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Xbox Chief: We Need To Create a Netflix of Video Games (theguardian.com)
Phil Spencer, the man who heads up Microsoft's Xbox division, says that if the video game sector is to grow both creatively and economically it needs to start thinking along the lines of a video-games-as-a-service subscription model. From a report: Over the last five years we've seen the emergence of a new concept: the video game as a service. What this means is the developer's support for a new title doesn't stop when it's launched. They run multiplayer servers so that people can compete online; and they release extra downloadable content (DLC) in the form of new items, maps and storylines -- sometimes free, but very often paid for. [...] So being able to build and sustain a community around a single title takes the risk out of development. However, the costs of renting and running server networks and maintaining the matchmaking and lobby infrastructures make the model inaccessible for smaller teams. Should it be? "This is directly in line with what I think the next wave of innovation needs to be for us as a development platform," says Spencer. His solution, it seems, is to make Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform more open to smaller studios, so they get access to a large global network of servers. "They don't have to go buy a bunch of servers on their own and stick them under their desks and hope they get enough players to pay for them," he says. [...] Spencer feels that, from a creative standpoint, we need new types of narrative experience -- but from a business standpoint, it's getting harder and riskier to commit to those games. Is there an answer? Spencer thinks there is -- and it comes from watching the success of original content made and distributed on modern TV services. "I've looked at things like Netflix and HBO, where great content has been created because there's this subscription model. Shannon Loftis and I are thinking a lot about, well, could we put story-based games into the Xbox Game Pass business model because you have a subscription going? It would mean you wouldn't have to deliver the whole game in one month; you could develop and deliver the game as it goes."
sega did this in the mid 90s and it was a great service for its time. got a few games a month that you could play through a dialup modem. I wondered why no one has done it since.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
It's called emulation. I have complete collections of most systems.
Keep innovating, Microsoft!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Origin already has a model like this?
Isn't this just describing Steam?
If a future offering from Xbox is the Netflix of video games, then what's the YouTube of video games?
I thought that was what Xbox live fee was for. Dear MS stay out of the PC market, eat shit, and die.
I very much hope this fucking fails.
The business models are completely different. Every mode of distributing games for cash has FULLY influenced how games are designed. If you make a game that sells at a store, it has to fit on whatever media you are selling it on (pretty easy these days), and it has to be complete. If everyone has internet connections, you can ship a halfassed game with a fraction of content instead, and we see that. If you can do in-app purchases, then a science will spring up about how best to trick and exploit your customers- start with a free, fair and fun game, then gradually ramp up the difficulty until it is either an expensive, fair, and fun game, or a free, unfair, and unfun game. And we see this too, and not to a small degree- there's huge expensive studies done about how best to rip people off.
So, what does a subscription based service incentivize? First of all, shitty games that look good enough to justify a subscription, games with artificially long end-points such as MMOs, and of course, the same in-app purchases. Basically, it has the worst commonalities of all the existing models. But wait, there's more! If the subscription is, say, 15 a month, then that's not enough to pay for free access to like 5 good MMOs and two dozen good first person shooters. How do you divide the 15 a month anyway? By the games played by each person? It ends up having the same compensation issues that Spotify does, except unlike performers, you don't go on tour with your game- your distribution is your entire model, full stop.
There's almost no way that, even if highly supported and well liked, this is sustainable. This is just middle-men engaging in huge rent-seeking, and they will be the only ones to possibly make any kind of cash out of this, which will be entirely on the backs of any developers.
A more optimistic view is to offer temporary access to older games, for people who like them but don't want to go through the drama of maintaining their ability to play them separately for long periods of time. That's the best case scenario, and not the one they are talking about. I suspect even that would fail too.
And I'm sure this would be just more Windows-specific garbage (Xbone also runs Windows, AFAIK), as if the world needs more of that.
No, you don't. You need to fix the problem of companies releasing great video games and then slowly ruining them by pushing updates that don't fix bugs but rather degrade the game play with new power-ups, different weapon positions, changes in balance, etc...
I already pay Microsoft about $60/year for a subscription service that allows me to download and play games. It's called XBox Live Gold. Perhaps no one told the new boss at XBox about?
You're the Johnny-come-lately again.
The word you're looking for is 'Steam'.
http://store.steampowered.com/...
Give me more games per month on xbox live and make sure I can play them forever on xbox live. Charge an additional 9.99$/mo to give me games on release day that I can play as long as I have an active XBL account. Honestly once I beat a game there's very little reason I need to keep it on my shelf, in my system, or other type of media. I have HORDES of old games that collect and the chance of me playing .0001% of them is slim to none.
I'll take a modern service that gives me all my content+new content for a very low monthly rate.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
No hard copy, no sale.
Let me translate this marketing talk into something that average people would understand: "Let's milk our customers for as long as possible by first selling them an early alpha and then, while solving critical bugs, adding some missing features so that the game doesn't look and feel like a demo product".
Sorry, this is such a shitty concept it must die. Games in 80s, 90s and early 00s were released as complete final products and rarely if ever received any patches or DLCs. Now with the advent of a high speed Internet connection, even operating systems are offered as beta products (I'm looking at Windows 10). This is all done to save money on QA/QC and to increase the profits of game publishers (not, not developers) - the companies which basically do nothing, except clever often misleading marketing.
The service no one asked for.
From the POV of a player, this isn't that much different. Most modern games already depend on DRM servers and your ability to play the game you "bought" can be rescinded at any time. Also, it is explicit in the TOS that you are not buying the software, but are only given a limited right to use it which can be withdrawn in the future.
Most games these days act more like rentals than purchases, so that model has already been accepted by the market.
Looking forward to games being randomly pulled in and out of the catalogue while I'm in the middle of playing them, at whim of always changing agreements between the streaming service and the publishers.
The reason I stopped using my Xbox was the long install times to initially launch games and then the constant need to spend 30 min installing updates to the console and game each time I want to play.
Sounds to me more like they want to eliminate people's ability to sell used games (because you'll never own a copy, only 'rent' it) and at the same time gain perpetual profit from the 'rental' of 'streaming' games to people. Basically, it's a return to the Video Arcade: you walked in with a pocketful of quarters, and left with your pockets empty. Also reminds me of the original DivX business model: they wanted you to buy a physical disc, but you'd have to pay a fee every time you wanted to watch it. I hope nobody falls for this.
It's like playing Mad Libs. Try it!
We need to create a Blue Plate Special of Eiffel Towers
We need to create an Integrated Desktop of Ice Makers
We need to create a Guardians of the Galaxy of Chewing Gum Flavors
You can't miss!
I do the old XKCD gag of playing old games on old hardware. I buy most of my games for
Besides, this already exists and is called Gamefly.
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Weird how all the big companies seem to believe the future lies with us continuously paying them for the privilege of their services without them actually suppling a permanent product.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
CEO: "We want to get more money for selling games."
Marketdroid: "Users are not willing to pay more than $60 per game."
Bright Idea Guy: "I know! We will sell games as a service and charge $10/month. Our customers will LOVE it!"
IMHO for most of the title it would be fine... I often buy a game play it and drop it... but there are a few titles that I would not like that. There are some titles im still playing even 20 years after their release. Also I have a fear of these service as they are profit based... that mean this game that you love isn't making enough money anymore well it's going to be removed and you wont have a thing you can do about it. I also fear that it will be a breading ground for bad games... unfinished games that needs a lot of debuging are gonna get there and you're going to pay to be a debugger.... IMHO it will greatly depend on how it works.. is it a 15$ a month for ALL GAMES or is it going to be this game is 5$ a month this one is 10$ a month and so on... I would accept the first but you wont get me for the second... In the end I dont expect the users will be the winner, thet publisher are going to be the winner as always and user and studios wont get much out of that.
Fantastic! Let's continue to pump out half finished games and sell the other "half" of the unfinished game via DLC...
Perhaps if they did away with selling unfinished games, and got on par with "Netflix Originals" by creating GOOD (Not DLC Dependent) and FULLY DEVELOPED (Complete Season) content at once, it would be sustainable. Stop trying to clone other games and release something original and fresh for a change.
Some people spend 100 dollars a month on video games.
I couldn't justify that. I could do 10... I don't think this captures a new audience, or will increase revenue. I don't think they will do it. At least not in a Netflix sort of way. For this to replace or extend the current videogame market I think they will have to charge, 60+ dollars a month.
Which has been running for over a year and has a library of over 350 games available to play for $20/month? Kind of like that?
Because that's essentially what he wants. The "netflix of video games". It's cloud gaming. As existed for a while now. It's trash because US ISPs are not willing to upgrade their infrastructure and it barely work outside of the US.
Sorry, this is such a shitty concept it must die. Games in 80s, 90s and early 00s were released as complete final products and rarely if ever received any patches or DLCs. Now with the advent of a high speed Internet connection, even operating systems are offered as beta products (I'm looking at Windows 10). This is all done to save money on QA/QC and to increase the profits of game publishers (not, not developers) - the companies which basically do nothing, except clever often misleading marketing.
DLC is the name of the game.
My sons are pre-teen, and they play various free games. They are amazed that they are free, cause they are sooo cool. (they suck) They see these youtubers (my least favorite word) prattling on about these games, and sit and watch them play them, and talk incessantly while doing so. But those games become popular, and if you get people hooked on it, you can sell them things. Upgrades/costumes/other levels, etc. It doesn't work on my kids, because I don't let it.
This isn't a new concept, it's the razor/razor blade thing. But if they can get a subscription, then I am 100% sure there will be product tie-ins, commercials, and more things they can buy. It's like a pre-teen casino.
Not picking on pre-teens, but I think the rest of us can see right through it. I asked my son the other day if he plays any of the new versions of Minecraft, and he said "No, all the new versions are weird and aren't fun since Microsoft bought them. I just play the older versions." I honestly don't think MS can do what Netflix did, and that's have a vision. They built their userbase and then came out guns blazing by daring to create original programming. I think it was the smartest thing they could do, and they didn't do it half-assed. MS will approach this game thing with kid-gloves and it will fail. By the time they have anything worth showing, the market will have moved on.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
It's called the MMORPG. Play one. They consist of 42 different flavors of game, from tic-tac-toe mini-games, to full length narrative, to side-quest narrative, to e-sports, to fashion shows, to dance parties. etc More to the point, the shittiest of MMORPG's implement the same kind of micro-fleecing that freemium mobile games have, only worse. Now you pay $1 every 30 seconds just to keep retrying stupidly hard quests in the game, otherwise you restart from the beginning and lose the equipment you're wearing.
I may sound a bit miffed by the directions MMORPG's have gone, but this is why a "netflix" of games will not work:
1. No standard platform - Despite the Xbox360, GC/Wii/WiiU, PS3 all having nearly identical parts, none of them run each others games. The Xbox One, PS4 and Windows platform likewise have nearly identical parts, but not identical ports.
2. No standard game lobby/cloud-save - Leaderboards in Xbox Live, Achievements, and so forth are cheated, easily. So are achievements on the Windows platform. These things need to actually require effort to get, not simply hacking some bits in the save game with a cheating tool.
3. DRM - Everyone hates DRM, and the only way a 'Netflix' service works for games is by downloading the entire game in the first place. You can't simply stream gameplay, as games with tight controls need 8ms of latency or less, and you only get that if the machine is physically rendering the game, not streaming it. The games you can stream and get away with are generally things P&C adventure games, visual novel adventure games, turn-based RPG's/MMORPG's and 4X games/board/card games that operate on turn-based mechanics. You are not going to get a viable platformer/mario-clone type of game on a streaming service.
If you stream gameplay you can, solve all of these problems, but it has cost that most gamers are not willing to play, and that is in bandwidth. With the current Trump administration basically setting fire to net neutrality, that means that nearly every streaming service is now potentially a dead business model.
Like Netflix, you need to do it in a way that's, more or less, invisible to a consumer's monthly expenditures. If you roll something like this out at $20-30/m, people are going to tell you to kiss their ass. This is the #1 reason these buffet-style services never work. They are ALWAYS too expensive. $30/m will get you just about any game you want, if it's a bit older, and you get to KEEP it.
$10-12? Now you're talking. Enjoy your paychecks.
With PlayStation Plus you get an initial "instant game collection" and then they add about 6 games a month to your list and as long as you're subscribed you can keep playing all of them. Pretty much sounds like we already have that....
And Steam has PC pretty well covered
Twinstiq, game news
In case it hasn't become obvious to people, subscription models are the new 'purchase'.
>says that if the video game sector is to grow both creatively and economically it needs to start thinking along the lines of a video-games-as-a-service subscription model. From a report:
Replace video games with anything. There is ore money to be made by 'renting' than by selling. And when the products are digital it's twice as lucrative.
This is going to be very sour for consumers when soon, we own nothing, but pay for everything... monthly... a slow leak in our wallets... and this becomes the norm. Now we are just like cows being milked.
as steam killed the physical pc media, and thus gamestores no longer stock, this will do the same. however, this would be nice if implemented in the manor of steam, and given microsoft uni-model vision this should make for interesting replay value of old games on new consoles.... i digress, PC MASTER RACE! lol
seriously. owning copys of things used to be so nice. not having to pay 9.99 for the rest of my life to play this one game that hasn't updated in 8 years come on.
AAA development keeps pricier. Cliff Bleszinski just wrote an article saying it's unsustainable. For every GTAV we get two Medal of Honors a Darksiders franchise and a Shenmue. Prices need to be raised, but folks wont' pay more than $60. Before you balk at that consider what a $55 copy of Lotus RECS for the Sega Genesis cost in 1992 adjust for inflation. It was about $110 bucks in todays money while Forza 5 sold for about half that and had hundreds if not thousands more features (especially if you count all the advanced graphics as individual features, which if you're the engine programmer/3D Artists makes sense).
Arcades had this problem in the late 90s when they needed to raise the price to 33 cents a play and couldn't. It eventually killed them.
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Sounds a lot likr Playstation Now.
To play devils advocate to this post what if we looked at it differently?
First of all I see this as a platform that can host everything and is cloud based so they are only transmitting what you view to you. You would no longer have to buy any additional hardware or worry about DRM/which platform you are on. I think there are lots of 'early' people in this space but we aren't quite there yet.
Lets say this service charges 15 dollars a month. Of that 15 dollars lets say the platform itself takes 3 dollars regardless to pay itself. The rest (12 dollars) is broken down and distributed based on how you spent your time that month. Lets say you spent 100 hours playing video games that month just for a nice round number.
You played six different games:
Rainbow Six Siege (18 hours/$2.16)
Diablo 3 (60 hours/$7.20)
Castle Crashers (4 hours $.48)
Madden 2018 (2 hours $.24)
Dead by Daylight (16 hours/$1.92)
As you can see each publisher/developer would receive their equivalent funds and we start voting with our money as an extension of our time. We don't need to worry about value when comparing two games releasing at the same time anymore because we can jump into any product we want at anytime. Oh, your friend group wants to try out Battlefield One first but it turned out they liked Titanfall 2 more? The hours define the payout.
For instance, instead of developers focusing on moving units (without demos) and most games really only exploding in the first few months this might incentivize developers to build and support games for longer. The best way to do business today is make a game that LOOKS good and moves lots of pre-orders but actually has no one playing a few weeks later assuming you ignore the reputation hit. You save tons of money on infrastructure and servers this way. Also under this model eliminating long term problems like cheating/hacking would actually be on developer's radar because it would influence future playtime on their game and the likelihood of people 'popping back in'.
I would love to play a flat fee for something like this in the future - especially if the platform company focused on delivering the best PLATFORM EXPERIENCE to the user's and didn't also dabble in game development themselves.
This is the future, we have been heading there with VC, PS+, Xbox Live gold, MS Game Pass, EA Access. Gamefly doesn't work anymore. I signed up on a Wednesday, waited 8 days for a game to ship the following Thursday, then wait another 4 days for it arrive the following Monday. Mail the game back 2 Monday's later, they get notified from the post office 2 days later on Wednesday, but it's still "At home" in my Q on Thursday. So for a 1 month rental period that's 14 days of playing and 15 days of shipping & handling. I still think NEW games should be sold, then after a year move them to rental. Just like movies - theaters, video-on-demand, DVD. People don't BUY 2 and 3 year old games, better to have them in a rental program than forgotten.
I get the Netflix analogy, but, ya know, Netflix is all-in on Amazon Web Services (not Azure).
GeForce Now
Playstation Now
GameFly
OnLive
Kalydo
Gaikai
This is exactly why I didn't get neither a PS4 or an XBox One. They already require a subscription for full functionality. The only reason I'm considering a Switch is because it sounds like it'll still be reasonably functional without having to pay for subscription too, even though Nintendo finally caved in and decided to join this crappy trend.
Also, Spencer must have his head under a rock or something if he's just now realizing this crap . Playstation Now already exists, nVidia has Gamestream/GRID, Gaikai has been out there for quite a while now (the core of Playstation Now), and there are several other services and attempted services like these out there - GameFly, G-cluster, Kalydo, Playcast Media Systems, etc etc.
I dunno about market reception on these, but I don't think many people are buying into this trend. I won't.
"Over the last five years we've seen the emergence of a new concept: the video game as a service."
It is absolutely not new, it was called an 'arcade' forty fucking years ago. Guess what happened to the majority of them?
They shut down as home gaming became possible/affordable.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Unfortunately it also means a game could get "cancelled" before it's complete if there aren't enough players to support it.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
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This is the exact opposite of what I want as a consumer, and an uncreative extrapolation from the current "software as a service" plague.
There's a reason I do NOT buy a game until its Definitive/GOTY edition comes out: I want to pay for it one time and own it forever after that moment.
I don't buy a car with three wheels and then buy the forth wheel later when the manufacturer finally finishes designing the hubcaps. I don't buy a movie ticket to see 90 minutes and then buy a second ticket to see the final 30 minutes, which hadn't even been shot when the first 90 came out. Finish your work, game devs, then I'll buy it in a single lump sum transaction.
I spend more than $10/month on games. Shit, I spend $10/month on games just with one retailer, and they're nowhere near my primary source of new games.
Anything under about $30/month for access to 80% of the games released more than six months ago and I'd be far better off.
There's got to be more to it than that. Very few people play one (and only one) game for 6 months straight, so right off the top the math you're providing is a losing equation. If you assume say, 1 week per game playtime on average (across all users and across all games,) then that means you're charging the user $2.50 for a $60 game.
I somehow doubt that new releases would be on the service for a few weeks/months until the initial purchasing rush is over, and this is just a way to get you to pay $10/mo for old games that you may not have otherwise considered buying at any price because you'd forgotten about them or weren't interested enough to pay the full sticker price or whatever other reason.
Then again, this is just some guy spouting off, so its entirely possible that he just made a "wouldn't it be cool if" rant that happened to become news simply because of the position he holds, without any serious thought toward the economics of it.
You have to have a game worth playing or a couple for someone to want to get an xbox (I have never owned any generation of xbox). Most of what can be played on xbox can be played on computer.
I have yet to see a game worth playing on xbox.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
We should create an Xbox for videogaming!
but they have defeated piracy, at least in my case, the first thing i do before torrenting the pilot of a new series is look it up on google to see if its made by netflix, if its their original content i dont even bother to torrent it. Their stuff is bland and lame, soylent green tier stuff for millenials with 2 pant sizes below their real pant size, testicle pain inducing content
not even microshit could achieve that in videogames, even if satya went personally to the servers to poo on them
Playstation offers 450 games on their service for $15/month. Much like Netflix it is all old stuff most people have no interest in playing. Which is why I don't subscribe to either.
CompuServe. End of Line.
"Over the last five years"? Really?
I built Furcadia on pretty much this model in 1996. It's still running and still bringing in revenue, and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for its longevity.
Just because the author of this article only noticed this trend 5 years ago doesn't mean it's only five years old. :)