I think it will take some time for an effective business model to evolve that works for games. Games don't exactly follow the lump-sum, zero maintenance model o

I think it will take some time for an effective business model to evolve that works for games. Games don't exactly follow the lump-sum, zero maintenance model of movies, but they also don't work well with the SaaS treadmill either. Some games lock players in and absorb their time continuously (e.g. Overwatch, PUBG, WoW, etc), while others package a digestible block of content that can be consumed in 10, 20, 50 hours, and then it's done. Subscription payouts based on proportional screen time would drastically favor the former over the latter, while lump-sum compensation flips the tables since it doesn't consider ongoing server and infrastructure costs needed to make multiplayer work. I think this "Buy your games, and subscribe to them too" model that Stadia is using is how they're trying to split that baby, but given that nearly every other service is either subscription or one-time purchase, I have a hard time seeing it stick around long-term. Then again, some console systems also function that way, so I might be wrong.