EA: "Cloud gaming is going to bring in another billion players"

[riotous]

People need to realize what 10 years in tech means before start being skeptical.
Also what were your predictions regarding mobile gaming?

Click to shrink...

But what is popular in mobile gaming vs. what is possible?

Pokemon Go and Candy Crush don't need to be streamed from a server, mobile devices are perfectly capable of rendering them locally. Hell they are capable of rendering PubG Mobile and Fortnite, but those kinds of games aren't as popular as the simpler ones.

So where is this market of people really wanted more complex games that require a controller?

To me there are nothing but catch 22's.. as game streaming becomes more possible, so does the possibility of people having a pocket computer that can play games perfectly well without needing to stream from a server.

 

[Deleted member 22002]

Gotta push those stocks with some crazy bullshit!

 

[.exe]

Hmmmmm.Doubt.

It just doesn't seem like that huge a leap in accessibility as mobile.

 

[Deleted member 2254]

So where is this market of people really wanted more complex games that require a controller?

Click to shrink...

Game streaming will not necessarily require a controller. It will be a better experience with one, sure, but we already have shooters, racers, strategy games, platformers, etc. work perfectly fine with touch controls. They aren't as comfortable or precise as KB+M or controllers, but that isn't stopping hundreds of millions of players playing such games in that way.

 

[KKRT]

But what is popular in mobile gaming vs. what is possible?

Pokemon Go and Candy Crush don't need to be streamed from a server, mobile devices are perfectly capable of rendering them locally. Hell they are capable of rendering PubG Mobile and Fortnite, but those kinds of games aren't as popular as the simpler ones.

So where is this market of people really wanted more complex games that require a controller?

Click to shrink...

The most played game on the planet is League of Legends.
And you can do much more within cloud environment then you will ever be able to do on a phone.
Additionally game streaming can be done on a phone, so many people currently playing mobile games, will just play streamed games on their phones.
Cloud gaming is not only and wont be only about playing Uncharted/Battlefield on your TV or Netbook.

 

[Alucardx23]

Maybe. Until the 5G infrastructure is there & the cost of 5G compatible devices goes down, I don't really see it. Phones obviously brought in a ton of players, but those games are mostly free-to-play with microtransactions. Even if you achieve flawless cloud gaming you still have to convince people it is worth spending $60 on a new game. I find it more likely that existing console/PC users will move to streaming if the quality improves & they're okay without ownership to reduce their costs (like Bluemanifest) than for there to be new emerging demographics of people willing to spend $60 on a game.

Click to shrink...

How about spending $30, $20 on a game? Some % will surely also buy $60 games, but why pretend that will be the only price on cloud gaming services?

 

[riotous]

The most played game on the planet is League of Legends.
And you can do much more within cloud environment then you will ever be able to do on a phone.
Additionally game streaming can be done on a phone, so many people currently playing mobile games, will just play streamed games on their phones.
Cloud gaming is not only and wont only about playing Uncharted/Battlefield on your TV or Netbook.

Click to shrink...

Not sure how this response fits my post; did you read it?

 

[riotous]

Game streaming will not necessarily require a controller. It will be a better experience with one, sure, but we already have shooters, racers, strategy games, platformers, etc. work perfectly fine with touch controls. They aren't as comfortable or precise as KB+M or controllers, but that isn't stopping hundreds of millions of players playing such games in that way.

Click to shrink...

And those games run just fine on the phones those 100's of millions of people already own.

What does game streaming allow that their phones don't? More complex games their phones can't render? But is that really what people want?

 

[Thera]

EA's chief technology officer failed to understand, in 2019, that tech aren't making games, human do. How do you want them to respect work ethic when they say things like that.
And that guy also still thinks game quality depends of the capacity to be "like real life". And he describe him self as a "lifelong gamer". Good good good...

 

[Deleted member 45765]

=)

Click to shrink...

"Dreamcast, up to 6 billion players."

 

[Deleted member 2254]

And those games run just fine on the phones those 100's of millions of people already own.

What does game streaming allow that their phones don't? More complex games their phones can't render? But is that really what people want?

Click to shrink...

If game streaming catches on, studios will dedicate less resources to games running locally. And if you already have unlimited 5G (the infrastructure isn't quite there yet but in various countries you can buy in for like 30 bucks per month), why would you oppose the idea of streaming per se? If I'm running a shitty Chinese knock-off phone where PUBG lags on minimum but an HD stream of a high quality game setting runs fine, I know what I am choosing.

 

[Deleted member 49438]

How about spending $30, $20 on a game? Some % will surely also buy $60 games, but why pretend that will be the only price on cloud gaming services?

Click to shrink...

I used $60 as an example. I didn't mean to imply that would be the only price for games on a stream service. But I think that even spending $10 on a game is a barrier to entry for some people.

 

[KKRT]

Not sure how this response fits my post; did you read it?

Click to shrink...

Yes, thats why i wrote that LoL is the most played game in the world?
And you know why Fortnite and PubG are not played as much as candy crush? They are not casual enough and they require high performance and time investment
There can be different games for different audiences. The most played game in the world is PC game, but the most played mobiles are casual games.
You can have both via streaming, but being much higher fidelity or being way more cpu demanding.
Part of LoL success is low hw requirements, but also very addicting gameplay, you negate first with streaming.
Casual mobile games are very low hw intensive, but they are also short experiences, they are also getting more connected and server oriented, its great fit for streaming as cloud makes mp easier and hw requirements stays the same on mobile, no matter what fidelity and physics you'll throw at it.

---

How about spending $30, $20 on a game? Some % will surely also buy $60 games, but why pretend that will be the only price on cloud gaming services?

Click to shrink...

People do not realize that there will be F2P games on streaming services, its just a matter of time.

 

[Alucardx23]

I used $60 as an example. I didn't mean to imply that would be the only price for games on a stream service. But I think that even spending $10 on a game is a barrier to entry for some people.

Click to shrink...

There are 2.2 billion people that play games on smartphones, just calculate adding 5% of that to buy console games. Also look at the amount of money generated by smartphone games today.

https://techjury.net/stats-about/mobile-gaming/

https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/22/mobile-gaming-mints-money/

 

[Saint-14]

No thank you, streaming belongs in the grave.

 

[Diablos]

One BEELLLIEON players [/Trump]

 

[Arkaign]

But what is popular in mobile gaming vs. what is possible?

Pokemon Go and Candy Crush don't need to be streamed from a server, mobile devices are perfectly capable of rendering them locally. Hell they are capable of rendering PubG Mobile and Fortnite, but those kinds of games aren't as popular as the simpler ones.

So where is this market of people really wanted more complex games that require a controller?

To me there are nothing but catch 22's.. as game streaming becomes more possible, so does the possibility of people having a pocket computer that can play games perfectly well without needing to stream from a server.

Click to shrink...

Yep, moving target situation.

People also REALLY REALLY forget what reality is like for most of the world's population. Simply taking the time to dive into a big/expansive game, or dedicate much time to some kind of competitive online thing is an extreme luxury on average. Even in the so-called 'wealthy' West, we are seeing generations who are having real adjusted incomes lower than their parents, and with less free time, and more things to pay for than previous generations had to concern themselves with. Combine this with climate change, certain key resources becoming far less available (rare earth metals, fresh water, even helium for fucks sake), and if anything, the number of gamers is going to DECREASE over time. Many are simply too spoiled or too blind to see the tides moving in regards to that.

When you're making barely enough to feed yourself on (if that), justifying some kind of income stream to EA of all fucking things just seems absurd. People seem to forget that mobile gaming is almost exclusively free to play, bite sized stuff. Personally I haven't even installed a game on my cell phone in years now, but I see what people are interested in that don't overlap with PC/Console games, and they are NOT trying to play Battlefield or Witcher 3 on their phones. They play gacha, or slot machines, or some other thing that lets you play for a few mindless clicks until a forced ad comes by, or you have timers (which you can pay to skip of course!) that need waiting to reset.

The Venn diagram here is not what EA man thinks it is.

 

[riotous]

And you know why Fortnite and PubG are not played as much as candy crush? They are not casual enough and they require high performance and time investment?

Click to shrink...

That's.... my point. Games that are popular on phones are also games that run just fine on phones. We don't need cloud computing to render time waster games.

 

[KKRT]

That's.... my point. Games that are popular on phones are also games that run just fine on phones. We don't need cloud computing to render time waster games.

Click to shrink...

Because of now? Its not about now, its about the future. You do not know what will be popular in the future.

 

[Window]

Hoo boy that's an optimistic claim. I hope (for their investors sake) that EA aren't planning around that number. I think cloud gaming will have a place in the industry but I don't think cost is the major factor limiting the size of the gaming market. Cloud gaming may increase the potential size of the market but I think to convert that potential into actual players will require different type of games being created than what the industry currently focuses on in the console space.

 

[Cyanity]

So many players are going to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment for the first time 😢

 

[Deleted member 49438]

There are 2.2 billion people that play games on smartphone, just calculate adding 5% of that to buy console games. Also look at the amount of money generated by smartphone games today.

https://techjury.net/stats-about/mobile-gaming/

https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/22/mobile-gaming-mints-money/

Click to shrink...

If you read my post that you quoted initially I addressed that the majority of these mobile gamers are playing spending money on F2P games with microtransactions rather than games that require up-front purchases. Neither of the articles you just linked address that in any form. That's the only point I was trying to make, is that there is still a barrier to entry that people struggle to overcome (mentally, if not financially) & the data reflects that.

 

[Window]

That's.... my point. Games that are popular on phones are also games that run just fine on phones. We don't need cloud computing to render time waster games.

Click to shrink...

I largely agree. The type of games people want to play on their phones can already be rendered on phones. One possible set of applications this may not be possible (at low/reasonable cost to consumers) for is high fidelity VR. Cloud rendering may make sense here but I suspect we will reach a point where on board GPUs in mobile devices are powerful enough so that cloud rendering even for this may not provide any huge benefits.

 

[AtomicShroom]

"Dreamcast, up to 6 billion players."

Click to shrink...

I remember around the time of the Xbox 360 reveal, Microsoft was also making wild claims about how they'd bring in one billion users, in part by allowing casuals to design and sell their in-game creations on the marketplace, using the example of a fictional girl selling skate designs in a skating game or some such. What was her name again? Oh yeah:

"VelocityGirl can sell her custom skateboard designs! Live Anywhere! Xbox 360 will reach a billion people!"

See how well that went...

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

I wonder what a super general artificial intelligence would do get a trillion gamers.

 

[Skyfireblaze]

That statement is about as accurate as: "Every pirated download is a lost sale" :/

 

[ty_hot]

But the guys that own i9 CPUs and RTX GPU around here told me that cloud sucks and that they dont understand who wants to play from the cloud... now I am confused.

 

[Dog]

 

[elenarie]

I can see it. There are probably a lot of people who want to play Fifa, Madden, etc., who don't want to spend hundreds on a console, even if they can afford it. More people than ever are listening to music and watching movies because you don't have to buy dedicated hardware anymore.

Click to shrink...

Very much this. It is about giving people choice in how they play their games. :)

 

[dodmaster]

Maybe a billion AI players. I think there is a chance to maybe double the global console/PC market by tapping the mobile market and translating the traditional console/PC experience via streaming over the next ten years. But that's not a billion gamers.

 

[mutantmagnet]

I hope this is just the opinion of the chief technology officer.

Because if this the prevailing thinking of the Electronic Art's entire chief executive team then they are clueless about what it means to add even half a billion more people who don't or barely game via the cloud.

To expand the market by even half a billion you have to make cloud gaming appealing to people in outside the Western and South East Asian markets they serve.

Western nations total population is 1.5 billion.
Southeast asia total pop is 0.6 billion.


You're not going to get grandma and grandpa into the cloud so that 2.1 billion drops roughly to 1.87 billion.

You're not going to add China to the same cloud as everyone else so you can't use them to reflect this potential growth area because it isn't your servers providing them service and you won't be able to collect data on Chinese citizens to the same degree that you can make money off the rest of us through data collection.

The global gaming population sans China is already over 2017's 1.72 billion.

It might be possible to grow another half billion in whatever time frame this EA exec is thinking of but to grow to another billion is all hype and no sense. To get there a bunch of really poor countries need to develop their online infrastructures and hopefully the economics of selling even microtransactions (which are priced for western audiences primarily) doesn't price them out. The difference in purchasing power in certain western and southeast Asian nations is easily 8 times higher than other countries they will need to expand into.

 

[Lokimaster]

Man why do these companies say dumb things like this? Dude streaming a game isnt going to get passed 10 million gamers for the next 10 years. smh

 

[elenarie]

And this is just football/soccer, if you add together the market potential of all franchises, genres... even with the user overlap, I don't think one billion is sounding so unrealistic. Even if you "just" convert mobile users who no longer play stuff like Candy Crush on their local device but start using cloud instead, that's a massive headstart to begin with. It obviously won't happen tomorrow, the infrastructure isn't there yet. But it will be.

Click to shrink...

Yep.

 

[SturokBGD]

Call me Devil's advocate but I can't help but feel people interested in "amazing destruction" are already playing video games.

 

[chowyunfatt]

Microsoft said the same thing about billions of players regarding the Xbox one at the beginning of this generation, look how that turned out.

 

[Rygar 8Bit]

You won't get those numbers until you make internet fast and free all over the globe.

 

[Spinluck]

Cloud gaming is that one thing that turns the rational people here insane.

 

[elenarie]

Pokemon Go and Candy Crush don't need to be streamed from a server, mobile devices are perfectly capable of rendering them locally. Hell they are capable of rendering PubG Mobile and Fortnite, but those kinds of games aren't as popular as the simpler ones.

Click to shrink...

In a way, you literally just described cloud gaming. Much of the actual logic in these games is executed on the server side, as is the case with many, many other multiplayer games.

In Battlefield, for example, everything is synced and executed on the game servers which are running in the happy little clouds, and the game clients only render the data that they get from the servers. The game servers keep track of all of the networked assets in the maps, which are almost all of the assets present on the maps, sync the states of said assets and maps across all connected clients, do any related physics processing and send that back to the clients for them to render what is supposed to be displayed and so on. Every input a client does is not applied until a game server validates it, executes it, and responds back with an appropriate action that the client sender needs to do. :)

Cloud gaming refers to much more than streaming down a render of a game running fully on the cloud, like Stadia. :p

 

[Deleted member 2254]

Infrastructure growth is something people just don't account with at all I think.


20 years ago there were only about 200m people on the Internet. Their speeds were ridiculously low, needing hours or days to download anything substantial, with video qualities and such being rather terrible. Even piracy wasn't exactly too viable: the bandwidth costs and the time investment, not to mention you having to unplug your phone for a long time, often meant you were often better off buying the product you're trying to illegally obtain. For most, Internet was also very expensive and not even necessarily available.

10 years ago, unlimited Internet consumption on your PCs was a given, and we were finally seeing good enough speeds to reliably stream in decent qualities, although few people had the privilege of HD playback just yet. We were already well into Internet on phones, and yet, in 2009 not that many people had smartphones yet. Internet on phones was expensive as fuck, with "packages" including 500Mb or 1Gb costing more than the unlimited plans today, and the speeds weren't good either. Browsing YouTube for more than a dozen videos per month was a bad idea.

Today we start getting 5G in more and more places. A huge percentage of the developed countries employs a very vast 4G network. Back to PCs, tons of people have 100mb, 200mb, 500mb, 1gb downloads. People comfortably watch HD streams (live streams, even) on their phones, without having to worry too much about data because you can get dozens of gigas or unlimited plans for 20-30 Euros. Some of the biggest entertainment services in the world like Spotify or Netflix work through streaming, not long ago they didn't even allow the option to download just yet.


Why is it so crazy to think that in 10 years the infrastructure will be there for BILLIONS of people to access low latency HD/4K streaming? Why is it so unreal to think that the BILLIONS of people already playing on their mobile phones will accept streaming as an option for their future gaming habits once the infrastructure is there? Why is it so absurd to think that gaming, an industry that's been growing at a crazy pace for many years now, will keep on increasing its potential? And most importantly, why do people think "real games don't fit on consoles" when titles like Fortnite, PUBG, COD Mobile, Asphalt 9 or FIFA already proved this can be wrong? Yeah, no shit you're not gonna play God of War 2018 as is on a 5 inch phone, good luck reading the texts, the UI or the subtle details of the world. But if streaming becomes a worldwide phenomenon, console/PC games that can also be streamed will obviously be designed around that world too. Mobile gaming already influenced traditional gaming (both for better and worse), you think cloud won't have any influence on game design?

 

[score01]

This along with 1% of China. What could go wrong with this forecast?

 

[Bigjig]

I think the barrier to video games becoming more popular doesn't have much to do with tech at all. I don't see how a cloud streaming service is any more accessible to a casual gamer than a free to play mobile game. A free mobile game is already on a device everybody owns, costs nothing to play and is easy to control. Even in the scenario where you could click a button in a browser to play the next Fifa or Halo, you'd still need a controller hooked up to play it on. Those games are many more times more complicated to control than a mobile game. You'd still need to sign up to a service or buy the game to play it.

TV and music streaming reaches a mass market because all it literally requires the user to do is to press the play button. Heck, people are so lazy Netflix and other streaming services will automatically play the next episode in queue. Games require a time and effort to learn and play that most people don't have. Controlling a character in a 3D space doesn't come naturally to most people. Console games require a large degree of tacit understanding that goes over the head of a first-time gamers. The soccer mum that plays Candy Crush isn't going to try Battlefield just because the destruction physics are made more realistic. In this sense, a really intuitive VR-control solution may be more barrier breaking than cloud streaming.

 

[riotous]

In a way, you literally just described cloud gaming.

Much of the actual logic in these games is executed on the server side, as is the case with many, many other multiplayer games.

In Battlefield, for example, everything is synced and executed on the game servers which are running in the happy little clouds, and the game clients only render the data that they get from the server. The game servers keep track of all of the networked assets in the maps, which are almost all of the usable maps, sync the states of said maps across all connected clients, do any related physics processing and send that back to the clients for them to render what is supposed to be displayed and so on. :)

Cloud gaming refers to much more than streaming down a render of a game running fully on the cloud, like Stadia. :p

Click to shrink...

Yes I'm aware that multiplayer games use "the cloud." We are talking about cloud streaming, not multiplayer gaming. Why are you muddying the waters here?

/typed from a VM in Azure, as I'm a software architect who writes cloud based solutions

 

[Cranster]

Remember when Don Mattrick was going to sell a billion Xbox One's to TV viewers?

Yeah, it didn't pan out.

 

[FTF]

lol sure

 

[Alucardx23]

If you read my post that you quoted initially I addressed that the majority of these mobile gamers are playing spending money on F2P games with microtransactions rather than games that require up-front purchases. Neither of the articles you just linked address that in any form. That's the only point I was trying to make, is that there is still a barrier to entry that people struggle to overcome (mentally, if not financially) & the data reflects that.

Click to shrink...

When you have such a large group, if only a small percentage of them buy console games in the $5 to $60 price range we have available today, then we are talking about millions of additional sales. Did you calculated 5% out of 2.2 billion? You can do half of that as well and tell me what numbers you get. You don't have to get anywhere near anything like the majority or even half of that 2.2 billion group.

 

[Deleted member 437]

EA has their own cloud gaming that they are beta testing.

They 100% must convince stock holders that cloud gaming has the potential for 1 billion. Makes them look good.

Having said that, all this "we can utilize all this power to make better destruction" is a complete load of horse shit. It is possible, sure. Will they do it? Fuck no. They want you to play the game and stfu. They aren't going to take up more hardware just so you can have fancier destruction.

 

[Deleted member 45765]

"cloud gaming" = gaming from someone else's hard drive with higher ping.

 

[White Glint]

It removes the barrier of an expensive hardware purchase but adds the far more limiting barrier of needing high-speed low-latency network access. I don't think claims like these are realistic, at least not for a few decades.

 

[thediamondage]

thats like saying 95% of people will be fucking sex robots

yeah, its true, but its probably gonna take a lot longer than what you expect

 

[thebishop]

So why are there no EA games on Stadia?

 

[Deleted member 49438]

When you have such a large group, if only a small percentage of them buy console games in the $5 to $60 price range we have available today, then we are talking about millions of additional sales. Did you calculated 5% out of 2.2 billion? You can do half of that as well and tell me what numbers you get. You don't have to get anywhere near anything like the majority or even half of that 2.2 billion group.

Click to shrink...

I mean 5% of 2.2 billion is 110 million. That's napkin math. It's not remotely close to the 1 billion new players that the EA rep is predicting.