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Luna – Cloud gaming service

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Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#41

This feels like an appropriate place to rant on something that’s been bothering me for a while. It’s really disappointing to me to see every single form of entertainment becoming a subscription service. It’s also the same problem you see with various apps/software trying the SaaS model, even when it doesn’t make sense. Are we going to have exclusive games requiring multiple subscriptions to enjoy the content you want…

I'm not too worried about it personally, the only tech company I think that has a competitive offering in this space is Microsoft (with Game Pass and potentially xCloud). All others are doomed to fail.

You're not worried that Microsoft has the only competitive offering?

Shouldn't that kind of terrify you? Microsoft is not known to be a good corporate citizen when they have a monopoly.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#42
post #21

This feels like an appropriate place to rant on something that’s been bothering me for a while. It’s really disappointing to me to see every single form of entertainment becoming a subscription service. It’s also the same problem you see with various apps/software trying the SaaS model, even when it doesn’t make sense. Are we going to have exclusive games requiring multiple subscriptions to enjoy the content you want…

I find this odd because I think historically most people haven't purchased entertainment. Libraries have always been common for books, more people listen to a song on the radio then on a CD they own, people watched TV on broadcast or cable before Netflix, and most movies are watched in the theaters or rented then on a DVD they own. Games have been weird for being something you have to buy.

A book is just a book. It doesn't go away, you don't need a complicated setup to read it. If you like it, you can still buy it. Games could be rented too before blockbuster folded.

And while I'm pretty sure I can still stream a random French band with moderate success from today in thirty years, I'm not so sure if I can stream games released today then. As an enthusiast I can turn to emulation, retro systems, reverse engineering to get old games going if I own a copy. Music streaming is delivering a byte stream from storage. Game streaming is a whole different beast.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#43
post #27

This feels like an appropriate place to rant on something that’s been bothering me for a while. It’s really disappointing to me to see every single form of entertainment becoming a subscription service. It’s also the same problem you see with various apps/software trying the SaaS model, even when it doesn’t make sense. Are we going to have exclusive games requiring multiple subscriptions to enjoy the content you want…

With Google Stadia you can still purchase the game and play it forever.

s/purchase/perpetually license/

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#44
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Google Stadia you can still purchase the game and play it forever.

"Forever" - so until Google kills it in a year or two.

Well, that's how console gaming and most e-shops work. You get to play until the hardware generation phases out.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#45
Has anyone tried a Stadia before? I've remained doubtful about game streaming because it seems like the latency is such a hard problem to overcome. In any game that requires even a bit of precision and fast reaction, 30-100ms of latency can feel pretty bad.

Seems to me like the only way this could possibly work is if the games are designed with streaming in mind, but even then it seems hard... Remote Desktop in Windows, for example, feels laggy even on LAN (connecting to another computer in the same house).

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#46
The Venn diagram for target audience and situational use cases of these services has always seemed very small to me.

At least the subscription model and game selection seems better than Stadia.

edit: Also, it seems to me like the target audience is for the same sort (and I’m not trying to denigrate) that watch movies on their TV with internal speakers or can’t fathom why you’d pay more than 30 bucks for headphones or earbuds. Some people just don’t care about the latency, hiccups, or compression artifacts. And that’s fine, but I’m not part of that group.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#47

This feels like an appropriate place to rant on something that’s been bothering me for a while. It’s really disappointing to me to see every single form of entertainment becoming a subscription service. It’s also the same problem you see with various apps/software trying the SaaS model, even when it doesn’t make sense. Are we going to have exclusive games requiring multiple subscriptions to enjoy the content you want…

I feel the gaming industry is segmented in a few universes these days. There's the universe of high budget AAA games, where decisions made by corporate execs often ruin great ideas, or you get the same exact game re-released every 1 or 2 years under slightly different name. There's the world of mobile gaming, where every single game seems to be the same gacha experience that trains you to open the app every minute to…

> There's the indie games, where great ideas are implemented on low budget.

+1 for this. The best game I recently played was Return of the Obra Dinn, which incredibly seems to have been an essentially one-man effort: Lucas Pope wrote the story, did all the programming, designed all the art, and composed all the music.

Big companies can push all the crap they want, but unless they find a way to stand between indie developers and their audiences, I think we can look forward to great innovative games for decades to come.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#48

Has anyone tried a Stadia before? I've remained doubtful about game streaming because it seems like the latency is such a hard problem to overcome. In any game that requires even a bit of precision and fast reaction, 30-100ms of latency can feel pretty bad. Seems to me like the only way this could possibly work is if the games are designed with streaming in mind, but even then it seems hard... Remote Desktop in Windo…

Not stadia but geforce now and I like it a lot.

Re: Luna – Cloud gaming service

#50

This feels like an appropriate place to rant on something that’s been bothering me for a while. It’s really disappointing to me to see every single form of entertainment becoming a subscription service. It’s also the same problem you see with various apps/software trying the SaaS model, even when it doesn’t make sense. Are we going to have exclusive games requiring multiple subscriptions to enjoy the content you want…

It all boils down to $$$, of course. 1. You cannot touch the sacred cow $60 game price. You can go lower, you cannot go higher. 2. Reoccurring revenue & upsells/addons are every business' wet dreams. The game is done, sell it at $60 and shift 9/10ths of the team onto the next game. 1/10th of the team remains in bug-fix/content-churn mode to fulfill whatever season/battle pass scheme they're peddling. Release a new ga…

> You cannot touch the sacred cow $60 game price. You can go lower, you cannot go higher.

Several AAAs for the upcoming gens are going higher.

https://www.businessinsider.com/video-game-price-increase-60...

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