Good or bad for indies? EA says Gaming's move away from ownership model is inevitable.

EA’s VP of investor relations says the technology is already in place for a shift to an access model like Spotify or Netflix: Gaming's move away from ownership model is inevitable - EA | GamesIndustry.biz

My thoughts (about such a dystopia):

– Due to latency some type of games will never work with streaming. Those kind of games would have a large niche market then.

– This is clearly driven by the will to kill piracy – 100s of million former pirates would be forced to subscribe when games are streaming only. At the same time the honest customers who bought games don’t need to pay a lot for a single title anymore. At the end this could generate a surplus for EA & Co.

– If EA and Ubisoft would go the CBS access and Disney route (which would fit perfectly to their spirit), will Steam become the Netflix of game streaming (for the rest of games made by smaller studios and for those companies who don’t want to invest in the necessary infrastructure)?

– If people pay $9.99 for game streaming will they still buy to own? They possibly save money due to streaming which they could invest in other games then.

– Hardware/OS manufacturers – what if Apple, Google & Amazon start to create their own streaming platforms like Sony did?
I doubt they would love it when people stop buying games on the App Store anymore after they have started to use the streaming apps from EA and Ubi.
Most people won’t subscribe to multiple streaming services and these giants would have a giant budget to try to get most of the customers. (Apple currently invests billions in TV content to create a new streaming service.)

– Will there be a streaming service by Unity?

Can tiny indies still survive in such a scenario?

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Amazon made their own attempt at this a little over two years ago and recent indications have been that it simply hasn’t panned out. They’ve since stopped accepting new apps and have announced it will be shutdown completely come 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Underground

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In the interview the person from EA believes the infrastructure (of the customers) will be ready for it soon.
I think connection problems and latency are the reason why such services never became successful. (and I hopefully never will be)

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“Soon”, right. That’s what they said 5 years ago (remember OnLive), and there hasn’t been any noticeable progress since then. Not in the US anyway. In addition to the physical network problems, I hope there’s enough of the playerbase that isn’t interested in such a model. I know I already auto-skip any “free to play” games.

–Eric

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I am definitely not interested in the vision that EA has for gaming. I think that the gaming industry needs to be more pro-consumer and give consumers more power and choice.

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EA has an idea for a platform. It doesn’t mean the shape of the world is changing.

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I’m not sure why you thought it would mean streaming.

IIRC several stores have a model where you pay something per month and that grants you access to some games. No streaming involved. IIRC this is used by EA origin and Playstation store.

Because that’s literally the contents of the article (and the article it links to). One of the comparisons is between the cost of a subscription and the cost of purchasing the game and purchasing the required hardware to play the game.

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Because the the person from EA talks about streaming several times in the article.

I think a DRM based subscription service has much better chances. But I prefer to own or to subscribe to multiplayer games directly.

Well, alright. I suppose EA wants to repeat OnLive fiasco. Too bad for them, I guess.

What I meant is that there are several stores already using subscription based access to games. This model can work for some users, and there’s no need to go bananas with the whole streaming idea.

Sure, the concept of having VDUs locally and a strong server remote, has been around since networking was a thing, and it is the best possible concept overall. It’s efficient, it’s upgrade proof. I could go on.

But the world isn’t ready for it, nowhere near. And I’m not sure EA has the chops to do that. They think they do, but they don’t. It’s fragile. Netflix will take a huge beating when Disney withdraws. And Unless EA can invite fellow AAA to join in, I’m not seeing it.

Also I don’t know how much of a fan console manufacturers are of EA essentially trying to make it’s own console in the same format as onlive.

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Why? Yes, Disney has some great content that people will probably pay to see separately. I don’t see them dropping Netflix because of that, though, since Netflix still offers loads of stuff people also want to see in a really cheap and convenient way.

To be fair, though… this is said by someone who did indeed drop Netflix because they dropped one show. It just happened to be the only show I was watching on it at the time.

My wife and I use streaming video services and still happily pay for the few shows we like that we don’t have access to that way. The catch is that I’m pretty sure those are mostly shows who had an established audience before streaming became a thing, so they could afford not to get into the streaming market - they knew people would buy their DVDs anyway. New shows have to go where the audience is, and this probably has a snowball effect.

I really don’t want my industry to get into a similar snowball…

As per last time this general discussion came up (that BoondogGLe thing), the issue is with the pie shrinking. If there’s less dollars coming in to the same number of developers then on the whole that’s worse for us all. And the pay out model would hugely influence the type of games which are viable to make. I guess the good news for “tiny indies” is that they need the least money to stay afloat. The bad news for everyone is that it might make it much harder to sell games outside of subscription platforms if that’s the way things go.

Yep, Xbox Live and Humble also have subscription services that give you new games over time, as well. So, there’s actually a fair bit of it going on. The majority of them (all of them?) are download services rather than streamed ones, though.

I think a key point to make with all of the above is that they aren’t the primary sales channel for the games they include. Games get into those subscription deals long after their strong sales period is past. I wonder if it’s not also seen as a bit of a marketing thing, in that it gets games into the hands of many people who wouldn’t otherwise have purchased them, which might get them a bit more attention and maybe increase sales outside of that for a bit.

Another trend I’ve noticed is games appearing in those when there’s paid DLC to be had. For example, Battlefield 1 is available in Origin’s subscription service where a year of subs costs less than the ticket price of BF1. As soon as you get into the game it’s made very clear that you really want a Premium pass to get the best experience… If they find that conversion from standard players to premium players is higher than conversion from non-players to players then it’s an obvious win for them to get more players even at a lower price point.

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Even if EA Offered a Streaming service for thousands of games for $1.99 a month - I wouldn’t do it simply because of the fact EA has destroyed amazing IP’s such as Command & Conquer, they utterly destroyed the amazing IP that Westwood made.

I mean C&C Generals was not too bad, it was different. But after that, ruined.

I’m fine with using Spotify, Netflix and Crunchyroll, because by comparison to games I don’t really care about movies or music. For games I want some kind of permanent ownership, because I care a lot about games and the “preservation of the medium” aspect of it. I have the physical cardboard boxes of my first games on my shelf. Things like TFX, Stunt Island and Jagged Alliance 1.

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As a gamer, I would switch to a subscription. Probably not with EA, they don’t have many titles I’m interested in these days. But if Steam did it, sure. I was just looking at my library earlier and thinking I need something new to play.

I wonder if the overall pie might actually go up. I currently don’t spend that much on games. I wait until they are on a dramatic sale, then pick them up for peanuts. Its likely a monthly subscription would get more out of me then I currently spend. And the AAA guys could still use something like the cinema model, pay for the game while its new and big, then get it on subscription once the hype dies down.

Pay $9.99 for each game you own per month good luck with that. Even if they had all there games for $10/month I wouldnt subscribe they have no games i want to play

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Probably not much of a strategy gamer then :slight_smile: You would end up paying far more for the same game.

Problem with the sub model is with netflix, you have binging, you have a lot of shows or episode you move through. This is fine. But with gaming, the same entertainment pattern isn’t there so there is no benefit at all for the gamer. People don’t change games anywhere near as often as they do for shows.

It only benefits whoever is doing the service. And I’m not sure it would benefit small fry devs either.

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Actually for a more dedicated single-player gamer subscription will be cheaper. Because instead of paying for 4 releases they’ll be able to get all four of them for significantly lower price and beat them all in a month.

Of course, if the game is multiplayer-oriented and neverending, then subscription will be more profitable for the developer.

Which means that this kind of model would financially encourage creation of MMOs MOBAs, and multiplayer junk in general.

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All the multiplayer games have significantly longer player retention, these people will lose money with a sub model.

Neginfinity is right. It’s way cheaper.

EA Origin Access is $5 per month, or $30 per year. That’s the cost of TWO new (AAA) games from them. If you’re interested in a least one game a year that they wind up putting on there (and if you’re the kind of person who would buy games at release), you’re saving money, and everything else is icing on top.

If I only wanted to play Bioware games, I could buy Jade Empire ($15), ME trilogy ($30), DA Origins Ultimate ($30), DA ][ ($20), and Inquisition GOTY ($40). That’s well over 100 bucks.

Or I could pay 30 bucks for a year of Origin Access and play all of the games in that time (and if it takes two years to play all of the games, I’m paying $60, still half of the original cost).

I don’t like subscriptions. I’ll never pay for one to play games because I want to own them (yeah I know we don’t own them, but whatever). But they’re definitely cheaper.

And even for multiplayer games, the player is still likely getting more bang for their buck with a subscription than one does for a $60 20 hour single-player game.