Not even a week after Google announced its own game streaming service, here's Microsoft offering one of their own:
Our vision for the evolution of gaming is similar to music and movies — entertainment should be available on demand and accessible from any screen. Today, I’m excited to share with you one of our key projects that will take us on an accelerated journey to that future world: Project xCloud. Today, the games you play are very much dictated by the device you are using. Project xCloud’s state-of-the-art global game-streaming technology will offer you the freedom to play on the device you want without being locked to a particular device, empowering YOU, the gamers, to be at the center of your gaming experience.
Good news for hardcore gamers who want to play the latest title without having to own a new console, or PC gamers who want to play their games on older machines or other devices. However, both Google and Microsoft are making a massive category error: Just because technology makes a service more convenient to use doesn't necessarily grow the market for that service. That bad assumption comes right out in the announcement video:
It's amazing for traditional console players because it gives them another place to play. But what's incredible is for the people who haven't been introduced to this type of gaming, people who've never seen a franchise Halo or Gears [of War], it's pretty big.
This is roughly crazy pants. Every owner of an iPhone and a high end Android from the last 5 or so years already has access to console-type games on their phones, like this one:
The problem is, AAA-type games like Infinity Blade attracted relatively modest sales on smartphones, while overwhelmingly, the hits are not AAA games with high-end 3D graphics but tend to be casual and 2D. Similarly, console sales have not measurably grown, even as older models have come down in price -- the top seller by far remains the Playstation 2, which came out in 2000! If there was a growing demand for AAA games, wouldn't successor consoles be exceeding its sales numbers? (Well over 150 million.)
The confusion is cultural, with gamer technophiles assuming that everyone wants to have the same immersive 3D experience they enjoy, if there was only an easier or cheaper way to do so. But actual download numbers and sales figures suggest otherwise. Or to put it another way: Google and Microsoft are blowing billions of dollars to grow a market that shows no sign of budging beyond what it already is.
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