With Amazon Luna now also revealed we know about three game streaming services: Googles Stadia, Microsofts XCloud and Amazon Luna. And I think it is highly likely more contestants will enter. Game Streaming offers the convenience of console gaming, without the need to buy into a specific hardware (you still need some hardware, but nothing specific). And the downsides - like latency - may not be as important for some parts of the gaming customer base. So Amazon actually underlines my point: while console gaming as a niche looks secure, the bigger gaming market has become volatile, so that the position of consoles is threatened. I think consoles may be able to prevail, but not without adressing the market changes in some form. These changes may shake up the console market internally, depending on how well each competitor is able to work with the threat. And currently I see that all three are differently positioned towards streaming. Nintendo tries to offer something special, which they probably use to differentiate themself from streaming and trying to carve their own niche. MS itself are going into streaming while keeping consoles around for the moment. Sony is putting their bet on classical console gaming. How this all will work out going forward is yet to be seen. I think streaming may start slow and building momentum in 2021 and 2022. I expect game streaming to become a relevant market segment in 2023 or 2024. Then we will see how this affects console gaming for real.
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