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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."
Keep innovating, Microsoft!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Isn't this just describing Steam?
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.
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.