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[VincentMatts]

I just started thinking about this today, I was reminded how Phil Spencer said a while back that he really viewed google and amazon as the future competition in gaming, and really made no mention of Sony and Nintendo in that sentence.

Fast forward to this week where MS buys Bethesda and yet doesn't specifically mention how the games will remain 100% exclusive to Xbox/pc and not PlayStation or Nintendo platforms. They still haven't confirmed any xbox console exclusivity, and why wouldn't you at this point? Why keep it vague if this will ultimately help to sell Xboxes?

Yesterday, Amazons cloud gaming service "Luna" was announced. This will obviously have very heavy integrations with Twitch. Google will do the same with their Stadia service and YouTube.

But this had me question what Phil said a while back, do they even see Sony has enemies now? Has this future potential battlefield set-up the current console rivals has potential future gaming partners?

I dont see this has an impossibility to be honest. Very curious times indeed. What do you guys think?

Edit: Can mods change "treat" to threat" in the title. My bad.

 

[Bryank75]

Is a neighbors dog shitting on your lawn a 'treat'?

 

[Graciaus]

No one cared about Stadia. No one will care about Luna are my thoughts.

 

[Seketh]

"MS, Sony and Nintendo into in an unwritten partnership"

That is called collusion. Antitrust laws apply to gaming too...

 

[sainraja]

You guys shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the services. Blockbuster never saw Netflix as a threat either. I guess using the example you guys are using, Blockbuster treated Netflix like the neighbors dog shitting in their lawn and look what happened there.

 

[VincentMatts]

"MS, Sony and Nintendo into in an unwritten partnership"

That is called collusion. Antitrust laws apply to gaming too...

What I mean is they would share their games between each other, but not Luna or Stadia.

Sony and Nintendo dont have the infrastructure to do cloud gaming on the level of an amazon, google or MS without signing some sort of deal with them, like sony did by using MS Azure servers in the future.

 

[Oddvintagechap]

Microsoft is doing the same though.

 

[reinking]

No one cared about Stadia. No one will care about Luna are my thoughts.

MS cares enough to spend 7.5b to make sure Amazon or Google did not get their claws into ZeniMax.

I don't think streaming changes a lot for Nintendo and Sony. It is not their primary market. I believe Microsoft is already ahead of Amazon and will have more AAA games available for streaming. Even with Amazon making deals to get games onto their service MS has enough first party titles to have an that advantage. If/When Amazon starts buying studios we can worry.

 

[theHFIC]

Sony has already partnered with Microsoft / Azure Cloud for boosting the Playstation Now backend so some form of battle lines seem to be getting drawn.

 

[VincentMatts]

You guys shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the services. Blockbuster never saw Netflix as a threat either. I guess using the example you guys are using, Blockbuster treated Netflix like the neighbors dog shitting in their lawn and look what happened there.

Yeah and just think about it, if google or amazon just simply buy Ubisoft or TakeTwo, they suddenly become a real threat. And they can afford it.

 

[Holammer]

Consoles can follow PC and go places where streaming can't follow (yet) by offering 120fps support in games.

 

[LordCBH]

There’s a threat from stadia? Did they get rid of Phil Harrison? Cause getting rid of him would be a threat that says “we want to take this seriously.”

 

[MagnesG]

Lol they could try doing a "Nintendo" game.

 

[jaysius]

This thread will be a real treat.

 

[acm2000]

stadia is dead, luna will die off too, no one wants a streaming only world.

geforce now is king currently, with MS closing in.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Attitude is in every SONY, Nintendo and Microsoft building for that to happen PS5 is almost here it ain’t worried about Stadia lol

 

[Sorcerer]

Of course Amazon's Luna must have been in motion during this entire Stadia disaster and they simply could not turn back at this point. Hopefully they learned some lessons from Google.

 

[Bryank75]

You guys shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the services. Blockbuster never saw Netflix as a threat either. I guess using the example you guys are using, Blockbuster treated Netflix like the neighbors dog shitting in their lawn and look what happened there.

Totally different, Blockbuster didn't have it's own films or a die-hard following. Blockbuster also was mainly a North American company......

I could list loads of very important differences but I know you probably have made up your mind.

 

[VALCON 82]

Is a neighbors dog shitting on your lawn a 'treat'?

Man this pisses me off!!!! i know Mod of war.. not game related but damn that's some disrespectful shit (pun intended)

 

[VincentMatts]

Is a neighbors dog shitting on your lawn a 'treat'?

Would you still be saying that if amazon bought Ubisoft?

 

[DrAspirino]

It's Blockbuster vs Netflix all over again.

Sure, you can still buy Blu-Rays from some stores, but the big bucks comes from Netflix and streaming platforms. Microsoft has already partnered with Sony for a cloud future (most likely present now) and Nintendo's strategy was betting hard on hardware to make them "uniques".

Mark my words: by the end of this generation, the terms "exclusive" will mean "xbox platform only" or "Sony platform only" (regardless of the device, whether it's PS5, PC, XSX or XSS, cellphone, tablet, TV, etc.).

You may not like it, heck, even abhor it, but cloud gaming is here to stay (specially now that 5G is being deployed all around the world).

 

[Bonfires Down]

It's possible. I definitely think shit is about to go down in the games industry over the next generation, so unexpected alliances and acquisitions could well happen.

 

[Bryank75]

Would you still be saying that if amazon bought Ubisoft?

Even moreso...

Ubisoft need a lot of work to improve what they have. Some potential but nothing outside Siege is really on point IMO.

 

[Aion002]

I just started thinking about this today, I was reminded how Phil Spencer said a while back that he really viewed google and amazon as the future competition in gaming, and really made no mention of Sony and Nintendo in that sentence.

But this had me question what Phil said a while back, do they even see Sony has enemies now? Has this future potential battlefield set-up the current console rivals has potential future gaming partners?

I dont see this has an impossibility to be honest. Very curious times indeed. What do you guys think?

“When you talk about Nintendo and Sony, we have a ton of respect for them, but we see Amazon and Google as the main competitors going forward,” said Spencer. “That’s not to disrespect Nintendo and Sony, but the traditional gaming companies are somewhat out of position. I guess they could try to re-create Azure, but we’ve invested tens of billions of dollars in cloud over the years.”

Phil Spencer says Amazon and Google are Xbox’s real competition

Cloud gaming could be the next console war

www.polygon.com

 

[reforen]

NO, stadia is dead and Luna will charge extra for different channels so if you want to play some Ubi stuff there you have to pay

 

[Bryank75]

Would you still be saying that if amazon bought Ubisoft?

and yes, I have known who was rumored to buy them for a few days already.

 

[sainraja]

Totally different, Blockbuster didn't have it's own films or a die-hard following. Blockbuster also was mainly a North American company......

I could list loads of very important differences but I know you probably have made up your mind.

Well, that's one way to keep your head in the sand. No one situation is the same. If you think I don't understand that then I don't know what to tell you. However, the main point was, Blockbuster didn't see Netflix as a threat to their business. They were wrong. Let's not do what they did and be so quick to dismiss Amazon/Google. They are not small players. They are pretty big. Things don't have to align exactly as how it transpired before for people to take notice or consider it. I know none of us have any influence there but for this discussion my point stands.

 

[Bryank75]

Well, that's one way to keep your head in the sand.

Do u no de wae, blind man?

 

[IntentionalPun]

Amazon is better at supporting products than Google is..

Still think Luna is gonna flop.. all game streaming will compared to tech companies expectations.

 

[DESTROYA]

What does it tell us when every streaming service so far has been a utter failure ?
No one wants this garbage!

 

[DrAspirino]

What does it tell us when every streaming service so far has been a utter failure ?
No core-gamer wants this garbage!

Edited for clarification.

....and of course core-gamers will never want that "garbage". The thing is that we, core-gamers, are a small percentage of the general population compared to the massess that just play the yearly Fifa, Madden, NBA, COD, PUBG, and Fortnite. Those guys wouldn't give a damn if they run their favorite games locally or on the cloud. Heck, they are the ones that make those companies money through microtransactions left and right.

 

[DESTROYA]

Edited for clarification.

....and of course core-gamers will never want that "garbage". The thing is that we, core-gamers, are a small percentage of the general population compared to the massess that just play the yearly Fifa, Madden, NBA, COD, PUBG, and Fortnite. Those guys wouldn't give a damn if they run their favorite games locally or on the cloud. Heck, they are the ones that make those companies money through microtransactions left and right.

I really doubt that , at least one of these streaming services would of taken off.
You give too much credit to the general population that would want to pay monthly to buy into these services , even they realize that lag and latency is pretty bad for even them .

 

[Clear]

It makes possible some very interesting alliances, that's for sure.
The prime beneficiaries of which will be IP holders, as they are the ones with the freedom to choose their suitor in the cloud space.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

they are no threat

the US doesn't have the high speed internet for streaming games to be successful

it's not happening. give it 10 or so years.

 

[tkscz]

On paper, streaming games sounds good, but in practice, telling people to pay for a service and then pay for the media in that service as well doesn't tend to work. I see people compare it to streaming movies, but once I pay for my monthly subscription to a streaming service, I don't have to pay for the movies/shows I watch as well. Look how well that went with Disney and Mulan.

There are also people whose internet access have data caps, people who can't afford good internet or people who simply don't have it.

Streaming works better if you're doing it like Steam/Microsoft does, as a choice. You CAN stream the games or you can download them and play them that way.

 

[VincentMatts]

Edited for clarification.

....and of course core-gamers will never want that "garbage". The thing is that we, core-gamers, are a small percentage of the general population compared to the massess that just play the yearly Fifa, Madden, NBA, COD, PUBG, and Fortnite. Those guys wouldn't give a damn if they run their favorite games locally or on the cloud. Heck, they are the ones that make those companies money through microtransactions left and right.

Yeah, and people have to keep in mind also that just because this is how it works now doesnt mean it wont improve significantly in the future. 5G for example will help with that. Cloud streaming will improve significantly in the coming years. It was never intended to be perfect on day1.

 

[NickFire]

I think we should all take a step back from any assumptions that Amazon is even legitimate competition yet. We just went through this with Stadia, and come on man, not again.

 

[The_Mike]

You can be sure that Sony would be the last to ever partner with anything.

By the way, what's Luna and Stadia?

 

[#Phonepunk#]

MS buys Bethesda and yet doesn't specifically mention how the games will remain 100% exclusive to Xbox/pc and not PlayStation or Nintendo platforms. They still haven't confirmed any xbox console exclusivity, and why wouldn't you at this point? Why keep it vague if this will ultimately help to sell Xboxes?

which is why i'm so puzzled that people think they would cut off potential revenue streams.

why do people think exclusivity is going to be the result? they haven't said as much.

imo too many console warriors xbox fanatics are projecting their desires onto the company. Fallout 5 and Skyrim 2 will be on every piece of hardware just like the previous entries.

 

[LucidFlux]

I see many walled gardens in the future, each with it's own allure whether that's value per dollar, convenience, specific exclusive IPs or maybe it's where your friends are playing that sucks you in. The gaming market just keeps growing and there is room for multiple players to flourish. I can also see many gamers double dipping into multiple ecosystems. So no, I don't think the big 3 console manufacturers are going to need to team up but there will as always be strategic partnerships.

 

[Clear]

My take right now is:

* MS are by far in the strongest position currently, as they have the infrastructure, the brand, hardware and the IP.
* Google and Amazon both have infrastructure but are weak on IP, which is a tough issue to solve. Their advantages are deep pockets and a singular focus on cloud distro.
* Sony have a strong brand in Playstation, tons of IP, good hardware but limited infrastructure.
* Nintendo are like Sony, but are even more committed to brand as expressed through IP and hardware.

Its kinda obvious at this point that MS don't need anyone else, they have a vision and the cash to carry it through. This is good for now, but long-term it could prove to be an issue if Google/Amazon (or potentially someone like Apple) were to forge an alliance with Sony and/or Nintendo. As that combination would result in a very potent competitor service.

Sony may already be seeding the ground for this by moving some IP into the PC space, as by breaking the connection with their own branded hardware, they could in the medium term offer a selection of their product on one or more of these cloud services.

 

[Piku_Ringo]

Even moreso...

Ubisoft need a lot of work to improve what they have. Some potential but nothing outside Siege is really on point IMO.

Ahhhhhh, if only we could get a good splinter cell game from it

 

[Bryank75]

Ahhhhhh, if only we could get a good splinter cell game from it

I heard they had a game nearly ready but top management inspected it and decided there weren't enough towers to climb and it was canned.

But seriously, I loved the old ones like Double Agent.

 

[Graciaus]

MS cares enough to spend 7.5b to make sure Amazon or Google did not get their claws into ZeniMax.

Convincing a consumer to use your product and a preexisting successful company bettering themselves aren't really the same thing though.

Maybe Microsoft is playing a different game I just don't see. Regardless of what they say Sony and Nintendo are their main competitors in video games.

 

[MiguelItUp]

Uhhh, no? Lmao. Those companies care about their own individual gain. As cool as a partnership sounds, it would never happen.

 

[mikefrails]

Sony does not have the games catalogue or partnerships to support this model. They’d be the first to drop out if things went streaming exclusively.

 

[ZywyPL]

Why are people panicking so much about Google and Amazon joining the gaming industry, am I missing something or what?

Stadia launched quite some time ago and it's basically dead already thanks to combination of terrible business model+serious technical issues+lack of gaming library.

Luna at least has the business model most people would expect from a subscription-based streaming service, huge plus for them here, but it has yet to prove itself how it performs, connection input lag is something that will always be there and will be extremely hard to mitigate, and the gaming library also has to come from somewhere, they start with about a hundred titles, which is nice, but those are all old games, what will they have to offer in the upcoming year, two, or five?

Nintendo is "competing" alone on its own market, they will be way more than fine, especially when they can always allow all those streaming services to be available on their consoles, it's basically a double-win for them.

MS will be fine too, they are covering pretty much everything from PC, consoles, mobile devices, subscription/streaming service, they have it all, they don't even have to dominate in any of those, but the combination of smaller profits from each market will create quite a pile of cash anyway.

Sony is the ones who are mostly undecided where they really want to go in the long term, first and foremost they should IMO get rid of Ryan who believes that PS games are a premium experience only for the chosen ones and shouldn't be available elsewhere than a Playstation console, and of course they should cost premium too, because that won't lead them anywhere. Stop messing around, start releasing your games on PC like everyone else does now on a regular basis, like 1-2 years after the console release, the money is clearly there as already proven by the PC ports released so far, not releasing the games won't convince the PC crowd to get a PS console, just be sure to put a minimum effort into those ports and even more money will come out of it. And secondly, figure out PSNow, they have a solid base to compete with other streaming services, but the is no concrete plan for it, it's like they randomly release random titles, only to remove them from the service sooner or later, with that kind of BS there's no way they are gonna compete with anyone.

 

[Piku_Ringo]

I heard they had a game nearly ready but top management inspected it and decided there weren't enough towers to climb and it was canned.

But seriously, I loved the old ones like Double Agent.

Honestly would not be surprised if that was true. But I heard one of the higher ups responsible for making their games so formulaic is gone so maybe there is hope

 

[VincentMatts]

Why are people panicking so much about Google and Amazon joining the gaming industry, am I missing something or what?

Stadia launched quite some time ago and it's basically dead already thanks to combination of terrible business model+serious technical issues+lack of gaming library.

Luna at least has the business model most people would expect from a subscription-based streaming service, huge plus for them here, but it has yet to prove itself how it performs, connection input lag is something that will always be there and will be extremely hard to mitigate, and the gaming library also has to come from somewhere, they start with about a hundred titles, which is nice, but those are all old games, what will they have to offer in the upcoming year, two, or five?

Nintendo is "competing" alone on its own market, they will be way more than fine, especially when they can always allow all those streaming services to be available on their consoles, it's basically a double-win for them.

MS will be fine too, they are covering pretty much everything from PC, consoles, mobile devices, subscription/streaming service, they have it all, they don't even have to dominate in any of those, but the combination of smaller profits from each market will create quite a pile of cash anyway.

Sony is the ones who are mostly undecided where they really want to go in the long term, first and foremost they should IMO get rid of Ryan who believes that PS games are a premium experience only for the chosen ones and shouldn't be available elsewhere than a Playstation console, and of course they should cost premium too, because that won't lead them anywhere. Stop messing around, start releasing your games on PC like everyone else does now on a regular basis, like 1-2 years after the console release, the money is clearly there as already proven by the PC ports released so far, not releasing the games won't convince the PC crowd to get a PS console, just be sure to put a minimum effort into those ports and even more money will come out of it. And secondly, figure out PSNow, they have a solid base to compete with other streaming services, but the is no concrete plan for it, it's like they randomly release random titles, only to remove them from the service sooner or later, with that kind of BS there's no way they are gonna compete with anyone.

Not panic, but the thing is that they have money. And lots of it. They could do what MS did with Bethesda two times over and not share their games with anyone.

And honestly if they expect to survive, they will probably have to buy some devs imo. Its only a matter of time.

 

[diffusionx]

What I mean is they would share their games between each other, but not Luna or Stadia.

Sounds a lot like collusion.