I got a PS5 a year ago after not having any console since the n64, and there is probably a lifetime of good games that I can pick up on deep sale without buying anything full price
I had a GeForce Now Founder account but finally let it lapse as the price kept going up. I also bought into Google Stadia and it was great technology wise.
I don't see cloud gaming as a bad thing as a backup, or when you're on the road.
However, like everything these days, the fuckers will just keep jacking up the price to squeeze every penny out of the market. Or lock it down so you have to buy from their store.
This is the real problem. The technology is capable and we could have nice things but these assholes will just ruin it so fuck 'em.
Even if they're not greedy, I don't think the price that it would take to provide that service at cost is going to ever be a price people are willing to pay.
I don't see cloud gaming as a bad thing as a backup
I agree, I'd like to have the OPTION to stream cloud games in addition to the OPTION of playing games digitally and the OPTION of owning games physically.
I remember being so excited for cloud gaming as a kid, before the term was coined or the concept was widely there - I just kept thinking to myself how cool it would be to be able to play any games I want on my less-than-capable PC. Couldn't even imagine the tech actually arriving one day.
And by the time it did, I've become so disenchanted with technology that reaches mainstream, because you're just so right: it becomes a very aggressive money-making machine that treats you without any respect and only wants more.
I would rather pay more for less thanks to the rampocalypse, play with stutters and terrible FPS on lowest settings, than let a Take-Two CEO and others have us rent games and computing power.
@Crankenstein@ms_lane not even then, the game has to be locally installed, streaming from a companys server is not acceptable. The only acceptable way of streaming is when i install it on either a pc at home or have my "own" server or service like shadow where i install MY game and stream from there
I would never accept 100ms either, but what's funny is that twitch/reaction games are more popular than they've ever been. Fighting games, FPSes, Soulslikes, precision platformers are all extremely intolerant to any kind of latency.
They can kiss my hairy ass, not on the left, not on the right, but right in the middle. I'll play the 40 plus years of games I've already amassed over and over instead. Hell I'll even make myself ai slop choose your own adventure books before I spend one cent on streaming only anything.
Yea please. I keep saying it too. Wake up you fucking sheeple. Many folks who become CEOs are some of the worst of the worst cause that is the only way you get there. A CEO only says things that make them money.
Clueless or not, zelnick is in the position to attempt to make this happen. Sony seems to be on board with them, and I bet microsoft is salivating at the thought as well.
Plenty of people have laptops or old office desktops. Fiber is available pretty widely in much of the developed world and in a dense city 5G is likely to be better than copper. Availability of a decent connection is location dependent, ability to drop a grand on a console is dependent on your finances. Some people might live in a city but not have that much disposable income.
E.g in Romania, gigabit connection is 8 euros a month. Basically anyone can get it. But I don't think bandwidth is anywhere near as important as latency. So the availability is even more location dependent
Aaaand downvotes from people who never read the article, we've reached peak reddit.
This is from an earnings call. He 1) says that increasing hardware prices are not a good thing and 2) thinks streaming is starting to be ready enough that people who can't afford gaming PCs or consoles, can stream the games instead.
This came from a lengthy answer given in Take-Two’s quarterly earnings call this morning by Strauss Zelnick, in response to a question about the rising cost of hardware. He began his reply by saying that the rising price of hardware is “not a good thing” because it means fewer people will have machines on which to play games, but that it won’t slow Take-Two down as a business, “because we’re delivering experiences that people want.”
But Zelnick continued with a really interesting response about streaming. First, he pointed out that the world is increasingly moving to open systems, as demonstrated by the rise of PC gaming over the last 20 years. Then, he continued:
With the advent of streaming—which we really do believe is around the corner in terms of having something that’s low latency, and really works well for consumers—machines that weren’t game machines before will become game machines. So, without regard to what happens in the console business, which is of consequence to us, of course, we see the overall install base as a practical matter growing materially. And if you believe in streaming, to be clear, we really do, and I’m happy to put a timeline on it. I think we’ll be in commercial streaming mode in three years, and by commercial I mean low latency. That can 10x the effective the install base. That doesn’t mean we’re going to 10x our revenue, and we wouldn’t project that we would, because obviously your avid consumers already have access to video game machines. But I do think it creates great opportunity for titles that are broadly desirable even outside of core markets, and we do have titles like that, obviously.
This is VERY different from what the headline suggests, of course Kotaku editorialized the fuck out of it.
lmao, good fucking luck realizing this without massive expenditures in infrastructure. In the US, internet is basically shit everywhere i've ever lived, I've never been able to even stream from my own PC to my phone without the experience being excruciating and unplayable on anything that wasn't turn based.
they don't care... they want people to pay for shit service to then upgrade to the less shit service to have its terms change without your consent or prior knowledge to the more expensive service that requires some other shit or specific hardware... which will also be shit.
We're pleased to announce that we're introducing ad-breaks to our Premium and Premium+ tiers, to give players greater choice! Our new Premium Ultra+ tier will give players a true ad-free experience for just £49.99 a month.*
*Additional charges may apply. Data collection required. Proprietary game controller required (sold separately). Subscription renews automatically until account holder's death. Advertisements may still be shown in certain cases.
so you don't want to pay just an extra 1.99 for only 4 ads instead of 8? also for another 0.99 you get the chance to earn upto 70% off your next subscription to the monthly pre-order bidding
Yeah. Take-Two CEO is a dumbass for the logistical reasons alone. Good-enough-to-stream-games internet is more rare than household VR headsets. There is not enough market to support this industry at the scale required to make it financially viable.
That's mainly because upload speed is capped much lower than download speed. That's reversed if you're streaming from a service though. Still a shit idea either way, hell the streaming services of several years went under in what a year or two.
The tech bros like him, Bezos, Huang, and all those other tech fascists are working extra hard to make sure we don't have the software or hardware to buy in order to play or do anything independently.
They'll be force-feeding streaming soon enough. I'm fully convinced they're gonna push streaming hard as soon as the AI bubble bursts, just so they can justify building all those data centers.
Microsoft can't even justify an online subsciption service for $30/month. They already bacled down that price. And I don't think we need to talk much about Stadia who tried the "pay $60 to stream a game" model.
No way in high hell this takes off. The economics aren't there and the competition is too strong. Not to mention I don't think the internet infrastructure is quite ready for that kind of mass streaming anyway.
Those AI datacenters are pretty much single use. If you want to use them for anything else, you need to strip out everything down to the concrete and power leads, and install a new set of equipment.
Okay? People have already been abandoning Windows on the gaming front. More hurdles and roadblocks will speed that up. How will they sell these products as useful?
And you still haven’t answered who “they” is. Now it’s Microsoft? Or Nvidia? Why wouldn’t AMD capitalize on the gap?
By all means, be a concerned consumer. But your concerns become incoherent and easy to dismiss when you don’t think critically about them and frame them in a direct way that exposes problems people will be impacted by.
The market can stay irrational, yadda yadda. Also, Nvidia and Microsoft know they're the major pillars of the bubble (M$ being the single largest backer of OpenAI) ones that have the most to lose, so they have to keep the illusion going to keep their stocks from nosediving and, more importantly, to keep lawyers and prosecutors off their backs.
It can, should and hopefully will fail forever, but it only has to succeed once. Telecom companies unwillingness to invest in new infrastructure might actually be our saving grace, because I don’t see cloud gaming ever gaining critical mass without most people having reliable and cheap access to fiber internet.
as if lol. even if compute gets cheap (seems like not), installing high speed internet all over the world? that's a huge project that nobody is working on.
i mean streaming gives big corporations more power, like the power to shut off your game if you don't pay a subscription fee, the power to track everything you do
Of course, but that isn't going to drive consumer demand in a good direction and studios are already shutting down left and right.
They don't need to switch to a streaming model in order to charge subscription fees, and streaming isn't going to bring any benefit to the player (and comes with huge drawbacks if, for example, you have shitty internet speeds or data caps), so again I'll ask why? It's just adding tons of unnecessary bandwidth usage over the current model but offers no benefit that I can see to anyone involved.
Does that mean they're going to break into my house and delete all the local games, compilers and interpreters off my computer? Because unless they're doing that, this is just factually incorrect.
No, it means that when your old stuff breaks you won't be able to buy replacements.
Endgame would be a client so thin it has nothing but a screen and ROM to boot the network interface.
We are already seeing that the demand for desktop scale ram and video cards is negligible relative to data centre scale. Why would anyone keep making stuff for your home PC if most people are happy with their subscription only streaming devices?
I don't have a solution but the tech company roadmap seems pretty clear. You'll own nothing.
I think what a lot of people don’t understand is that the dip in revenue is tolerable because they’ve run the numbers on the data they have and found that this move makes them more money in the long run. Unless you are willing to find a new hobby, there will always be a game you will compromise on if you have these sort of values, and millions of people that just don’t care enough.
You also have to remember this is how they define reality as well. Corporations may well be more durable than governments at certain levels of revenue. Try to recall all the things that you took as being eternal eg the Internet if you are gen z. These things were new at the time but you lived your life as though they always existed.
Now look at how the younger generations will grow into this new gaming paradigm with those who remember current times complaining as they ramble about back in their day etc etc. The new generations will roll their eyes as they go to buy the limited edition pre order collectors editions discs because the disc will become a status symbol.
Not to mention if everything goes their way we will be streaming games. Can’t be cannibalising this new revenue stream by selling physical disks that let people play without accessing the network and giving us data. In sure there are more plans but I haven’t gone researching anything.
I don’t have the answers, but we will all have to keep fighting the good fight against corporate rent seeking in all its forms. At least those of us that are aware enough. But we have to accept we won’t be making a difference as to how the world works, just living in accordance with our values.
Unless you are willing to find a new hobby, there will always be a game you will compromise on if you have these sort of values, and millions of people that just don’t care enough.
Sure. A few games here and there built upon decades of investment. Not every single AAA game ever. I don't think it will be sustainable for any attempts to make new IPs or anything that isn't already making hundreds of millions per year.
I don’t have the answers
Probably indies for a lot of enthusiasts who aren't stuck in a specific AAA moat.
Another thing I'd like to highlight is the data hoarder/old internet style "you can take my local games from my cold, dead hands" talk.
...Well. If 90% of the market ends up game streaming, that's what the vast majority of game devs will target, even indies. There will be no more local games for you to buy. There will be no desktop gaming GPUs to replace the one that dies. Heck, I bet the internet itself gets locked down in the future.
I see this attitude e on Lemmy and some other corners of the internet, along the lines of "who cares what the masses do? We never needed them." Like we can go back to the usenet days when the internet was a niche.
That's a nice thought.
But they're taking what critical mass holds up for granted.
I don't have a solution, either.
People, in aggregate, seem to always pick convenience over principle/long term health, when it comes to tech stuff.
Well. If 90% of the market ends up game streaming, that’s what the vast majority of game devs will target, even indies.
That kind of marketshare implies that Steam gives up the idea of local games. And if that happens we've already lost the fight. I don't think it'll go that far for a very long time.
Besides, developers still need hardware to develop games. So the idea of them ceasing to make consumer GPUs seem far fetched. They are needed for a lot more than just playing the biggest games.
Like we can go back to the usenet days when the internet was a niche.
Well we're here aren't we? It's not the 90's, but we also came here because we refused to let adslop become our future of forums and disusccion. We don't need 90% adoption to foster a community. If we could get to .1% we'd already be in a very good place.
There will be no desktop gaming GPUs to replace the one that dies.
unless you make them, i guess i would emphasize our personal skill development in tech as a people as the ultimate guarantor of our rights to own things personally. While some government policies are worse than others, no government solution can ever be a guarantee.
Well we have to try to do yhe best we can, or you think some well crafted government policy would guarantee our rights? What's a better solution than developing your skills as much as you can so you can build stuff yourself as much as you can?
I’m just saying, from a practical standpoint, it would be like replacing modern commercial planes with the Wright brothers plane.
A modern GPU isn’t something “skills” can make, it’s a collaboration between thousands of highly specialized people and gigantic hyper specialized factories.
Having such a thing isn’t anyone’s right. It has nothing to do with rights.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m pro open hardware. I think a great way forward would be RISC-V processors with integrated accelerators targeting Vulkan, and much of this can be communally developed. But the actual fabrication part is extremely difficult, especially if you want it done economically and with some device that isn’t a toy.
Yeah, but what if those people started to suffer the consequences of games being streamed and not being able to own the games and buy the games that they play.
More and more people will suffer the consequences of games being streamed, and the consequences of being unable to buy and own their games
Our worst fears: unable to own anything and being unhappy
ultimately the target audience of the video game industry is children and they'll keep making obscene hypermonetized games that get fifth graders hooked. Only thing we can do is not buy them ourselves and protect our own loved ones from them. But yeah i mean idk i wish our government would have better policies but there's a long list of great government evils to cure at the moment before we start worrying about gacha games and whatever newer techniques for ripping off people with videogames.
Yeah, been hearing that shit since OnLive. 15 years later and cloud gaming is still niche. Throw that prediction together with "we'll have super AI by 2030". Neither Nvidia's Geforce NOW or Xbox Cloud Gaming have open financial reports, being thrown together under other umbrellas. Google didn't have the foresight to see that cloud gaming wasn't "the next big thing", but at least it was a project that surprised no one when they announced it was being killed.
The only reason to think "we'll all be streaming games" in 3 years is because nobody will be able to buy electronics due to AI shitting the RAM market. The more likely result is more people making do with what they have and less games aiming for 300GB install size and 16GB minimum VRAM
AAA gaming is full of execs who have not grasped how their industry has already begun imploding. The survivors in the all digital potato PC world will be the indie devs and Steam since Steam sells their games. The indie game devs write their games to run on anything. The other survivor will be the free to play studios who have already won every market they've entered. If they don't own a gaming market yet its because they haven't bothered winning it. Look at active player counts. Franchises like Battlefield and Call of Duty are way down the charts from the free to play shooter games.
Franchises like Battlefield and Call of Duty are way down the charts from the free to play shooter games.
I think a big part of that is they are usually monetized the same (or even more aggressively) as the free to play games, but you also have to pay $60 up front every couple of years to keep playing because they come out with a new one (nuking any community they previously had built, further fracturing their community). It's like they watch other games make bank on a concept and monetization system and think they can do the same thing, but they only copy the bad parts and then wonder why it doesn't make them billions in a just a couple years.
The free to play listen to player feedback and incorporate related design or development features in a timely manner. If there's a bug they fix it. If they want a new feature, they strongly consider it. The AAA gaming industry has been inwardly focused for about 10 years now. Watch The Game Awards and you see its just like the Oscars. Awards going to a lot of very obscure titles for checking some box on the social justice agendas. Some games like CS2 stay at the top by simply not making major changes for the worse when they already have a winning formula for their market that nobody wants to see changes.
Aside from the California-western europe developer culture, I think a lot of it has to do with the people above AAA gaming who make the major decisions are not themselves in the industry but in enterprise services or the business community. Microsoft top people may know how to squeeze profits out of enterprise customers but they've been clueless on gaming.
Those making entertainment products aimed at the mass market can either avoid making political and social statements or they can accept being a niche market product. It's about making enough money that people don't have to be laid off. The people running these companies for the last 10 years have failed to accomplish that.
The only one that I think stands a chance is the xbox one, and that's assuming they combine it with gamepass. Because that was the only thing that sounded even somewhat appealing to me about the idea of remote gaming: being able to try a bunch of different games legally without needing to buy them all. Like netflix but for games (and not just mobile games like the actual netflix games).
Having my own devices that can handle playing games, I have zero interest in paying full price for a game I own even less than most games these days (because at least with the files all being stored and run locally, it opens up other possibilities, like hacking it to still run without DRM if its DRM server goes out or modding it). That was deal breaker #1.
Dealbreaker #2 is of course the latency. I use an ETX via VPN for my work and just typing on that thing is annoying because of the latency.
The subscription cost is another big negative, though I guess I wouldn't call it a dealbreaker. Though I currently have 0 video game related subscriptions (I don't count netflix, assuming they haven't given up on their games).
On the pros side, the only things I can think of is that it limits cheating (though separate devices would still work) and it gives you an option to play if you don't have a device capable of playing it, though you do still need a device, a display and sound system, and a good internet connection.
At this point, I'm convinced that if you think this stuff, you are not a real gamer and are fundamentally hostile to the gaming community, and/or a complete imbecile.
I'd rather replay my older titles offline than be bound to a subscription. Streaming services here in my country remove so much stuff while you're still watching them. And the content that's still up there is of a very low quality.
I mean, older GTA titles already got removed; we now have to resort to other ways to replay those. They are still superior to the re-releases, in my honest opinion.
Yeah this is their goal. Subscription everything. Also they don’t want gpus in your hands and we will see them more regulated than assault weapons - or some sort of gentleman’s agreement where they are generally unavailable to the public. Writing is on the wall because if you can run quality ai locally the powers that be suddenly lose a trillion or two overnight.
For sure. The day I can’t own my video card is the day I’m done gaming. I had a lot of good years and a great run. I’m fully uninterested in supporting any industry that removes your ability to own your own hardware or software and even less interested in supporting one that is doing it to appease the ai overlords.
That headline completely misrepresents what he actually says.
Personally, I can see streaming gaining more of a foothold again, due to hardware prices, but only for the niche of high-fidelity games. And I rather imagine that niche is primarily going to shrink.
We've already got the "friendslop" games gaining massively in popularity. And if people can't afford new hardware, a streaming service will be just as hard of a sell.
Can't make people pay to stream board games and dnd. Which, coincidentally, I am buying guide books for because shitfucks like this are actively making gaming harder and harder to continue to justify morally to myself.
They: don't pay their staff but give executives massive bonuses (Game company CEOS are among the highest when you look at pay disparity charts), indulge in layoffs on failure or success (listing non-paid wages in the quarter as profit to shareholders) , continously justify gambling as not because it's digital (lootboxes, "player packs" boosters), actively erode consumer rights (liscense vs ownership), actively treat their consumers like dogshit (the ps3 WILL cost $700 and if you do not like it you can...get an Xbox? Lol?), cutting content of products to add back as paid extra content (moving up deadlines and prioritizing XYZ at the end so it's "not done" by deadline so it can be added back later for a price to beat the "we intentionally didn't include it" allegations)
Gaming's shitty practices are ruining other markets and the governments of the world's refusal to reign them in is causing spillover into other things.
I remember the CEO of NVIDIA making similar claims like 10-15 years ago (and being rather eager for that future to come), but I'm not really seeing anything that has changed since then that makes it more likely now.
There's the increases in hardware costs, yes, but in order to get sufficiently low latency, you can't just plop one or a few big data centers per country, you need at least one smaller one pretty much per town. And to ensure a good quality of service, those are going to need more redundant hardware than a more centralised solution would, and given that cloud gaming service providers are also affected by hardware getting more expensive, that would make for some very high up-front costs.
There's the possibility of VCs throwing dumb money at these companies until they control the market, but for that to work, they need to actually be able to take control of the market. But they're not just competing against the latest and greatest, they're also competing against ten year old hardware that's considerably more affordable. Things aren't advancing as quickly as they used to, and I doubt the shrinking number of people who do always want the best possible are going to be too thrilled about having graphics littered with compression artifacts.
The speed of light will still be in effect on three years, so we’ll all be watching streamers who built their PC before the rampocalypse play the latest games that we’ll never be able to afford.
Yea good luck with that. Especially in the US. Internet infrastructure is way behind here in a lot of areas. Some people still use dial up for fucks sake.
Not to mention latency, or god forbid the internet goes down and you can't play games at all. Yea no thanks dumbass.
Given RAM keeps getting bought out by data centers, and AAA games keep requiring more RAM & GPU juice. For the chunk of gamers who 'need' to play the latest AAA this could easily become a reality.
Luckily us indie gamers can keep playing on our potatoes and be happy.
Exactly. This CEO is not talking about art, or humanity, or even mere entertainment. He is talking about what would need to be true for his business model to stay relevant.
we wont but he wishes
they want streaming because then they can control access
they want to control the hardware and software
you will have no option but to keep paying whatever price they ask
otherwise you will lose everything
I got a 3DS and DSi not too long ago to play games on, so I'm more likely to go backwards and get old tech to play timeless classics than stream new games.
If he means that all the unemployed people are gonna be Twitch streamers, then maybe. If he means that we are gonna be streaming the games from their servers, I would wager that their servers will mysteriously be hit with a thermite bomb, before that shit happens.
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fuck that noise, I'll play ROMs of SNES for the rest of my life if it comes to it. idgaf. never giving in to cloud based bullshit ever
True, but don’t sleep on the Mega Drive / Genesis, or the Neo Geo too!
There are legitimately so many incredible titles in the 4th (16bit) console generation, that it could keep most people playing for a decade or more.
..and that’s BEFORE gaming exploded in popularity with the 5th & 6th console generations.
Hear hear. Fuck off take two.
I got a PS5 a year ago after not having any console since the n64, and there is probably a lifetime of good games that I can pick up on deep sale without buying anything full price
I’m old and don’t play that often anymore
Considering you probably could play rom hacks for these 3 games for the rest of your life - FF6, Zelda, and Mario
AAA cattle will be streaming their games in 3 years. FTFY
I had a GeForce Now Founder account but finally let it lapse as the price kept going up. I also bought into Google Stadia and it was great technology wise.
I don't see cloud gaming as a bad thing as a backup, or when you're on the road.
However, like everything these days, the fuckers will just keep jacking up the price to squeeze every penny out of the market. Or lock it down so you have to buy from their store.
This is the real problem. The technology is capable and we could have nice things but these assholes will just ruin it so fuck 'em.
Even if they're not greedy, I don't think the price that it would take to provide that service at cost is going to ever be a price people are willing to pay.
Probably true. Especially with the current hardware prices.
I agree, I'd like to have the OPTION to stream cloud games in addition to the OPTION of playing games digitally and the OPTION of owning games physically.
The keyword here being OPTION.
Very much this.
I remember being so excited for cloud gaming as a kid, before the term was coined or the concept was widely there - I just kept thinking to myself how cool it would be to be able to play any games I want on my less-than-capable PC. Couldn't even imagine the tech actually arriving one day.
And by the time it did, I've become so disenchanted with technology that reaches mainstream, because you're just so right: it becomes a very aggressive money-making machine that treats you without any respect and only wants more.
I would rather pay more for less thanks to the rampocalypse, play with stutters and terrible FPS on lowest settings, than let a Take-Two CEO and others have us rent games and computing power.
It's only good for single player games, I tried multiplayer games on Stadia and it just didn't work
If a game requires internet to play I don't pay!
Are they implying that in 3 years they'll have upgraded my internet AND put servers in every single city, not just capitals so stream this?
I'm not accepting 100ms of latency, ever.
This.
Intention be damned if they don't provide the necessary infrastructure so people can access this at a minimum standard of quality.
I, unfortunately, live out in the boonies and streaming a game with this country bumpkin Internet is impossible.
@Crankenstein @ms_lane not even then, the game has to be locally installed, streaming from a companys server is not acceptable. The only acceptable way of streaming is when i install it on either a pc at home or have my "own" server or service like shadow where i install MY game and stream from there
I would never accept 100ms either, but what's funny is that twitch/reaction games are more popular than they've ever been. Fighting games, FPSes, Soulslikes, precision platformers are all extremely intolerant to any kind of latency.
They are implying that in three years, if they have their way, you'll have no choice. You'll own nothing and you'll be happy.
They can kiss my hairy ass, not on the left, not on the right, but right in the middle. I'll play the 40 plus years of games I've already amassed over and over instead. Hell I'll even make myself ai slop choose your own adventure books before I spend one cent on streaming only anything.
Can we please stop listening and quoting company CEOs. Haven’t we all learned how clueless they truly all are ?
Yea please. I keep saying it too. Wake up you fucking sheeple. Many folks who become CEOs are some of the worst of the worst cause that is the only way you get there. A CEO only says things that make them money.
Clueless or not, zelnick is in the position to attempt to make this happen. Sony seems to be on board with them, and I bet microsoft is salivating at the thought as well.
If he only offers streaming, he'll just leave a gap for indies who actually deliver.
And Indies are going strong right now! I used to play big titles but not anymore.
By the way, take a look at the indie game The Precinct.
I'm long past gaming. I'm down to Solitaire and Mahjong, and occasionally watching a let's play on YT...
If you read it, he says it's a way to reach those who don't have machines capable of running the games, therefore increasing the target audience size.
If people who lack a gaming machine have a big internet connection instead is rather questionable.
South East Asia is one area that comes to mind, they have pretty good internet
Plenty of people have laptops or old office desktops. Fiber is available pretty widely in much of the developed world and in a dense city 5G is likely to be better than copper. Availability of a decent connection is location dependent, ability to drop a grand on a console is dependent on your finances. Some people might live in a city but not have that much disposable income.
E.g in Romania, gigabit connection is 8 euros a month. Basically anyone can get it. But I don't think bandwidth is anywhere near as important as latency. So the availability is even more location dependent
Aaaand downvotes from people who never read the article, we've reached peak reddit.
This is from an earnings call. He 1) says that increasing hardware prices are not a good thing and 2) thinks streaming is starting to be ready enough that people who can't afford gaming PCs or consoles, can stream the games instead.
This is VERY different from what the headline suggests, of course Kotaku editorialized the fuck out of it.
Oh good, his words gotten taken out of context
lmao, good fucking luck realizing this without massive expenditures in infrastructure. In the US, internet is basically shit everywhere i've ever lived, I've never been able to even stream from my own PC to my phone without the experience being excruciating and unplayable on anything that wasn't turn based.
they don't care... they want people to pay for shit service to then upgrade to the less shit service to have its terms change without your consent or prior knowledge to the more expensive service that requires some other shit or specific hardware... which will also be shit.
We're pleased to announce that we're introducing ad-breaks to our Premium and Premium+ tiers, to give players greater choice! Our new Premium Ultra+ tier will give players a true ad-free experience for just £49.99 a month.*
*Additional charges may apply. Data collection required. Proprietary game controller required (sold separately). Subscription renews automatically until account holder's death. Advertisements may still be shown in certain cases.
Upgrade to less shit service? Wake me up in 2034 when that's an option.
so you don't want to pay just an extra 1.99 for only 4 ads instead of 8? also for another 0.99 you get the chance to earn upto 70% off your next subscription to the monthly pre-order bidding
You will own nothing and like it!
if that's what they want. I'll stop consuming quite easily.
Yeah. Take-Two CEO is a dumbass for the logistical reasons alone. Good-enough-to-stream-games internet is more rare than household VR headsets. There is not enough market to support this industry at the scale required to make it financially viable.
Not in America at least, which is a problem given that America is the single biggest market in the world.
That might no longer be the case after another two-and-a-half years of Trump.
That's mainly because upload speed is capped much lower than download speed. That's reversed if you're streaming from a service though. Still a shit idea either way, hell the streaming services of several years went under in what a year or two.
No we fucking wont. But i might only play indie games by then
The tech bros like him, Bezos, Huang, and all those other tech fascists are working extra hard to make sure we don't have the software or hardware to buy in order to play or do anything independently.
They're not gonna make it! I think its just a matter of how much mess they make before they fail.
I have enough unplayed and uncompleted games in my Steam account to last until the end of the universe.
I won't be streaming games in three years.
The trick is ensuring you have hardware that lasts
They'll be force-feeding streaming soon enough. I'm fully convinced they're gonna push streaming hard as soon as the AI bubble bursts, just so they can justify building all those data centers.
Microsoft can't even justify an online subsciption service for $30/month. They already bacled down that price. And I don't think we need to talk much about Stadia who tried the "pay $60 to stream a game" model.
No way in high hell this takes off. The economics aren't there and the competition is too strong. Not to mention I don't think the internet infrastructure is quite ready for that kind of mass streaming anyway.
Those AI datacenters are pretty much single use. If you want to use them for anything else, you need to strip out everything down to the concrete and power leads, and install a new set of equipment.
Tax write off.
Who is “they”? Major game publishers? How will they convince 80 different indie publishers to stop publishing locally run games?
Microsoft was already working on streaming the entire OS. They'll find a way.
Okay? People have already been abandoning Windows on the gaming front. More hurdles and roadblocks will speed that up. How will they sell these products as useful?
And you still haven’t answered who “they” is. Now it’s Microsoft? Or Nvidia? Why wouldn’t AMD capitalize on the gap?
By all means, be a concerned consumer. But your concerns become incoherent and easy to dismiss when you don’t think critically about them and frame them in a direct way that exposes problems people will be impacted by.
You're wearing Lemmy goggles, the "abandonment" is a drop in the bucket really.
And "they" is the tech industry as a whole.
We've been saying that for a long time now. Still going strong, even though I would personally love to see it burst and we can get back to normal.
The market can stay irrational, yadda yadda. Also, Nvidia and Microsoft know they're the major pillars of the bubble (M$ being the single largest backer of OpenAI) ones that have the most to lose, so they have to keep the illusion going to keep their stocks from nosediving and, more importantly, to keep lawyers and prosecutors off their backs.
Motherfucker, I don't buy your games at all.
People will already pay 500€ extra to shave 2ms off their display delay. Absolutely no way they will accept the input delay of streaming games.
no
How many times does cloud gaming need to fail before these corporate stooges give up on it
It can, should and hopefully will fail forever, but it only has to succeed once. Telecom companies unwillingness to invest in new infrastructure might actually be our saving grace, because I don’t see cloud gaming ever gaining critical mass without most people having reliable and cheap access to fiber internet.
At this point it doesn't even have to succeed, just be the only choice as the tech fascists kill the ability to buy hardware and software.
Thats what I'm worried about
I'll go back to playing NES roms before I pay for game streaming
Take-Two CEO says [he hopes that] we’ll all be streaming our games in 3 years
He doesn’t know shit, he can’t do shit
Heard that before lol
Yeah, but now consoles are gonna cost $1,000 and lower-mid-rang PCs even more.
Streaming games sucks, but it'll be the only option for people who can spend that kind of cash on the hardware.
In 3 years my internet will be just as capable of streaming games as it was 20 years ago.
And it will cost even more though.
My internet hasn't really changed in price, been 80/month for decades, just swapped no bandwidth for extreme instability.
Ah, yet another rephrasing of "You'll own nothing."
as if lol. even if compute gets cheap (seems like not), installing high speed internet all over the world? that's a huge project that nobody is working on.
And all for what, too? Just so you don't have to spend 20 minutes downloading a game one time?
i mean streaming gives big corporations more power, like the power to shut off your game if you don't pay a subscription fee, the power to track everything you do
Of course, but that isn't going to drive consumer demand in a good direction and studios are already shutting down left and right.
They don't need to switch to a streaming model in order to charge subscription fees, and streaming isn't going to bring any benefit to the player (and comes with huge drawbacks if, for example, you have shitty internet speeds or data caps), so again I'll ask why? It's just adding tons of unnecessary bandwidth usage over the current model but offers no benefit that I can see to anyone involved.
no yeah it sucks for everybody. the only reason execs want it is because power, but execs famously don't understand how anything works on the ground
No the hell I fucking won't.
From my PC to my steam deck, sure.
Does that mean they're going to break into my house and delete all the local games, compilers and interpreters off my computer? Because unless they're doing that, this is just factually incorrect.
No, it means that when your old stuff breaks you won't be able to buy replacements.
Endgame would be a client so thin it has nothing but a screen and ROM to boot the network interface.
We are already seeing that the demand for desktop scale ram and video cards is negligible relative to data centre scale. Why would anyone keep making stuff for your home PC if most people are happy with their subscription only streaming devices?
I don't have a solution but the tech company roadmap seems pretty clear. You'll own nothing.
He's right, I stream via Moonlight from my PC to my living room
I think what a lot of people don’t understand is that the dip in revenue is tolerable because they’ve run the numbers on the data they have and found that this move makes them more money in the long run. Unless you are willing to find a new hobby, there will always be a game you will compromise on if you have these sort of values, and millions of people that just don’t care enough.
You also have to remember this is how they define reality as well. Corporations may well be more durable than governments at certain levels of revenue. Try to recall all the things that you took as being eternal eg the Internet if you are gen z. These things were new at the time but you lived your life as though they always existed.
Now look at how the younger generations will grow into this new gaming paradigm with those who remember current times complaining as they ramble about back in their day etc etc. The new generations will roll their eyes as they go to buy the limited edition pre order collectors editions discs because the disc will become a status symbol.
Not to mention if everything goes their way we will be streaming games. Can’t be cannibalising this new revenue stream by selling physical disks that let people play without accessing the network and giving us data. In sure there are more plans but I haven’t gone researching anything.
I don’t have the answers, but we will all have to keep fighting the good fight against corporate rent seeking in all its forms. At least those of us that are aware enough. But we have to accept we won’t be making a difference as to how the world works, just living in accordance with our values.
Sure. A few games here and there built upon decades of investment. Not every single AAA game ever. I don't think it will be sustainable for any attempts to make new IPs or anything that isn't already making hundreds of millions per year.
Probably indies for a lot of enthusiasts who aren't stuck in a specific AAA moat.
This relies on everyone having high speed internet. I certainly don't.
+1
Another thing I'd like to highlight is the data hoarder/old internet style "you can take my local games from my cold, dead hands" talk.
...Well. If 90% of the market ends up game streaming, that's what the vast majority of game devs will target, even indies. There will be no more local games for you to buy. There will be no desktop gaming GPUs to replace the one that dies. Heck, I bet the internet itself gets locked down in the future.
I see this attitude e on Lemmy and some other corners of the internet, along the lines of "who cares what the masses do? We never needed them." Like we can go back to the usenet days when the internet was a niche.
That's a nice thought.
But they're taking what critical mass holds up for granted.
I don't have a solution, either.
People, in aggregate, seem to always pick convenience over principle/long term health, when it comes to tech stuff.
That kind of marketshare implies that Steam gives up the idea of local games. And if that happens we've already lost the fight. I don't think it'll go that far for a very long time.
Besides, developers still need hardware to develop games. So the idea of them ceasing to make consumer GPUs seem far fetched. They are needed for a lot more than just playing the biggest games.
Well we're here aren't we? It's not the 90's, but we also came here because we refused to let adslop become our future of forums and disusccion. We don't need 90% adoption to foster a community. If we could get to .1% we'd already be in a very good place.
unless you make them, i guess i would emphasize our personal skill development in tech as a people as the ultimate guarantor of our rights to own things personally. While some government policies are worse than others, no government solution can ever be a guarantee.
...You think a modern GPU can be crowdsourced?
I mean. You could. Hardware hackers have. But it wouldn't resemble anything remotely like our desktops now.
Well we have to try to do yhe best we can, or you think some well crafted government policy would guarantee our rights? What's a better solution than developing your skills as much as you can so you can build stuff yourself as much as you can?
I’m just saying, from a practical standpoint, it would be like replacing modern commercial planes with the Wright brothers plane.
A modern GPU isn’t something “skills” can make, it’s a collaboration between thousands of highly specialized people and gigantic hyper specialized factories.
Having such a thing isn’t anyone’s right. It has nothing to do with rights.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m pro open hardware. I think a great way forward would be RISC-V processors with integrated accelerators targeting Vulkan, and much of this can be communally developed. But the actual fabrication part is extremely difficult, especially if you want it done economically and with some device that isn’t a toy.
What choice do we have?
Yeah, but what if those people started to suffer the consequences of games being streamed and not being able to own the games and buy the games that they play.
More and more people will suffer the consequences of games being streamed, and the consequences of being unable to buy and own their games
Our worst fears: unable to own anything and being unhappy
That’s what I mean!
There’s no hiding from this or just “ignoring stupid people who stream games.” It is going to catch everyone, one way or another.
Yeah, but at least everyone will suffer the consequences and eventually people will get sick of being unable to own their games
One day the tides will again turn, but will eventually turn in our favor
This unfortunately. But what if there are consequences for streaming games? If games are being streamed then they can’t be owned
This is what we fear: owning nothing and being unhappy and unable to do anything about it
ultimately the target audience of the video game industry is children and they'll keep making obscene hypermonetized games that get fifth graders hooked. Only thing we can do is not buy them ourselves and protect our own loved ones from them. But yeah i mean idk i wish our government would have better policies but there's a long list of great government evils to cure at the moment before we start worrying about gacha games and whatever newer techniques for ripping off people with videogames.
Lmao no we won't.
Yeah, been hearing that shit since OnLive. 15 years later and cloud gaming is still niche. Throw that prediction together with "we'll have super AI by 2030". Neither Nvidia's Geforce NOW or Xbox Cloud Gaming have open financial reports, being thrown together under other umbrellas. Google didn't have the foresight to see that cloud gaming wasn't "the next big thing", but at least it was a project that surprised no one when they announced it was being killed.
The only reason to think "we'll all be streaming games" in 3 years is because nobody will be able to buy electronics due to AI shitting the RAM market. The more likely result is more people making do with what they have and less games aiming for 300GB install size and 16GB minimum VRAM
AAA gaming is full of execs who have not grasped how their industry has already begun imploding. The survivors in the all digital potato PC world will be the indie devs and Steam since Steam sells their games. The indie game devs write their games to run on anything. The other survivor will be the free to play studios who have already won every market they've entered. If they don't own a gaming market yet its because they haven't bothered winning it. Look at active player counts. Franchises like Battlefield and Call of Duty are way down the charts from the free to play shooter games.
I think a big part of that is they are usually monetized the same (or even more aggressively) as the free to play games, but you also have to pay $60 up front every couple of years to keep playing because they come out with a new one (nuking any community they previously had built, further fracturing their community). It's like they watch other games make bank on a concept and monetization system and think they can do the same thing, but they only copy the bad parts and then wonder why it doesn't make them billions in a just a couple years.
The free to play listen to player feedback and incorporate related design or development features in a timely manner. If there's a bug they fix it. If they want a new feature, they strongly consider it. The AAA gaming industry has been inwardly focused for about 10 years now. Watch The Game Awards and you see its just like the Oscars. Awards going to a lot of very obscure titles for checking some box on the social justice agendas. Some games like CS2 stay at the top by simply not making major changes for the worse when they already have a winning formula for their market that nobody wants to see changes.
Aside from the California-western europe developer culture, I think a lot of it has to do with the people above AAA gaming who make the major decisions are not themselves in the industry but in enterprise services or the business community. Microsoft top people may know how to squeeze profits out of enterprise customers but they've been clueless on gaming.
You had me until the social justice comment.
Why can't gamers appreciate diversity lol
Diversity is good. But don't tell me you yourself can't feel the vibe when it's forced in.
Those making entertainment products aimed at the mass market can either avoid making political and social statements or they can accept being a niche market product. It's about making enough money that people don't have to be laid off. The people running these companies for the last 10 years have failed to accomplish that.
The only one that I think stands a chance is the xbox one, and that's assuming they combine it with gamepass. Because that was the only thing that sounded even somewhat appealing to me about the idea of remote gaming: being able to try a bunch of different games legally without needing to buy them all. Like netflix but for games (and not just mobile games like the actual netflix games).
Having my own devices that can handle playing games, I have zero interest in paying full price for a game I own even less than most games these days (because at least with the files all being stored and run locally, it opens up other possibilities, like hacking it to still run without DRM if its DRM server goes out or modding it). That was deal breaker #1.
Dealbreaker #2 is of course the latency. I use an ETX via VPN for my work and just typing on that thing is annoying because of the latency.
The subscription cost is another big negative, though I guess I wouldn't call it a dealbreaker. Though I currently have 0 video game related subscriptions (I don't count netflix, assuming they haven't given up on their games).
On the pros side, the only things I can think of is that it limits cheating (though separate devices would still work) and it gives you an option to play if you don't have a device capable of playing it, though you do still need a device, a display and sound system, and a good internet connection.
So I'm not gonna be buying more games in 3 years? Guess I'll have time to work on my backlog
At this point, I'm convinced that if you think this stuff, you are not a real gamer and are fundamentally hostile to the gaming community, and/or a complete imbecile.
Because this kind of thinking went so well for Ubisoft.
Don't forget the great success of Google Stadia!
I'd rather replay my older titles offline than be bound to a subscription. Streaming services here in my country remove so much stuff while you're still watching them. And the content that's still up there is of a very low quality.
I mean, older GTA titles already got removed; we now have to resort to other ways to replay those. They are still superior to the re-releases, in my honest opinion.
I mean... I won't.
"Dale, if I'm streaming my games in the future, I'm gonna kick your ass."
Me with my over 500 games backlog in steam and thousands of Roms in emulators:
Everyone, grab your Stadias!
Some might. I will be playing an instrument or reading instead. I'm out.
Yeah this is their goal. Subscription everything. Also they don’t want gpus in your hands and we will see them more regulated than assault weapons - or some sort of gentleman’s agreement where they are generally unavailable to the public. Writing is on the wall because if you can run quality ai locally the powers that be suddenly lose a trillion or two overnight.
Dude I can create my own games with pencils and paper, they won't lock me in to paying a subscription to play games.
For sure. The day I can’t own my video card is the day I’m done gaming. I had a lot of good years and a great run. I’m fully uninterested in supporting any industry that removes your ability to own your own hardware or software and even less interested in supporting one that is doing it to appease the ai overlords.
Take two was published by EA. It make sense… they challenge Ubisoft as the most evil gaming company.
Straus Zelnick can lick my nuts.
And nothing of value would be lost… It's maybe just me, but the last thing take-two (or rockstar) made, which was good, was Vice City.
Oh come on, you can't say GTA San Andreas wasn't amazing!
I actually skipped that one because of GTA oversaturation.
I've never enjoyed any of these fuckers games… if they disappear tomorrow, my gaming habits won't change one bit. Go make games worth playing first 😂
That headline completely misrepresents what he actually says.
Personally, I can see streaming gaining more of a foothold again, due to hardware prices, but only for the niche of high-fidelity games. And I rather imagine that niche is primarily going to shrink.
We've already got the "friendslop" games gaining massively in popularity. And if people can't afford new hardware, a streaming service will be just as hard of a sell.
Can't make people pay to stream board games and dnd. Which, coincidentally, I am buying guide books for because shitfucks like this are actively making gaming harder and harder to continue to justify morally to myself.
They: don't pay their staff but give executives massive bonuses (Game company CEOS are among the highest when you look at pay disparity charts), indulge in layoffs on failure or success (listing non-paid wages in the quarter as profit to shareholders) , continously justify gambling as not because it's digital (lootboxes, "player packs" boosters), actively erode consumer rights (liscense vs ownership), actively treat their consumers like dogshit (the ps3 WILL cost $700 and if you do not like it you can...get an Xbox? Lol?), cutting content of products to add back as paid extra content (moving up deadlines and prioritizing XYZ at the end so it's "not done" by deadline so it can be added back later for a price to beat the "we intentionally didn't include it" allegations)
Gaming's shitty practices are ruining other markets and the governments of the world's refusal to reign them in is causing spillover into other things.
I won't.
Sadly I don't disagree, and that is the endgame, but 3 years is ridiculously short. Probably more like 10.
My backlog is already bigger than I'll ever get through. I'll live without new stuff.
I remember the CEO of NVIDIA making similar claims like 10-15 years ago (and being rather eager for that future to come), but I'm not really seeing anything that has changed since then that makes it more likely now.
There's the increases in hardware costs, yes, but in order to get sufficiently low latency, you can't just plop one or a few big data centers per country, you need at least one smaller one pretty much per town. And to ensure a good quality of service, those are going to need more redundant hardware than a more centralised solution would, and given that cloud gaming service providers are also affected by hardware getting more expensive, that would make for some very high up-front costs.
There's the possibility of VCs throwing dumb money at these companies until they control the market, but for that to work, they need to actually be able to take control of the market. But they're not just competing against the latest and greatest, they're also competing against ten year old hardware that's considerably more affordable. Things aren't advancing as quickly as they used to, and I doubt the shrinking number of people who do always want the best possible are going to be too thrilled about having graphics littered with compression artifacts.
The speed of light will still be in effect on three years, so we’ll all be watching streamers who built their PC before the rampocalypse play the latest games that we’ll never be able to afford.
But what if there are consequences for streaming games? If games are being streamed then they can’t be owned
This is what we fear: owning nothing and being unhappy and unable to do anything about it
Yea good luck with that. Especially in the US. Internet infrastructure is way behind here in a lot of areas. Some people still use dial up for fucks sake.
Not to mention latency, or god forbid the internet goes down and you can't play games at all. Yea no thanks dumbass.
This is a literal fantasy that could only be believed by someone who hasn't had dogshit internet access in far too long and doesn't play games.
Or maybe fewer of us will game, of course. If you kill quality you kill your customer base.
Well Strauss Rockstar can stream the poop from my butt
Given RAM keeps getting bought out by data centers, and AAA games keep requiring more RAM & GPU juice. For the chunk of gamers who 'need' to play the latest AAA this could easily become a reality.
Luckily us indie gamers can keep playing on our potatoes and be happy.
Exactly. This CEO is not talking about art, or humanity, or even mere entertainment. He is talking about what would need to be true for his business model to stay relevant.
So basically most germans won't be able to play video games then anymore lol
By hook or by crook I will be running everything locally in three years. I'll hodge podge some workable gpu to give me a PC and LLM.
we wont but he wishes they want streaming because then they can control access they want to control the hardware and software you will have no option but to keep paying whatever price they ask otherwise you will lose everything
Bet. Pirates will find a way to get around whatever draconian anti-consumer shit they come up with.
Do you have to fail a test on how time works to be a CEO? Is that why movies are always set waaaaaaaay too soon in the future to make any damn sense?
The-what CEO?
Lol is he okay?
I mean. The first time round with strata and stuff yeah they said stuff like that but now?
Also it won't be true whenever.
I got a 3DS and DSi not too long ago to play games on, so I'm more likely to go backwards and get old tech to play timeless classics than stream new games.
If he means that all the unemployed people are gonna be Twitch streamers, then maybe. If he means that we are gonna be streaming the games from their servers, I would wager that their servers will mysteriously be hit with a thermite bomb, before that shit happens.
I won't.
That’ll work well for me with a 100ms ping latency motherfucker.
I’ll be streaming something, it’ll just be on your outta touch head.
You might be... ya fuckin prick
Shan't.
Maybe from my PC to my Steam Deck, lol
I feel like this wouldn’t work out in the competitive game space but I’m not smart enough to explain why.