Amazon game studio is struggling the same, so it’s not totally put of place this time. However:
FWIW, Stadia the console is an amazing product. It rendered useless buying a console in theory.
If any Stadia team member is reading: I want to work with you in this amazing project.
Unfortunately you need to have games on a console if you don’t want to make games (making them even at loss benefitted stadia image nonetheless) you need to license them and this is the turning point: you need a stronger acquisition strategy.
I've been surprised we haven't seen Google try to play with the pricing model at all; I would be more than willing to consider a per-hour rate for gameplay, even higher tiers for AAA properties.
Buy the game outright if you want, but pay, shall we say, .40 per hour of playtime with a minimum of 5 hours.
Are publishers not interested in terms like these? Google's clearly interested in the "start playing from Youtube with your favorite streamer" angle. A per-hour pricing model would click so well with that. Maybe streamers even get a cut from the first-time player fees.
I was so tempted by their “buy cyberpunk on Stadia and the hardware is free” deal they did in December but they ran out of inventory too soon for me to buy it.
And that’s from someone who has never really considered getting it before; I don’t even own a console and do all my gaming on PC and phone.
Im hoping they consider more and broader partnerships that like going forward.
Comparatively, making games is harder than making gaming hardware. It's incredible that I find fewer and fewer great games on the market these days when both the barrier to entry is lower, and the available technologies are so much more powerful.
But I think the problem results from the above. The barrier to entry is so low that entrants don't make many fun games (there's just more of them), and the available technologies to saturate usage of are so expensive to fully utilize and staff for that making a fun game falls by the wayside (too few games produced by those that can make great games, and of those, most of them are not even good).
gcatalfamo|5 years ago
FWIW, Stadia the console is an amazing product. It rendered useless buying a console in theory.
If any Stadia team member is reading: I want to work with you in this amazing project.
Unfortunately you need to have games on a console if you don’t want to make games (making them even at loss benefitted stadia image nonetheless) you need to license them and this is the turning point: you need a stronger acquisition strategy.
mpalmer|5 years ago
Buy the game outright if you want, but pay, shall we say, .40 per hour of playtime with a minimum of 5 hours.
Are publishers not interested in terms like these? Google's clearly interested in the "start playing from Youtube with your favorite streamer" angle. A per-hour pricing model would click so well with that. Maybe streamers even get a cut from the first-time player fees.
JauntTrooper|5 years ago
And that’s from someone who has never really considered getting it before; I don’t even own a console and do all my gaming on PC and phone.
Im hoping they consider more and broader partnerships that like going forward.
PaulHoule|5 years ago
dado3212|5 years ago
mpalmer|5 years ago
lrossi|5 years ago
andrewmcwatters|5 years ago
But I think the problem results from the above. The barrier to entry is so low that entrants don't make many fun games (there's just more of them), and the available technologies to saturate usage of are so expensive to fully utilize and staff for that making a fun game falls by the wayside (too few games produced by those that can make great games, and of those, most of them are not even good).