Comment by paulpan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulpan | Hacker News Reader

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Having just watched Netflix vs. the World documentary (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8407418/) last week, this acquisition seems to be inevitable as game streaming is taking off and will eventually become the defacto means of playing video games.

Microsoft's endgame is to increase the subscribers to its GamePass subscription so akin to Netflix's insatiable appetite for video content, Microsoft's will be for video games. But since IP development for games is expensive, time-consuming and hard to break into, it's arguably easier to acquire game studios entirely.

The impact is so wide-ranging: what becomes of Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now? Same goes for Sony and Nintendo. The most interesting one could be Apple, who clearly does not want game streaming to be the norm.

I don't see how both game streaming and high resolution/high refresh rate displays can both be the future. The bandwidth requirements will keep going up and high resolution particle effects can create terrible compression artifacts.

Local processing power is also not standing still in time, the capability a given price purchases is increasing year upon year. Do you imagine a future where people have limitless bandwidth, with low latency, and only use incapable thin clients?

Agreed that bandwidth and latency remains a challenge for most people today, especially for non-urban dwellers. For streaming to be the norm, there has to be a fundamental change in how ISPs treat internet connectivity and how the government regulates it. Maybe I'm overly optimistic in how things will play on in this front - in addition to newer technologies like SpaceX's Starlink platform.

The main point is that Microsoft is pivoting its gaming approach to the "gaming-as-a-service" and selling subscriptions, rather than the previous one of selling hardware and individual games. The digital-only editions of both the upcoming new Xbox and Playstation underscore this - plus you can even buy a subscription bundled with a console. Buying up studios help them achieve this vision.

Technology will catch up. Also inputs will be pre-processed and rendered so latency can be minimized.

That's not streaming.

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