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EA and other major publishers are gearing up for Netflix-like game streaming subscriptions


Massdriver

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Despite the efforts of services like Sony's Playstation Now, nobody's yet nailed the 'Netflix of games' blue sky proposal. However, major publishers like EA, Activision Blizzard, and Ubisoft are confident that subscription and cloud-based gaming services will find a large audience one day, and may even become the premier way to play games. 

EA CEO Andrew Wilson discussed the future of subscription and streaming services—that is, services which render games remotely and stream them to your local device over the internet—during the company's recent earnings call. 

 

"There was a lot of conversation on Origin Access Premier, and from a gamer standpoint, the feedback was very, very positive in terms of the opportunity to access more great games at great value with reduced friction," said Wilson. "And we expect that will be a big plus for gamers over time, and like all subscription businesses will take time to build. But we believe in the long-term potential of that, as we've seen to be true with linear-based media like TV, movies, and music." 

 

https://www.pcgamer.com/ea-and-other-major-publishers-are-gearing-up-for-netflix-like-gaming-subscriptions/

Yuck

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No thanks... Not because I have a problem with not owning the game, but because I have problem with latency in gaming.

 

If they want to open up a service where you still download the game, but only own while you pay for the service, I'm open to that.

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Microsoft's Game Pass is perfect for me. I would rather download the games to my Xbox and play them with out having to worry about how stable my connection is to avoid latency and reduce video quality. I don't have the best connection. Also I like to play online multiplayer games. I imagine game streaming and online gaming = :sick:

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I see less of Netflix in this, more of Comcast and premium cable channels you purchase separately.  Every major publisher will want to sell you on a subscription plan, regardless of it being cloud based or not.

I definitely don't see this as a positive development.  It's going to make things even more GaaS heavy than they already are.

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6 hours ago, legend said:

No thanks... Not because I have a problem with not owning the game, but because I have problem with latency in gaming.

 

If they want to open up a service where you still download the game, but only own while you pay for the service, I'm open to that.

 

I think it'd be great for something like running Civ on a potato. The ability to run the graphics at a reasonable setting and process turns at a reasonable pace tends to be the limiting factor with a game like Civ. The only real latency issues would be something like if you're playing multiplayer and another human player declares war on you, since there's an initial turn of everything resolving simultaneously where reaction speed can count for a lot.

 

But for anything where reaction times are super core to the game? lolnon

 

Not even single-player games unless they could somehow keep real-time tabs on the lag and retime the game on the fly accordingly.

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I dont even know if they have the infrastructure for it. Its one thing for the relative handful of people using PS Now at any given point, but for tens, possibly even hundreds of millions of people trying to play games at the same time? Plus bandwidth load? And server side hosting? What about peer-to-peer? Can a streaming service handle the processing and communication involved with 16, 32, or 64 people all sending that information back and forth to a host and clients, plus voice, with reasonable latency? To people who until now have been doing just fine with a 30Mb connection?

 

I'm gonna assume the answer to that is no.

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