Talk of console wars has dominated video games for years.
There are gamers who swear by the benefits of gaming in front of a keyboard
and mouse on a custom built P.C.,
while others prefer the convenience and ubiquity of consoles like the Xbox
and PlayStation. Those console brands in particular have built a name for
themselves as powerhouses in the world of convenient at-home gaming.
Microsoft sold 30 million units of the Xbox One console between its release
and November 2013 and the end of 2017.
Sony sold 73 million units of the PlayStation 4 console and that same time
period. Video games are a big business in 2018.
Video games and EA Sports generated about $24.4
billion in revenue about $2 dollars higher than 2017.
The industry is expected to hit $31 billion by 2023, but at the same time,
console sales are falling.
Console sales were forecast to decline by 12 percent in 2019 compared to the
year before. But there's a new player in the game: streaming video game
platforms. The reason that streaming is appealing to consumers in a vacuum
is that it obviates the need to purchase a console.
You could play from anywhere, on any device, at any time and you don't need
to worry about your hardware becoming obsolete.
Google's Stadia, Microsoft's Project xCloud and Nvidia's GeForceNow make it
easy to play top tier games without the top tier console or p.c.
The subscription -based services stream video games from high -end gaming
machines through the cloud, and that means the future of video games may no
longer need the console.
Video games are a phenomenon that have largely taken shape over the last 50
years. Arcades and at -home consoles launched in the early 1970s and quickly
flourished into a booming industry.
Magnavox presents Odyssey The Electronic Game of the Future.
The Atari video computer system is 20 cartridges with 1300 game variations
you play on your own TV set.
But those really were the only options for gaming in the beginning, at least
until the personal computer became popular.
The p.c brought with it a new way to play with friends too.
As the advent of the internet meant more and more people were hopping
online, but consoles weren't there yet.
It's largely the famed release of the PlayStation 2 in 2000 and the original
Xbox in 2001 that brought console gaming into the form we know today.
Those consoles were praised at the time for their breadth of content and
specs and largely saw rave reviews.
But the feature that was arguably the most ambitious for these consoles was
their internet connectivity.
The original iteration of the PlayStation 2 didn't come with Internet
connectivity built in.
It was sold as a separate accessory.
But the original Xbox did, and both Sony and Microsoft launched online
services for these consoles about a year after their release, Sony's online
connectivity was limited and largely relied on individual game makers to
facilitate the servers for those games, much like how PC gaming works.
But X-Box launched a whole new subscription model as a way to manage online
gaming. Xbox Live.
Xbox's subscription service facilitated online gaming of legendary titles
like Halo 2 and created a cultural phenomenon of playing with anyone, at any
time, around the world.
There were a couple of caveats to online play, though.
The first was that you had to have a fast enough Internet connection, and
the second was the requirement that the person you were playing with had the
same console as you, regardless of whether the game was available on
multiple platforms.
This lack of cross-platform play ability has been a problem in the gaming
industry for years.
Even as the new generation of consoles were released, the Xbox 360 and
PlayStation 3 came with exclusive games that would only be played on their
platform and on their servers.
It suddenly became important which console you had in which your friends
were playing on. The PlayStation 3 came with the new PlayStation Network, a
free platform that allowed users to get online with an optional premium
PlayStation Plus that gave users special perks and discounts.
And massively successful video games like Grand Theft Auto Online had tens
of millions of players around the world who only saw fellow players on the
same console. But fast forward to 2020 and the sentiment of the walled
garden of online gaming is starting to change.
Games like Fortnight, Rocket League and Call of Duty Modern Warfare have
done away with this and allowed anyone with any console to play each other.
And these games have been massively successful.
As of March 2019, Fortnite has 250 million people logging in to play with
others. Suddenly consoles are becoming less and less important.
Performance on both the Xbox and the PlayStation is solid and more games are
starting to allow you to game with others regardless of what you're playing
on. So is there a need for consoles anymore?
They know consoles are going away.
They know that streaming in 20 years is going to be so ubiquitous that
you're just not going to need a console.
Gamers have been wanting to take their video games with them for years and
console makers are starting to provide services like PlayStation Now and
Xbox Play Anywhere, stream your consoles games to a screen of your choice.
But these have been imperfect solutions that still rely on you to shell out
the cash for a console to begin with, OnLive and GeForce Now changed that.
And they were the first real streaming services for games that used offsite
company, owned hardware to deliver games to users.
And now Google Stadia has entered the mix and promised 4K gaming over the
internet entirely on Google's servers.
All you need is an account, a screen and a controller.
Stadia even has a selection of games.
It includes in its paid subscription for $9.99
a month. If you go with the free version, you'll have to buy the games
yourself. Microsoft has also started planning its foray into the streaming
game wars Project xCloud is meant to take on Google's directly, streaming
games from Microsoft's own cloud computing infrastructure.
And really, it makes sense that these are the two big players in the
streaming gaming industry right now.
Google and Microsoft are responsible for a combined 19.5
percent of cloud infrastructure services in twenty eighteen.
Microsoft Azure is 15.5
percent of that. Combine that with Microsoft's mastery of gaming with its
Xbox platform, and the company stands a real chance to take hold of the
streaming video game industry.
Delivering a seamless streaming experience really is a function of data
centers more than anything.
I mean, the technology knowing that Gaikai and OnLive, had the technology 10
years ago and it was not perfect, but it worked.
And here we are 10 years later.
You know, E.A.'s doing it on mobile phones.
I mean, I've seen it and E.A.
is, you know, a small T tech company, unlike Amazon, Apple, Google,
Microsoft, Sony are bigger T tech companies.
In short, these companies could drive people to streaming instead of to the
store to buy a console.
So what does all of this new tech mean for the future of consoles?
Can Stadia really replace them?
So Stadia has been a great idea.
It's been a lot of fun to play at home, but I've noticed in the community,
especially on Reddit, people are upset about a bunch of things, whether it's
a lack of updates or a lack of games.
Stadia is not necessarily a concern for Microsoft or Sony, who've now
announced Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.
Xbox Series X seems like it's going to be more of a service in addition to a
console, so might see xCloud built out into that.
Or maybe console owners get access to streaming video games or just people
can go out and buy a streaming subscription from Microsoft.
Microsoft is banking on the future of streaming games with its project
xCloud. But in this first iteration, there are just too many opportunities
for streaming to go wrong, particularly when gaming on the go.
At times, playing on 4G LTE meant frozen screens, choppy audio and controls
having a mind of their own and Stadia itself isn't ready to fully take on
video game consoles. You need one of Google's latest smartphones to play on
the go or a computer running Chrome if you want to play at home.
Some of these problems are growing pains for any new service, but others are
out of any one company's hand.
So what needs to change?
5G could be the linchpin in making a service like this work.
The increased speed and throughput could mean even users in a crowded city
could see lag -free gaming.
In urban areas like cities, you have wireless carriers launching what's
called millimeter wave 5G and that's about 10 times faster than 4G LTE.
There's also this sub-six gigahertz 5G, which isn't much faster than 4G LTE.
So what you really need is more areas with the millimeter wave 5G so that
people with Stadia can play games with fast enough speeds to connect online
and stream all these graphics.
But 5G is only available in select locations by most providers in the U.S.,
with them promising to expand in 2020.
And that technology, too, is in its early stages.
Some early testing of 5G has found that speeds are largely dependent on how
close you are to the tower or if you have a clear line of sight and more.
The solution for 5G is put a tower on every single streetlight, which means
the real estate's there, power supply is there and it doesn't go through the
glass so we're all going to have to have some kind of router that has an
external receiver and suddenly everybody's going to have internet everywhere
and super high speed.
That's the best thing that could happen to any content owners who wants to
distribute their content. Then there's the service itself, which only has a
handful of games to play.
Google has announced that it will add 120 titles to its service in 2020, but
until these games are available, there could be little incentive for people
to take the service seriously.
And that really is what could make or break a streaming service like this.
The more people that join, the more people there are for companies to cater
to and more players to interact with.
This is where a service like Google Stadia could live or die.
Google is known for how readily it will kill a service if it's unpopular.
So one of my biggest fears with Stadia still remains, and that's that Google
has canceled dozens of products in the past that they don't take off decides
that just no longer interested in the market.
And I think Google could still potentially do that with Stadia one day.
People don't buy it, they could just say, 'OK, we're ending the service, it
was a fun run' and maybe licensed the technology to other companies instead
of fully supporting it itself.
Plus, other companies have different solutions for how to game anywhere.
Take Nintendo's Switch console.
Which gives you the ability to take the same console you play at home with
you on the go. Or the growth of the video game industry on mobile devices.
A study from Activision-Blizzard and Newzoo, you found that 2.4
billion people would play a mobile game in 2019.
That study found that one in two apps open in the seven day period were
games. This might not be enough to end consoles altogether in the near
future, but there are more and more ways to get your gaming fix without
buying one. There's a portion of the population who will just never buy a
console, but it doesn't mean consoles go away.
If Microsoft and Sony make that a really good experience, they're going to
have a really faithful group of consumers who will support their consoles.
I just think each console generation gets smaller.
And what I can't predict is what these consoles will do for me other than
play games.