentivise people to eschew physical games and go digital only, but I would be fooling myself, since physical games are also DRM-riddled and they might just stop working if some software update so decides.
I find this odd because I think historically most people haven't purchased entertainment. Libraries have always been common for books, more people listen to a song on the radio then on a CD they own, people watched TV on broadcast or cable before Netflix, and most movies are watched in the theaters or rented then on a DVD they own.
Games have been weird for being something you have to buy.
1. You cannot touch the sacred cow $60 game price. You can go lower, you cannot go higher.
2. Reoccurring revenue & upsells/addons are every business' wet dreams. The game is done, sell it at $60 and shift 9/10ths of the team onto the next game. 1/10th of the team remains in bug-fix/content-churn mode to fulfill whatever season/battle pass scheme they're peddling. Release a new game with the same stuff ~2-4 years later.
3. Singleplayer games are dead because studios haven't figured out to get cheap secondary/ternary monetization out of them (for cheap.) A lot easier to make a digital hat than keep your design/narrative team making expansions.
To address the actual post: Amazon is hopping on because they have the technical capabilities... Unfortunately they don't have the game-industry/consumer-oriented know-how to make this a success. It's going to be a 'neat tech demo' but they'll never get a foothold because it's not solving an actual problem consumers are having at the moment.
> encourage longer titles with lots of grinding/farming
This is a good point that worries me. Also is the anxiety that carries having too much choice, like when choosing what to see next on Netflix. Now if you pay 60USD for a game you are compelled to finish it. With thousands of games to choose from, and being able to instantaneously switch between them, then I guess it means videogames as we know them would be over. Probably split in seasons, becoming super addictive and shallow just to get you engaged.
On the other hand, a Playstation 5 is $500 plus $50-$70 per game. A PC is even more expensive for the latest hardware. At $6/month it would take you 7 years before it costs you more renting than owning at which point there could be a PS6 and more games to buy.
For someone like me that rarely plays games, I'll probably sign up for a few months to play something that interests me then cancel it after I lose interest. I'll enjoy not having a console I hardly ever use sitting around collecting dust.
The fragmentation with movies/tv platforms has been awful, but Spotify has been amazing for music. I've probably listened to more music than I could ever afford otherwise. I don't think the price of movies has really changed either and you can still purchase them, so people are definitely making a choice to go with streaming over physical ownership. Go to any Goodwill and you will see shelves of discarded VHS and DVDs. I don't think people want to buy the VHS, then the DVD, then the BluRay, then the 4K BluRay and whatever 8K thing comes after anymore. Technology is changing so rapidly that's it better to pay a pittance each month now and wait for the next better thing just around the corner.
Well there is already Sneakers-As-A-Service so it just feels natural that every company will try to screw consumers into that tactic since a lot of people joins it for "perveiced" convenience
I don't think games as a subscription service will necessarily work out as well as for movies and television. At least at the moment, buying games can be so cheap (if you wait 1-2 years after releases) and games are usually so long that it's probably quite hard to release a subscription service that beats just waiting for sales. Also, I'm not sure how much the third-party developers that are not owned by Amazon/MS et. al. will make of these services; if they decide not to put their games on the service (or after years when sales are already occuring), it would already be a blow to these services.
Also, at least for me, having a more expensive internet connection (needed for game streaming services) would actually cost me more than a high-end gaming machine and way more than a console.
Does anyone know the basic tech stack behind Luna? This landing page doesn't mention anything, and I'm dying to know if they're also going the Linux and Vulkan route of Stadia.
Since it hasn't been posted here, it looks like amazon have "productised" AppStream[0] and added a subscription based model a-la prime video.
Interesting that they positioned it as a new product and not a prime offering, as increasing prime subs was always one of amazon's main drives recently (keep spinning that flywheel).
They had a similar streaming integration with their games engine lumberyard[1] iirc, and used it for some of their first party titles[2] though as far as I remember, none of their first party games have taken off.
Interestingly, in googling I found there is a "prime gaming"[3] option that amazon has, so I'm surprised this offering wasn't folded into that. Maybe the low uptake of prime gaming means they need to position it as a separate service to get press for it, or maybe the increased cost to serve can't be justified without charging an additional subscription.
Interesting. Disregarding my issues with Amazon as a company, on paper this looks like a better system then Google's Stadia, by actually having a netflix style access games for a monthly fee that I think most people expected Stadia to do.
The latency metric seems baked. As a long time PC FPS player where latency is king, I'd like to know if there is a real advantage versus USB or 2.4/5ghz dongle and a PC/console connected to the streaming server. I'm imagining a lot of thought went toward the back end architecture for the service and will definitely be giving it a go. Was not impressed by Google's attempt. If the latency issues with streamed games can be overcome through a direct device connection to streamlined infrastructure at Amazon, something like what Riot has done on their backend for League and Valorant, then it would be a real game changer (haha) for these services.
The power to be had offloading rendering could totally kill console and PC one day just from a technical angle. Imagining a Pixar like experience coming soon, straight from AWS. Can a home PC or console ever compete with a render farm?
Ubisoft obviously has some kind of special deal to be able to sell their own subscription “coming soon”, does anyone know what the profit share for game developers is for this kind of cloud gaming? Or will it only be large publisher titles available for these kind of services with behind closed door deals?
I get that this type of services reduces friction (somewhat) for playing graphically demanding games at the cost of network bandwidth (10gb/hour), but trying to work out what kind of possible Epic vs Apple shit fights this kind of silo platforms might start if it is rolled out to all AWS regions around the world and becomes dominant platform.
Feel like this going to kill any chance Stadia might have had, if they have enough games and they give you a couple of months for free / reduced price if you have a Twitch Prime this will probably own the game streaming market.
Ah damn, only available in the US. I was hoping that there'd be a streaming service available in Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne so I could actually have a chance of trying it with decent latency.
I wonder why don't any of these game streaming services every launch in developing countries like SEA. Affording gaming PC is quite difficult here, that's why Gaming Cafes are still so popular and even more so mobile games, however most people do have TVs because they are so cheap. I'd imagine 5$/month game streaming service would be much more attractive here than anywhere else.
Most of the games played in internet cafes are LoL, Dota2, Fortnite, CS:GO... All these can run on a potato for cheap. Looking at facebook for used parts you could prob build a desktop to play those games at ~$200 sgd.
[+] [-] CGamesPlay|5 years ago|reply
Now, I have recently started playing on GeForce NOW, nVidia's offering. However there it's much closer to an EC2 model: I'm renting a machine, and I log into my Steam profile and play games that I purchased there. If I want to move that to my own PC, I can. I like that pattern much more.
[+] [-] legohead|5 years ago|reply
I use Shadow now and it is much better. I have full control over the PC/VM, and install whatever I want from anywhere. I'm also super impressed with the latency - I can play multiplayer competitive games no problem.
I'm on a Mac so cloud gaming makes sense for me. I was going to build a PC but the cost was too high. Much cheaper to just pay ~$15/month.
This sounds like an ad, so to get back on topic -- if Amazon's Luna doesn't let you install whatever you want, it wont be able to compete.
[+] [-] freehunter|5 years ago|reply
The days of owning a game and playing it forever are so far gone that there are adults graduating college who don't remember a time when you could expect to own a game and play it forever.
[+] [-] ehsankia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lowiqengineer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] resfirestar|5 years ago|reply
That said, I think there's a tendency to pooh-pooh the "gamer" concerns about streaming far too much in the rush to declare that the state of technology couldn't possibly be an obstacle to launching a product. Just from this year two of the most popular games with non-gamer audiences were a samurai adventure that sells itself on its HDR visuals that wouldn't look so great compressed (Ghost of Tsushima) and a party game where you wouldn't need to be a stereotypical FPS gamer to notice and be infuriated by relatively small amounts of input lag (Fall Guys). Yes, people who don't play games all the time will be less demanding, but don't forget we're still talking about them playing games.
[+] [-] smoe|5 years ago|reply
I used to be a gamer, playing hours competing online every day around the Diablo 2/Warcraft 3 times but have since largely lost interest in it as a hobby.
These days I'm more interested in killing a half hour here and there, sometimes a rainy sunday afternoon. Almost exlusively more narative driven or not very mechanically demanding single player, often turn based games and couch coop.
I'm pretty happy with my Switch as the only gaming device, but I find it a hassle to look up which games are out, check reviews to see if their worth buying, maybe wait for a discount and wait for download. Then feeling bad for not having finished most.
So a service which I can just pull up when I feel like it, and click on a random game and immediately start playing for a while then either move on or come back is very attractive to me, and unlike other streaming services I don't care much about owning the product.
That said, I have never tried cloud gaming service, but for the convenience I'd be willing to make quite some concessions. E.g. keeping the Switch for the 2-3 fast paced party games I play.
[+] [-] chptung|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 013a|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baby|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] binaryjay|5 years ago|reply
I don't get this statement. Don't you need to purchase an Amazon Controller for $50 and if you want a good SoC and 4K capability you'll also need to purchase a Fire Stick 4K at about $50 which brings the total to $100.
As for Stadia - there's no need to purchase a Stadia controller or Chromecast 4K. I've used an Xbox controller and Chrome to play just fine.
[+] [-] boardwaalk|5 years ago|reply
At least the subscription model and game selection seems better than Stadia.
edit: Also, it seems to me like the target audience is for the same sort (and I’m not trying to denigrate) that watch movies on their TV with internal speakers or can’t fathom why you’d pay more than 30 bucks for headphones or earbuds. Some people just don’t care about the latency, hiccups, or compression artifacts. And that’s fine, but I’m not part of that group.
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|5 years ago|reply
Why sell software and hardware once when you can sell software, the hardware it's hosted on, and the support and services to manage that software and hardware every single month. It's why companies like Adobe and Microsoft have tried to push their main, relatively static[1] software packages like Office and Creative Suite over to a rent-seeking model. And it's why selling cloud services is all the rage.
It's not a good way to do things, it's not good for any consumer or user of those things, but it prints money on a stable and continuous basis in perpetuity, because people lose everything they paid for when they stop paying.
That's why cloud gaming is going to keep coming up year after year, no matter how impractical or stupid it is.
[1] For the vast majority of users, the difference between any given version of Office or Creative Suite and one released five or six years prior is nearly zero. Almost nobody needs to continually buy these.
[+] [-] spbaar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
Hiccups and artifacts are largely solved and where they aren't, the market tolerates it just fine.
There has been a whole decade of this stuff. The arguments are literally from last decade and they weren’t issues even with the inferior infrastructure then.
I dont think any of these services have proven themselves as a profitable endeavor on their own yet, but as far as advertising or a competitive ecosystem for a larger brand, theyve done really well.
[+] [-] 013a|5 years ago|reply
Yes. Its that high. PS4 sold ~115M units. XB1 ~50M. Switch ~70M. Steam has ~100M MAUs. There's overlap in those, and those numbers also really under-represent China and the huge PC gaming scene there, but I think we're in the right magnitude.
By and large, this group's interest in cloud gaming would only significantly extend to being able to access the games they already play on the hardware they have, when out and about. Xbox, Nvidia, PlayStation, and whatever Valve releases will own this group. They're not re-buying games on Stadia or Luna and locking themselves into that platform, nor dealing with locked cross-saves, cross-achievements, cross-social, its just not happening.
Second group: Lets say iOS users. Representing 1.5 billion people worldwide, significant overlap with the previous group. These users probably wont get too heavily invested into any cloud streaming service, because they are all inaccessible on their mobile device. Yeah, there's a Luna web app: I'm sure it'll be horrible.
Third group: People with bad or no internet. 160 million Americans lack broadband. Some of them still buy game consoles and suffer through weeks of downloading updates. Most don't. Online play sucks, but 150 ping is manageable. You learn to play with the ping. These people will never use any cloud streaming service.
We could go on, but the point I'm reaching is: I, too, have no clue who will be signing up for these services. It really feels like these cloud companies just have graphics cards laying around and are supremely uncreative with how to get value from them. Or, they want to own the world and its taken them thirty fucking years to recognize that, hey, gaming is a thing and boy are they late to the party.
Gaming hardware is not expensive. A Switch costs $200; a brand spanking new Xbox Series S, $300. You don't need a two thousand dollar PC to play all the great games out there. Stadia and Luna want you to buy their controllers and their dongles, the upfront cost is not zero, and consumers are not blind to the ongoing cost and expensive games (Game Pass anyone?! Its a fucking steal! And it practically comes with xCloud! Why do people still think Amazon and Google can compete with this?)
If there was some investment vehicle which allowed me to specifically short Stadia and Luna, I would put every cent in my savings and retirement into it, down to the last penny. Cloud streaming has a future, but it won't be via these two products.
[+] [-] Waterluvian|5 years ago|reply
I bet that will change yet again when they get older.
I really like your perspective: there’s millions of consumers out there with different priorities. You don’t have to “get” it you just have to appreciate that they exist.
[+] [-] MikusR|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehsankia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nazgulnarsil|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pier25|5 years ago|reply
> “We worked with the Safari team to ensure that some of the things that weren't there are there, and that allowed us to kind of get to where we are today,” Luna head of engineering and technology George Tsipolitis said.
https://www.engadget.com/luna-amazon-cloud-gaming-interview-...
[+] [-] ehsankia|5 years ago|reply
I'm surprised Stadia on iOS is not out yet, considering iOS 14 adds vp9 and by some account, it actually works right now if you spoof your user agent. Maybe very soon.
[+] [-] Terretta|5 years ago|reply
So much that's in the app store has, essentially, no need to be a DRM protected binary distributable.
(Unless, maybe, the app store channel brings some significant value.)
[+] [-] 0xCMP|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rococode|5 years ago|reply
Seems to me like the only way this could possibly work is if the games are designed with streaming in mind, but even then it seems hard... Remote Desktop in Windows, for example, feels laggy even on LAN (connecting to another computer in the same house).
[+] [-] QuixoticQuibit|5 years ago|reply
It’s really disappointing to me to see every single form of entertainment becoming a subscription service. It’s also the same problem you see with various apps/software trying the SaaS model, even when it doesn’t make sense.
Are we going to have exclusive games requiring multiple subscriptions to enjoy the content you want? Will we move away from being able to purchase games to run them locally?
Moreover, if Games as a Service (GaaS) becomes the de facto way to release games, is it going to encourage longer titles with lots of grinding/farming to ensure people stay engaged for months at a time? Will it slowly kill off sub-20h, more story-focused experiences that can be completed in a fraction of one month’s subscription price?
Also, it really bothers me to see that almost every single one of the FAANGs feels the need hop on the bandwagon. First it was music streaming, then movies/TVs, and now it looks like gaming is next. You can argue that competition is good but really we just have exclusive content siloed across various services and priced in such a way that likely only the large tech companies can subside it with their other offerings (e.g., ad revenue or premium phone sales).
[+] [-] dyingkneepad|5 years ago|reply
I feel that streaming can't really take over all of these universes. Sure it may dominate some of the AAA titles I don't care about where latency is not an issue, but I can't see it taking over everything. And for it to become even remotely popular we'll probably also need some breakthroughs in terms of latency.
Some gaming communities even have a lot of power in terms of pushback for bad things. Look at the fighting game community (FGC) where they basically boycotted Street Fighter x Tekken, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite and other titles there were either doing crappy stuff.
We can resist crappy things pushed to us.
[+] [-] BelleOfTheBall|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gordaco|5 years ago|reply
SaaS, and streaming in general, is very much anti-consumer, especially for those of us who value reliability over quantity. It's sad, but in most cases piracy really is the most pro-consumer option, even without considering the price (although in my case I usually just don't bother and go for other forms of entertainment).
The next generation of consoles already seems to include two versions, one with support for discs and another one (cheaper, of course) which is digital only. I'm tempted to rant about how this is a ploy to incentivise people to eschew physical games and go digital only, but I would be fooling myself, since physical games are also DRM-riddled and they might just stop working if some software update so decides.
[+] [-] neaden|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DivisionSol|5 years ago|reply
1. You cannot touch the sacred cow $60 game price. You can go lower, you cannot go higher.
2. Reoccurring revenue & upsells/addons are every business' wet dreams. The game is done, sell it at $60 and shift 9/10ths of the team onto the next game. 1/10th of the team remains in bug-fix/content-churn mode to fulfill whatever season/battle pass scheme they're peddling. Release a new game with the same stuff ~2-4 years later.
3. Singleplayer games are dead because studios haven't figured out to get cheap secondary/ternary monetization out of them (for cheap.) A lot easier to make a digital hat than keep your design/narrative team making expansions.
To address the actual post: Amazon is hopping on because they have the technical capabilities... Unfortunately they don't have the game-industry/consumer-oriented know-how to make this a success. It's going to be a 'neat tech demo' but they'll never get a foothold because it's not solving an actual problem consumers are having at the moment.
[+] [-] scoutt|5 years ago|reply
This is a good point that worries me. Also is the anxiety that carries having too much choice, like when choosing what to see next on Netflix. Now if you pay 60USD for a game you are compelled to finish it. With thousands of games to choose from, and being able to instantaneously switch between them, then I guess it means videogames as we know them would be over. Probably split in seasons, becoming super addictive and shallow just to get you engaged.
[+] [-] thebigspacefuck|5 years ago|reply
For someone like me that rarely plays games, I'll probably sign up for a few months to play something that interests me then cancel it after I lose interest. I'll enjoy not having a console I hardly ever use sitting around collecting dust.
The fragmentation with movies/tv platforms has been awful, but Spotify has been amazing for music. I've probably listened to more music than I could ever afford otherwise. I don't think the price of movies has really changed either and you can still purchase them, so people are definitely making a choice to go with streaming over physical ownership. Go to any Goodwill and you will see shelves of discarded VHS and DVDs. I don't think people want to buy the VHS, then the DVD, then the BluRay, then the 4K BluRay and whatever 8K thing comes after anymore. Technology is changing so rapidly that's it better to pay a pittance each month now and wait for the next better thing just around the corner.
[+] [-] cooldevguy|5 years ago|reply
https://www.on-running.com/en-us/cyclon
[+] [-] IdiocyInAction|5 years ago|reply
Also, at least for me, having a more expensive internet connection (needed for game streaming services) would actually cost me more than a high-end gaming machine and way more than a console.
[+] [-] echelon|5 years ago|reply
I still worry about these streaming platforms. Ease of use goes up, but it turns the industry into a subscription economy.
Maybe attention fulfillment maps better to subscription than to purchase, as there's less buyer's remorse? I still don't like it.
[+] [-] oehtXRwMkIs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mijoharas|5 years ago|reply
Interesting that they positioned it as a new product and not a prime offering, as increasing prime subs was always one of amazon's main drives recently (keep spinning that flywheel).
They had a similar streaming integration with their games engine lumberyard[1] iirc, and used it for some of their first party titles[2] though as far as I remember, none of their first party games have taken off.
Interestingly, in googling I found there is a "prime gaming"[3] option that amazon has, so I'm surprised this offering wasn't folded into that. Maybe the low uptake of prime gaming means they need to position it as a separate service to get press for it, or maybe the increased cost to serve can't be justified without charging an additional subscription.
[0] https://aws.amazon.com/appstream2/?blog-posts-cards.sort-by=...
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/
[2] https://www.amazongames.com/en-gb/games
[3] https://gaming.amazon.com/
[+] [-] neaden|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dubcanada|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattfrommars|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abakus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ndavis|5 years ago|reply
The power to be had offloading rendering could totally kill console and PC one day just from a technical angle. Imagining a Pixar like experience coming soon, straight from AWS. Can a home PC or console ever compete with a render farm?
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] layoric|5 years ago|reply
I get that this type of services reduces friction (somewhat) for playing graphically demanding games at the cost of network bandwidth (10gb/hour), but trying to work out what kind of possible Epic vs Apple shit fights this kind of silo platforms might start if it is rolled out to all AWS regions around the world and becomes dominant platform.
[+] [-] polytely|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aeolun|5 years ago|reply
For a change it would be nice if they started literally anywhere else.
[+] [-] voltagex_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wraptile|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philliphaydon|5 years ago|reply