In a quick-and-dirty interview with IndustryGamers, GameStop President Tony Bartel confidently proclaims that the world's largest games retailer has a huge advantage over streaming game services such as OnLive and Gaikai. When asked the question "How do you see cloud gaming evolving as a business model?," Bartel responds by saying that their advantage is knowledge of what customers are buying in advance:
"I think you’re going to see a lot of models being tested. I think you’re going to see people trying to sell full games for streaming in the cloud. I think you’re going to see people having monthly subscription models to pay for gaming in the cloud. I think you’re going to have people put together a micro-rental model where you have 'X' dollars per hour to play these games. But at this point the only one of those that has truly been tested is the DLC model.
We have an advantage over our competition because we know who has reserved a game for the big launches."
Bartel goes on to say that one of the highest growth categories - according to his company's research and knowledge in the space - is downloadable content for games:
"Based on market research that we’ve done, we believe one of the highest growth categories in all of digital is the sale of DLC. You still have a $50 billion console industry out there, and now you have this great DLC market where you have downloaded content directly to the console. And these gamers are used to paying for games. Rather than look to conjecture about the future, I would start with let’s talk about what’s working today, and that definitely is working. We see that growing from a $3 billion global category today to a $6.4 billion category by 2014. That’s a 24% per annum growth rate."
You can read the entire thing here - assuming that you are interested in what the future of cloud-based gaming might look like from GameStop's perspective.
Comments
Re: GameStop: We Have an Advantage over OnLive, Gaikai
Am I missing something in Gamestops claims here? Their advantage is "knowledge of what customers are buying in advance"? OK this is an important bit of info in a brick and mortar direct retail business where you must purchase and control inventory. I get that. But how exactly does that equate to an advantage in a digital streaming or direct download environment? It's not like On Live has to worry about how many boxes to buy ahead of time. They upload the game and then meter how many people choose to play or purchase it. y/n? It's not like there is any reason or advantage to preorders in streaming.
Re: GameStop: We Have an Advantage over OnLive, Gaikai
i still don't see the point in buying a lot of that DLC.
especially map packs, they seperate the community and often can't even be used in normal games, but rather a whole new playlist need be added just to play them. Or the player ends up with merely half the possible games to play in due to having the DLC as opposed to not.
unless its something merely cosmetic (such as GoW3's stupid gun skins people are openly wasting money on) or for Single player/co op content, the purchase of DLC is pretty meaningless IMO for the above reasons. Making it harder to find a host, or being booted from a game for missing a map is not fun, but neither is buying the DLC and finding it nearly useless (i've seen maybe 2 of the DLC maps from MW2 after i grabbed them on sale from steam... yay, and at that i've seen them maybe 3 times in nearly a year)
no more DLC for me thank you.
as for cloud stuff... the way STEAM does it, saves only, works fine for me. but cloud running the ENTIRE game... i'll pass. Onlive's weak system, bad resolutions, and low quality in general was enough of a turn off. I really can't believe people pay full price for a game on that service and only have access to it in part, if at all, and only in such horrid quality.