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I have to wonder if any of these cloud gaming initiatives will succeed. It's been fun watching people throw money into that pit.

• Retric 7y ago
  The problem seems to be people are unlikely to pay large subscription fees, but they also generally play at the same time of day so you can’t get a large multiple between hardware and subscriptions. Worse, people still need hardware at home to connect to these services. ~130x as many people bought PlayStation 4 than subscribe to PlayStation now at just 20$ per month. While they might be extremely profitable for Sony, AAA games require huge customer bases.
  • ghaff 7y ago
    That's a general problem with all-you-can-eat subscriptions whether games, Adobe products, or O'Reilly books. If you're a fairly heavy and regular user, subscriptions are usually not a bad deal. You get access to try new things out and you have a known predictable cost. However, most people are relatively light and irregular users. For a $5 a month service, that may be OK. But as the price goes up it gets less and less attractive for anyone who isn't a heavy user.