I have enough unplayed and uncompleted games in my Steam account to last until the end of the universe.
I won’t be streaming games in three years.
If he only offers streaming, he’ll just leave a gap for indies who actually deliver.
If you read it, he says it’s a way to reach those who don’t have machines capable of running the games, therefore increasing the target audience size.
Aaaand downvotes from people who never read the article, we’ve reached peak reddit.
This is from an earnings call. He 1) says that increasing hardware prices are not a good thing and 2) thinks streaming is starting to be ready enough that people who can’t afford gaming PCs or consoles, can stream the games instead.
This came from a lengthy answer given in Take-Two’s quarterly earnings call this morning by Strauss Zelnick, in response to a question about the rising cost of hardware. He began his reply by saying that the rising price of hardware is “not a good thing” because it means fewer people will have machines on which to play games, but that it won’t slow Take-Two down as a business, “because we’re delivering experiences that people want.”
But Zelnick continued with a really interesting response about streaming. First, he pointed out that the world is increasingly moving to open systems, as demonstrated by the rise of PC gaming over the last 20 years. Then, he continued:
With the advent of streaming—which we really do believe is around the corner in terms of having something that’s low latency, and really works well for consumers—machines that weren’t game machines before will become game machines. So, without regard to what happens in the console business, which is of consequence to us, of course, we see the overall install base as a practical matter growing materially. And if you believe in streaming, to be clear, we really do, and I’m happy to put a timeline on it. I think we’ll be in commercial streaming mode in three years, and by commercial I mean low latency. That can 10x the effective the install base. That doesn’t mean we’re going to 10x our revenue, and we wouldn’t project that we would, because obviously your avid consumers already have access to video game machines. But I do think it creates great opportunity for titles that are broadly desirable even outside of core markets, and we do have titles like that, obviously.
This is VERY different from what the headline suggests, of course Kotaku editorialized the fuck out of it.
I remember the CEO of NVIDIA making similar claims like 10-15 years ago (and being rather eager for that future to come), but I’m not really seeing anything that has changed since then that makes it more likely now.
There’s the increases in hardware costs, yes, but in order to get sufficiently low latency, you can’t just plop one or a few big data centers per country, you need at least one smaller one pretty much per town. And to ensure a good quality of service, those are going to need more redundant hardware than a more centralised solution would, and given that cloud gaming service providers are also affected by hardware getting more expensive, that would make for some very high up-front costs.
There’s the possibility of VCs throwing dumb money at these companies until they control the market, but for that to work, they need to actually be able to take control of the market. But they’re not just competing against the latest and greatest, they’re also competing against ten year old hardware that’s considerably more affordable. Things aren’t advancing as quickly as they used to, and I doubt the shrinking number of people who do always want the best possible are going to be too thrilled about having graphics littered with compression artifacts.
Are they implying that in 3 years they’ll have upgraded my internet AND put servers in every single city, not just capitals so stream this?
I’m not accepting 100ms of latency, ever.
I got a 3DS and DSi not too long ago to play games on, so I’m more likely to go backwards and get old tech to play timeless classics than stream new games.
That headline completely misrepresents what he actually says.
Personally, I can see streaming gaining more of a foothold again, due to hardware prices, but only for the niche of high-fidelity games. And I rather imagine that niche is primarily going to shrink.
We’ve already got the “friendslop” games gaining massively in popularity. And if people can’t afford new hardware, a streaming service will be just as hard of a sell.
Can’t make people pay to stream board games and dnd. Which, coincidentally, I am buying guide books for because shitfucks like this are actively making gaming harder and harder to continue to justify morally to myself.
They: don’t pay their staff but give executives massive bonuses (Game company CEOS are among the highest when you look at pay disparity charts), indulge in layoffs on failure or success (listing non-paid wages in the quarter as profit to shareholders) , continously justify gambling as not because it’s digital (lootboxes, “player packs” boosters), actively erode consumer rights (liscense vs ownership), actively treat their consumers like dogshit (the ps3 WILL cost $700 and if you do not like it you can…get an Xbox? Lol?), cutting content of products to add back as paid extra content (moving up deadlines and prioritizing XYZ at the end so it’s “not done” by deadline so it can be added back later for a price to beat the “we intentionally didn’t include it” allegations)
Gaming’s shitty practices are ruining other markets and the governments of the world’s refusal to reign them in is causing spillover into other things.
Me with my over 500 games backlog in steam and thousands of Roms in emulators:
Straus Zelnick can lick my nuts.
AAA cattle will be streaming their games in 3 years. FTFY
I had a GeForce Now Founder account but finally let it lapse as the price kept going up. I also bought into Google Stadia and it was great technology wise.
I don’t see cloud gaming as a bad thing as a backup, or when you’re on the road.
However, like everything these days, the fuckers will just keep jacking up the price to squeeze every penny out of the market. Or lock it down so you have to buy from their store.
This is the real problem. The technology is capable and we could have nice things but these assholes will just ruin it so fuck 'em.
I don’t see cloud gaming as a bad thing as a backup
I agree, I’d like to have the OPTION to stream cloud games in addition to the OPTION of playing games digitally and the OPTION of owning games physically.
The keyword here being OPTION.
Even if they’re not greedy, I don’t think the price that it would take to provide that service at cost is going to ever be a price people are willing to pay.
Probably true. Especially with the current hardware prices.
fuck that noise, I’ll play ROMs of SNES for the rest of my life if it comes to it. idgaf. never giving in to cloud based bullshit ever
True, but don’t sleep on the Mega Drive / Genesis, or the Neo Geo too!
There are legitimately so many incredible titles in the 4th (16bit) console generation, that it could keep most people playing for a decade or more.
…and that’s BEFORE gaming exploded in popularity with the 5th & 6th console generations.
Given RAM keeps getting bought out by data centers, and AAA games keep requiring more RAM & GPU juice. For the chunk of gamers who ‘need’ to play the latest AAA this could easily become a reality.
Luckily us indie gamers can keep playing on our potatoes and be happy.
Exactly. This CEO is not talking about art, or humanity, or even mere entertainment. He is talking about what would need to be true for his business model to stay relevant.
Ah, yet another rephrasing of “You’ll own nothing.”
In 3 years my internet will be just as capable of streaming games as it was 20 years ago.
And it will cost even more though.
My internet hasn’t really changed in price, been 80/month for decades, just swapped no bandwidth for extreme instability.
