The battle of the cloud is raging in the video game industry, determined to find its salvation in the game streaming as California opens its annual high mass, the E3 show.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which opens June 11 in Los Angeles, will be an opportunity for industry leaders to show how they plan to adapt to the changes brought about by the rise of the cloud and its technological advances.
Gradually, gamers are turning away from the traditional console and Google has taken a step ahead with its platform Stadia, which will allow from November to play streaming from any device connected to the internet, on the model of success of Netflix in the video. The video game industry is lucrative: it generated more than $ 135 billion last year worldwide, including $ 43.4 billion in the United States. According to the Entertainment Software Association, organizer of the E3, more than 164 million American adults are engaged in video games.
Play anywhere, anytime
The manufacturer of the Xbox console, Microsoft, is expected to reveal this June 16 details on its Project xCloud, it’s streaming game service currently tested by its employees. “Microsoft will play a major role this year at E3 by unveiling its vision of a future where you can access content where you want when you want, ” summarizes Mat Piscatella, an analyst at NPD. As for the games, are awaiting the latest versions of the hit titles Call of Duty, Apex Legends, FIFA, Pokemon or Ghost Recon. Some of them will be available on Stadia.
“The streaming will be in all heads, it can reach more players,” says Yves Guillemot, the CEO of French Ubisoft, who collaborated with Google for this subscription-based streaming platform. It is only thanks to the latest advances in terms of speed internet and capacity of servers that the video game, very greedy in bandwidth and computing power, can, in turn, enter the streaming era.
Microsoft and the Japanese Sony (manufacturer of the famous PlayStation) announced last month ally in streaming and better fight Google, which is also a cloud giant, such as Microsoft and Amazon. Google leads the dance for now: Stadia will be available in November with thirty games to his catalog.
Google ‘s offer is currently available for pre-order only in the format called “Founding Edition”, for 129 euros (or 169 Canadian dollars). At this price, the player gets a three-month subscription, a Chromecast Ultra device to connect to a screen, and a controller.
Two other offers will be available after the launch of the platform, one to 9.99 euros (or 11.99 Canadian dollars) per month called Stadia Pro, and a basic offer expected in 2020, on which few details have been provided. Stadia will be available in 14 countries, including France. Other heavyweights, Apple has also recently announced a future subscription system for streaming video games, Apple Arcade, for the end of the year.