Game Pass rose rapidly in subscribers over a matter of years, hitting 25 million in January 2022 as what used to be Sony’s PlayStation Now service stagnated at just over 3 million, though Game Pass has struggled to maintain momentum since its last disclosure of subscribers. Exclusivity via first-party games is integral to the ecosystems of both consoles, but they are far from identical businesses. Amazon is also in the space, but while Prime subscribers can stream popular games like “Fortnite” on its Luna platform, the cloud service still lacks exclusive titles, such as Amazon’s internally developed “New World” game, which is only available for PC by purchase on Amazon or Steam.Īs for cloud gaming on PlayStation and Xbox, it is only available through the highest tiers of the consoles’ respective subscription services, PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft and PlayStation owner Sony are among the few remaining players in cloud gaming, which still lacks a clear leader on account of unclear subscriber numbers. As small a portion of the business as it is, Newzoo forecasts cloud gaming revenue will have more than tripled in value by 2025, despite Google’s shuttering its Stadia service in January, just over three years after it had launched. In 2022, cloud gaming was estimated to account for just 1.3% of the $184 billion video games market, per data analytics firm Newzoo. “They have a point of view that maybe we have a lead in a market that is just forming and that content could somehow prohibit others from competing in that market,” remarked Microsoft gaming CEO Phil Spencer on the CMA’s decision in an interview Thursday, describing Activision as “an accelerant for our strategy.” Both companies plan to appeal the decision. The surprise was evident, as Activision Blizzard stock immediately fell in the wake of the CMA’s decision to oppose Microsoft’s bid to acquire the publisher and fell as much as 14% from where it stood.
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