Since the human race has of late relentlessly tied prosperity to growth:
They’re going to have a tough time competing with Steam.
Netflix has a shitload of infrastructure and capitol but yeah, I think they likely do not understand the market or the clientele as well as Valve does.
It doesn’t sound to me like they’ll be competing in Steam’s market. It sounds like you’ll get games along with your Netflix subscription. It seems more to have something in addition to the video content to differentiate themselves.
That said, the talk of mobile games doesn’t sound like something that would be that appealing to subscribe for.
Googling, Valve Corp, which owns Steam has a $77 billion market cap while EA is at about $41 billion. So they could buy one of them?
Reminder Amazon and Google with their untold billions both recently tried getting into the streaming game industry with DISASTROUS results.
What has Microsoft spent on Xbox and buying game companies since it started the business? How much have they made? I don’t actually know what the numbers are but I suspect it’s cost them billions. And yet they seem to think it’s a worthwhile business.
As successful as Xbox has been for them Microsoft already has one failed and dead game venture, “Games for Windows” which was basically their attempt at being Steam and bringing an Xbox Live interface to PCs.
But “Games for Windows” was really horribly implemented and was a chore to use. Steam was streamlined even back then and has only improved the UX as time has gone on.
GFW(L) never had a good UX. It was everything wrong with DRM turned up to 11.
As I’ve said in another thread, I just happened to grab a Stadia controller when I needed to purchase a new Chromecast (I assume they are getting rid of excess stock, the Stadia bundle was the same price as just a Chromecast), and I really do think it is a shame that it didn’t take off; it works really, really well. I was quite surprised that it didn’t seem any different than playing locally.