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this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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If cloud gaming ever becomes the norm, the consumer will have no power left. That’s their end game, to lock us into platforms and extract subscription and when they can’t get more subscribers they will demand higher prices and add more advertising. People who are paying for game pass, are investing in this future for gaming.
Fortunately, it seems Game Pass subscribers have pretty much stalled out since 2021. There's been no significant ride in subscribers since then.
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-08/xbox-studio-closures-microsoft-plans-more-cost-cutting-measures-after-layoffs
There's a huge difference between game pass and cloud gaming though. The way things are, cloud gaming isn't gonna take off for a long time. And game pass games aren't exclusive to game pass,i very much doubt it would make much financial sense to do that either as things are right now. Game pass and game sales aren't mutually exclusive. Most people are still more than willing to pay full price for games rather than renting it except in certain situations.
DRM
Luckily we already have maaaany good games available to download. So even if all future games were only playable on some cloud I wouldn't give a fuck
I'd still be mad though. Hopefully enough people would so that it will never become reality
I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I don't see even a single mention of cloud gaming in the article?
This is about studio closures and a disconnect between MS's actions and the types of games they say they want.
MS surprise launched hifi rush with zero marketing, put it on gamepass day 1 then complains it didn't meets ales expectations and shuts down the studio that made it. Now, 48 hours later, they are saying they need more games like that.
It may not be directly referenced in the article but cloud gaming was absolutely a part of what led to the closure of tango gameworks.
dsfgasfsaf
I'd argue that xcloud and gamepass are equally disruptive to the industry. In either case you don't own the games and they are tied to a subscription. Whether the game is running locally or in remote hardware doesn't change how it impacts development and sales of games.
Cloud based gaming is not going to replace owning hardware unless they can ensure sub 20ms response time for every and I don't belive that target is feasible but either case is bad for gaming as a whole. Games with 100 million dollar budgets are never going to see a positive ROI on services like gamepass and are reliant on gamers being willing to pay full price at launch.
My point is that Gamepass and similar services will kill AAA games if they become the primary way people access games and that is something that is best avoided. Games need a 6-12 month buffer to hit sales targets before they are considered for subscription services, otherwise the entire business model will fall flat on its face and take gaming with it.
Sure that’s how it is now. As soon as the technology is mature enough, they will slowly begin to make a push for cloud only games. In that way they have total control. They can’t do it now because the technology is not quite there yet, and people is not ready. But you can see where they are heading. All business software such as Office and other cloud services is already there.
dsfgasfsaf
There's also GeForce Now and they seem to be doing okay but at supposed 25 million registered users, that doesn't seem like that much all things considered. For comparison, I can't get the number of registered Steam users but they alone have around 30 million concurrent users on a typical day.
dsfgasfsaf
Oh I agree with you, I was just adding onto your point to the person you're replying to. There's plenty of options in the cloud gaming space but they're not doing well enough to impact traditional gaming where you run the game on your own hardware which they were worried about.
dsfgasfsaf
Sony is just as bad. Sony use the same tactics to vendor lock its users.
dsfgasfsaf
Gamepass isn't cloud gaming, though. It's a game subscription, but cloud gaming is only optional and only available for a subset of games. All of the games however can be downloaded and are played locally.
It’s optional for now.
I’d only take this as a valid point if you could point to any games succeeding in spite of being cloud only. When Stadia tried it, it kneecapped them.
You are right, that there are no games now bound to the cloud right now. But look at Microsoft business model in other areas. It’s all software as a service, web apps in the cloud, that businesses pay a subscription to use. It’s great way to extract value from customers, because it gets harder and harder to move away from these platforms. Your data, save games, your friend list, your ability to play multiplayer and so on, get increasingly locked to one platform, which makes it harder to move. And then Microsoft can just collect rent, they don’t have to innovate or compete on a free market. This trend is sometimes called techno-feudalism.