If you want, I now have an account on buymeacoffee! You can support my work on cloud gaming at this link
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/bleeflooflah
You can also check out my youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbq7s31VpOYjDRambgA1THw
If you want, I now have an account on buymeacoffee! You can support my work on cloud gaming at this link
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/bleeflooflah
You can also check out my youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbq7s31VpOYjDRambgA1THw
Stadia is the most accessible, affordable way for a new player to get into gaming. While plenty of games exist on phones, non-gamers aren’t going to pay money for new gaming experiences when they don’t really understand what they’re getting. When they download a free title, consumers have learned to expect being nickel-and-dimed every time they engage with the game. Mobile games might be free, but most of them are also trash.
To the point, REAL gaming has always required a significant upfront investment from the player. What’s more, the initial cost of the game on top of that investment. Game consoles have always cost what is typically equivalent to a day’s wages or more. This has even been true of hand-held devices like the Game Boy or PSP. The cheapest the gaming market has ever seen consoles was the Nintendo 2DS at a mere $79 at retail. For the titles that released on the 3DS, that was bargain bin pricing for a fantastic console. But $79 is still nothing to sneeze it, especially since you’d need to buy a $40 Nintendo game to play on it.
Stadia is the first platform that has ever allowed the consumer to play console-quality games at no up-front cost. Almost everyone in Western society owns either a tablet or a computer. In the off chance they don’t own one of those, they still likely have access to a smart-tv or a smartphone. Stadia being accessible on essentially any computing device means gaming is now just as accessible as tv or radio, on devices that consumers already own and are familiar with. AAA gaming experiences that used to cost hundreds of dollars before the game was even turned on are now playable without so much as having to watch an ad. That’s immensely powerful stuff.
While the free-to-play movement in gaming has caused some harm to long-time fans it has also lowered the barrier of entry for video games to practically nothing. Ironically, games are now almost MORE accessible than tv or radio, because console free-to-play games rarely have any ads at all and the play session can continue indefinitely without interruption. While free-to-play games on mobile are often predatory, it at least has allowed consumers to become familiar with the idea of games being free, and that’s especially useful for users that are brand new to Stadia. Top quality F2P games like PUBG and Destiny 2 are great entry points for building a sense of value in the casual gamer, and can help convince them that paying $10 or $20 for a “premium” game isn’t just a great experience, but also a fantastic value long term.
Stadia Pro is well witin the price range of other subscription services like Netflix and Hulu too. With over 50 games in the library, a new player could spend a great deal of time exploring the world of gaming for an incredible price. Pound for pound, no other subscription service gives away more games at the $10 price point. While competitive, Playstation Plus Extra is $13 and Xbox Game Pass is $15. At this point in time, neither of those services provide options to buy games and continue to play them in the cloud without a subscription. In addition, those services require the use of proprietary controllers, which add an upfront cost to the experience. On Stadia, the player has a wide selection of compatible control styles, including their mouse and keyboard.
Finally, multiplayer is something that other consoles require a subscription for. On Stadia, multiplayer is completely free. That alone gives Stadia a $60 annual savings over Playstation and Xbox and a $20 advantage of Nintendo. Added up over 5 years, it equates to half the price of the console or more. Stadia’s multiplayer features aren’t just simple and intuitive, but a multiplayer session is never going to cost more than the simple effort of starting the game.
In a free market, the best value typically wins. In the gaming market in 2022, Stadia is hands-down the winner here, even before game discounts, subscriptions and free trials are factored in. All that’s left is educating the public on how easy it is to start enjoying some of the best games in the world.
Sony knows the future of interactive entertainment is turning games into hobbies. In the near future, most gamers will likely only be playing 2-3 games (if that) and they will be coming back to each game on a regular basis as new content is released. Destiny, Gran Turismo, League of Legends, Warzone, Fortnite, Rainbow Six Siege, ALL of these games are hobbies for the people that play them. Earlier this year, Sony confirmed that they have 12 of these games in development. Why such a large number? The executives at Sony know that their audience isn’t going to keep playing all 12. There’s a very good chance that more than half of those games will fail, build a very tiny audience and will get minimal support for years. That’s fine. All Sony REALLY needs is one game like Fortnite. Or Warzone. Or Destiny. One game, carried out over 5-10 years, will pay for every single game that Sony develops in the interim. Sony is making 12 games because they know the more they make, the more chances they have at striking gold.
Let’s be clear about this, because it bears repeating. No executive at Sony expects all twelve of those games to be successes. Sony is entering the live-service market late, and there are simply too many dominant players taking up mindshare in the space. The average Playstation user already has their favorite game that they have poured months or years of their free-time into. Sony’s challenge will be to not only make amazing live service games, but actually pull those players away from their favorite games to try a new one. Perhaps what Sony may not realize is that although free games will often get downloaded, it's a much bigger task to actually get a player to invest in the universe. That investment by the player involves learning the game's controls, economy, gameplay structure, social functions and seasonal structure. Because live service games are systems built upon systems (battle pass, crafting, grinding, etc), The intellectual investment from the player is considerable. Players know this and it makes free games intimidating. There’s a reason that a large group of hardcore gamers don’t play mobile games; one of those reasons is them knowing the significance of the investment and the payoff of enjoyment. The payoff would be worth discussing later. For now, we can focus on the time investment.
As a hardcore gamer myself, I find investing in most AAA games that I purchase to be very doable, while trying out a live service experience fills me with suspicion and dread. I go in knowing I’ll need to memorize a complicated economy, deal with advertisements and “sales” and spend a dozen hours figuring out if I’m actually having fun or just satisfying my lizard brain. Even if I decide that I am having fun, I’m then going to do the research to see if the game actually has a healthy player-base and has a chance of surviving the next few years. If I think it doesn’t, I’ll drop it like a parking-lot tv purchase. Even someone like me, who is passionate about the games industry and the different models of payment and financing games have, 6 games in a year is a big ask. Especially from only a single company.
I don’t blame Sony for wanting to do it. I don’t even think it's a bad idea. But twelve is simply too many. The reason is that their fanbase is eventually going to stop listening and stop trying new products altogether. You can’t just launch an infinite number of games and expect the consumer to pay equal attention to all of them. There is such a thing as attention fatigue, and by releasing that many new free games over the course of a two or three year period, the average Playstation user is going to get sick of hearing about new “free” games and they’re just going to stick with what they know.
There is also the perception of quality to consider. If Sony has released its 4th live service game, but the last three have been trash, why should I think this new one is going to be any different? Over the course of a year you might get a customer to try one or two brand new games. There’s no way you’d ever convince them to try all six, and that's especially true if there are six more the next year. Even if these games were released at a cadence of once per quarter, that still only gives the consumer three months to try the game before the “new hotness” is out. For many live service games, that's barely a single season of content. With that kind of timeline, the player barely has a chance for the game to actually become a proper hobby. I suppose a great way to space these titles out then is to alternate their releases by platform. For example, Release a Playstation game in January and then release a mobile game in March.
One of those live service games, I anticipate, is the new Wipeout game. I’ve spent some time watching gameplay videos and reading some preview material for it. This game is going to flop so hard. I doubt it will make gaming headlines. It looks like common, generic, mobile trash, and I say that as a fan of mobile and idle games. What little press has covered the game is unimpressed with the offering, and I fear the game is destined for the bottom half of the 20 million other games on the App Store. This is an important point, however. Not all 12 of those games have to be console releases; in fact it's better if they aren’t.
Sony is getting into the live service game for the same reason that everyone else is. They want the money. They may not necessarily want a live service game taking wallet share away from their AAA single-player exclusives like God of War or Horizon. They are already getting that money and they want to continue to get it. In contrast, they’re making almost nothing from the mobile space. Finding a revenue stream from the App Store wouldn’t threaten Sony’s current model at all, and it wouldn’t threaten their fan base either. In fact, it likely wouldn’t even upset their fanbase.
Mobile offerings in the gaming space are ignored by the hardcore gaming public. Final Fantasy has been bastardized to hell and back on mobile, but fans don’t seem to care. No one seems to complain about the GTA ports, Dead Cells or other mobile adapted indies. Diablo got crucified, but I suspect that’s mostly because fans haven’t gotten a new diablo game in nearly a decade. Once Diablo 4 comes out, Immortal will be sidelined by gamers and it will continue to have its mobile-centric fanbase.
Last of Us Factions will of course come out on Playstation 5, and perhaps one or two others. The rest will be mobile adaptations of popular Sony franchises. That keeps hardcore fans from being overwhelmed, and keeps the drama away from the console space. On the other side, it opens revenue streams for Sony on mobile, advertising their franchises to the general public and getting them familiar with franchises that are going to turn into movies.
The best strategy for Sony, then, is to keep most of their live service ideas off of their consoles, and instead seed those ideas in the mobile space. That way, they let their juggernaut exclusive franchises have their spotlight, allowing them to continue charging full prices for premium content. This will make third parties happy too, as they feel they won’t have to compete with the giant budgets of Sony’s AAA first-party games.
When Nadella took office seven years ago, he emphasized
immediately that the future was in the cloud. At the time, it was an
interesting but understandable ambition. Azure was killing it, services were
continuing to grow, and it was obvious that Microsoft was positioned as the
dominant player in the space. Everyone took what he said a little bit
differently though. We all kind of knew what he meant, but not exactly.
In 2021, the cloud is doing way more than it was doing when Satya
stepped in. This year, Microsoft hasn’t just added powerful cloud features to
its existing platforms, it has taken everything to the cloud, including Windows
itself, the bread and butter of the company. Office has been in the cloud for
years, but it's cleaner than ever now. Xbox has been promising cloud features
since the launch of the Xbox One eight years ago, but now with Xcloud, it's
finally a reality. Everything Microsoft does is in the cloud now.
Everything.
Its a shift we can all claim we saw coming, but to be honest, I couldn’t
have imagined it happening this cleanly. During the highs and lows of the last
five years, Microsoft has shown consistent, steady progress in their vision of
the cloud, and barring a couple of security breaches (who doesn’t have those,
these days?) they somehow haven’t really pissed off most of their customers.
It’s surprising that no one has climbed on top of the hill and shouted it to
the masses yet, but Microsoft has once again won in the business world, and
looking ahead, they’re stronger than ever.
No one likes learning new systems, but the comfort and familiarity
of Office in the cloud is astonishing. When I committed in 2021 to switching my
file keeping over to Office online, I expected to have to fight with it more. I
didn’t expect to actually prefer the UI over the one built into my desktop. The
interface of Office online is exactly what it needs to be, without the extras
that most people don’t use but a few people really need.
Put simply, Office online is cleaner than its desktop counterpart.
Not just the UI, but the bloat. As much as Windows has evolved over the last
few decades, the fundamentals of file organization have been the same since the
90’s. File Explorer is essential to Windows, as well as the way it operates,
but its function allows it to become a cluttered mess through everyday use.
Keeping a clean file system takes active, intentional work in Windows.
Installing a new app, even in Windows 10, will often create a folder in my
Documents folder without any input from me. Sure, I can hide it, or manually
place it somewhere I would prefer, but if we are honest with ourselves a new
operating system released in 2021 would be criticized for this. When a person
uses any computing device, they expect the app they’re installing to do the
organization for them, in a way that they like, without them having to think
about it. Yes, mobile apps normalized this, and it's a good thing too, because
the new way is better.
Microsoft putting Office and Windows in the cloud allows for
cleaner file organization for normal, everyday users. If Microsoft incorporated
Onedrive subtly enough, I doubt most normal people would have any use for File
Explorer. Onedrive does everything most working professionals would want from
their computer. The organization isn’t the only aspect that is beneficial here
though.
I only use about a dozen of the apps built into Windows, and I
would call myself a power user as well as a Microsoft fan. So if I as a fan am
only using a fraction of the stuff that is built into Windows, why can’t these
stock apps be deleted? I won’t belabor the point, plenty of people have been
writing about this for years. I bring it up because Office online doesn’t have
Paint. The fresh start that Onedrive and the rest of the suite has afforded Microsoft
is a breath of fresh air for their user base. Today, the web browser is the
default, necessary app on the computer, so much so that it can get away with
being the only app open, and a professional can still get all of their work
done. Many of the highest quality applications that professionals use are cloud
based. Google understood this very clearly, and they used that idea to justify
ChromeOS. It was a genius, forward thinking move. We were all moving in that
direction anyways, and it provided incentive for the industry to double down
and keep moving in that direction. Now, Microsoft users are benefitting from
it. As Edge has adopted Chromium, Microsoft has now levelled the playing field
for their users, making cloud computing a much easier default. Since cloud apps
have become the default, Office Online doesn’t need to have thirty apps that
most people don’t use. If a user wants a particular tool that isn’t included as
part of the “Office” package, they can just open a new tab. They have access to
the tool they want without the baggage of installation packages and UI clutter.
There is still plenty of work to be done. The platform in general
just isn’t as snappy as Google’s G Suite. The big apps like Word and Excel are
missing plenty of tools, and of course the offline counterparts of the apps
just feel better. It's a curious thing that Microsoft isn’t adding these tools
in at a faster pace. It could be because the users they care about are running
Windows anyways, and these apps all run great even on budget machines. Office
online, for now, only needs to be good for Chromebook users, and those users
probably aren’t bothering to use Microsoft software anyways. For now, as we are
still in the early days of the cloud transition, its enough that Microsoft
absolutely nailed the file system in Onedrive. The file system is fundamental
on any computing platform, and it shows a promising future for cloud
productivity going forward.