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Cord-Cutting Hits Video Games (axios.com)
Video games are the next entertainment industry undergoing a major disruption, all the way down to the consoles and controllers. From a report: Details: "In the past, you plunked down $60 at GameStop for a copy of Grand Theft Auto or Madden NFL and played it out -- after which you could trade it in or let it gather dust," the AP reports. "Now, you'll increasingly have the choice of subscribing to games, playing for free or possibly just streaming them over the internet to your phone or TV."
New subscription streaming services represent a massive shift from gaming into the cloud, which will make it easier to access games on any device, including mobile. [...] Gamers wouldn't necessarily have to buy individual games anymore -- they could buy them as part of a larger and potentially cheaper package -- and it means that they wouldn't be limited to expensive hardware devices that only work for certain games.
New subscription streaming services represent a massive shift from gaming into the cloud, which will make it easier to access games on any device, including mobile. [...] Gamers wouldn't necessarily have to buy individual games anymore -- they could buy them as part of a larger and potentially cheaper package -- and it means that they wouldn't be limited to expensive hardware devices that only work for certain games.
Streamed games are a choke chain like we've never seen before in gaming. Portraying that as "cord-cutting" couldn't be getting it more wrong.
I know companies love the constant revenue stream, but I don't. It's not like I really have the time to play games, but I wouldn't be doing this if I had the time. I prefer to own the things I buy. I don't want software, games,music or anything i buy to just disappear one day because the company doesn't find it profitable any longer. How many music services have gone under now? I keep getting emails about Ultraviolet closing down. Or my favorite thing is when I hear about a service deleting ebooks or music from devices. I can still set up a Win 2K box and load Quake from the CD anytime i want. But that likely won't be the case with these games in 20 years.
This seems much more like a new cord rather than cutting loose from an existing one.
I pity the next generation of gamers. What will they do when they feel nostalgic for that game from their youth?
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
It's absolutely NOT "cord cutting" to make an end user 100% cord-dependent!
In the old days, you bought a game for a one-time fixed-price payment. In exchange for your cash, you got a disk or disks, manual, cheat sheet or mapos, or other assorted supplemental stuff, and the artsy box of course. But then it was YOURS. You could play it any time you wanted, for as long as you wanted, on any machine you wanted, etc.
Recently, games moved to "the cloud" (big brother's servers) and you can only play as long as you are online and they can make the game go away any time they want to. ("pray that I do not alter the deal any further....")
Now it is offered as some sort of utopia that this model will go even further.... your device simply becomes a dumb graphical terminal to the megacorporation servers and you will be 100% dependent on monthly fees.... and this is in someway superior????
This is only "good" to ignorant morons who are completely indoctrinated and have never known anything better. Companies move to models like this to make more money, not less, so you WILL pay more. [facepalm]
$10/mo no way more like $20-$30 base + add ones.
Just hope that ESPN / Disney don't force you to buy shit like mickey mouse adventures and some sports games as part of the base rate maybe pushing it $40-$50 range.
4K RES add $5-10/mo
premium games $10-$15/mo from 3-4 differnt groups (each with there own change) like to days HBO, STARS, SHOWTIME.
PPV rents $7-10 for 48 hours (from clock start not in game time)
PPV BUY games (no time out but full game price) (will be lost if you don't pay the base rate)
$5/mo dosbox (player) (Storage fees are on top of that)
we'll have Google, MS, Sony, some other company (maybe Valve?), all with game-streaming services to pick from.
guess what, it will be the same horrible situation we have now with video streaming.
some services will have game x, which is not available anywhere else, gaming company y will end it's contract with service z and from one day to the next all those games will be gone (oh, but they will be available from service w or you know, or own service because we want in on the action!).
you can also bet that all these streaming services will have their own studios only making games that will be available on their own service.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.