I think MS is most likely to. Under deals that would span more than streamed games.
Any idea how developers will be paid under this model?
Well, if its anything like the streaming music industry, this could be disastrous for developers…I don’t think anyone makes any money off of streaming music except for Spotify and Apple.
I don’t understand why streaming has to be a subscription model. Why can’t you pay full price for a game and have it added to your streaming library?
I think subscription is a poor model for this sort of thing, unless it’s only for older games that aren’t selling anymore.
They have to pay better than that. Music CDs don’t cost $10M to make.
I would think it might be like movies, where games get released and they are purchase-only for a length of time before they move to the streaming services.
The subscription is only for older games, aside from Microsoft Studios games. Assuming they follow the MS Game Pass model, anyway.
Any idea how the developers of those older games are paid? $/playtime? flatfee?
They obviously aren’t talking about it, but yeah, it’s logically got to be some percentage of the monthly fee depending on hours played.
Remember if your game is six months old and it isn’t a runaway success, sales drop precipitously. This kills buzz in a self-perpetuating cycle where revenue continues to drop off. It also murders concurrent players, which is critical for multiplayer viability. Furthermore, games in the Xbox Game Pass typically don’t come with DLC. That’s a major revenue source.
Interesting that they’re going to do the work of building server blades and installing them in every Azure data center around the world this late in the XB1’s lifecycle. They probably wouldn’t want to have to repeat that in a year or two if they had a new console coming out, right? Makes it seem more likely that the next machine is just a further upgraded XB1.
You really don’t have any choice if you want to offer game streaming service, latency is critical. The investment indicates forward compatibility, yes, but they would have to be crazy to give that up. I would be very surprised if the XboneS didn’t play new Xbox games circa 2023. Lower resolution and image quality, but they should play. That’s a 10 year cycle right there.
It depends if Microsoft can convince publishers that it’s worth it to put new games on it. They claim that games they release day 1 on GamePass have beat their sales expectations, despite everyone on GP getting it “for free”. Phil Spencer has gone into the reasoning before (I think on the E3 giant bombcast entry) but if you take them at their word then it’s not infeasible they can convince other companies to do so as well.
I think that is highly unlikely. But sure, possible.
3rd party releases are already hitting Xbox Game Pass immediately. Vermintide 2, Robocraft Infinity, and Graveyard Keeper were all released on Game Pass on release day.
Something in the stuff I read said it’s ready for whatever the next thing’s codename is already. Realistically, though, every console from here on out will probably be some sort of further upgrade of what came before now that we’re x86 everywhere.
Well, when Sony was doing market research on how to monetize PS Now everyone crapped their pants over the idea of buying games or even doing individual rentals. The only thing that seemed palatable to people was a subscription library.
But people are still experimenting. A number of digital games on 3DS and Switch in japan are streamed and even sold as a cartridge. But the publisher is either on the hook to host that forever, or the consumer could simply lose access eventually. Anyone who made a lot of game buys through OnLive is SOL, for example.
It’s an easy claim to make when you set your own expectations and no one outside the company can verify them.
Evidence seems to be pointing to that being true. As Mellified had said 3rd parties are already releasing day 1 on Gamepass and EA added pre-day 1 releases to their Origin Access subscription service as well. If you buy two EA games a year it costs less to get a year of EA Origin Premier for $100 and get all their new releases a few days before release. EA especially wouldn’t be doing that if they didn’t have numbers from the existing Origin Access that subscribers were more likely to buy DLC than non-subscribers.
For posterity’s sake and for full disclosure, I now work at Blade Group, creators of Shadow, the game streaming service. I didn’t work for them when we had this discussion, nor was I interviewing with them.
I assume your opinion has changed then?
Not sure. It’s been a while, but to be clear, Shadow’s model is a subscription for access to the cloud service, but they are agnostic about where you get your games. You can load up your Steam library, battle.net, Origin, or whatever.