Ryuu96 said:
Tbf...Microsoft have said repeatedly over the past year or so that this deal is largely about mobile, haha. It's not hard to believe them either, over the past two years, 36%-47% of ABK's revenue has came from mobile, it is the fastest growing segment and the largest, it is also an area where Microsoft has almost zero foothold in, I think even Activision-Blizzard only accounts for something in the low single digits of the mobile market. Though since COD Warzone, Diablo Immortal and Candy Crush are F2P, they can't do much for Game Pass. They need mobile studios who can take their IPs and build native mobile experiences on the side of the console experiences, Microsoft has largely failed to do that so far, they tried with stuff like Forza Street and Gears Pop but they all died quickly. The issue with xCloud is nobody really wants to play Halo Infinite on mobile with an awkward controller overlay slapped on-top of the screen, Lol. That is one of the things that Phil mentioned in emails as well. Also this just reminded me that xCloud still doesn't have K&M support on PC...Another advantage for GeForce Now. Nvidia really comes out the the best in this for Cloud Gaming, Imo... |
Yes, that's why I think games will change to be more easily played on Mobile devices. Simplified controls or mobile friendly spin-offs. You can indeed not take current games with their dozens of button inputs and complex UIs with tons of small text and play them comfortably on mobile. The question is, will they bring out a snap on controller for mobile play or go for maximum reach by simplifying the controls to work on all phones without any barrier of entry.
xCloud will be improved, but it's indeed pointless atm if you have a Series console or decent PC. Unless you want to play FS2020 on XOne. Is FS2020 on Geforce Now btw? It's definitely a lot cheaper for me to run it there instead of buying a new gaming laptop just to revisit one game. Plus the storage space required, terrible installer with large monthly updates and patches and up to 200 mbps data streaming needed to get max photogrammetry detail make FS2020 the perfect candidate. Streaming the game would require at most 50mbps, while running it locally can spike up to 200mbps. But running it on xCloud is indeed no improvement.
| EpicRandy said: It has very little to benefit us as console /pc players, but mobile players stand to gain from an increase in competition in that much more consolidated market. That's another area where I take issue with the previous CMA decision, they balanced the cons seen in the cloud market to the goods it may bring to consumers of GamePass while they did make any mention of the potential benefits from any, not even a slight, increase in the console market competitiveness and more importantly also did not contrast it with the benefits of challenging the established duopoly in mobile space where MS is one of the only very few entities that could even think of tackling that task. As for Xbox shifting some focus to Mobile, it very well might happen and by all mean it is happening with this transaction, after that, I think furthering that venture will happen the same way it happened with ABK, through further acquisition, expansion, and contractual development agreement with 3rd party. The thing is, you don't necessarily want to retool and reskill established talented individuals at your studio while they are still making good output in a still lucrative market so other options will be preferred. |
The CMA seems fine now with splitting off cloud streaming for the UK. So for the console and mobile space it's all fine.
Anyway I see no benefit for me in this deal. If XBox diverts attention to mobile, means even less chance for MS to get interested in VR. Sony is off chasing the live service dream, a dozen of those in the works vs nothing for PSVR2 afaik. Plus with MS' zero interest in VR, VR ports of ABK games are definitely off the table, just like Skyrim will most likely not come to PSVR2 now, definitely not Starfield. Nintendo lost interest as well, BotW had an experimental VR mode but TotK dropped it. Of course Nintendo could still do something with Switch 2.
But such is life with big corporations. Mobile and GAAS is where the (new) money is.
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