Video Games are Real

Tag: streaming services

  • Game Subscriptions Make it Hard to Vote with my Wallet

    Game Subscriptions Make it Hard to Vote with my Wallet

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    To vote with your wallet simply means to buy products from companies that align with your personal ethics or needs while not buying products from those companies that don’t. It’s easier said than done, for sure. Not everyone has the luxury of choice when it comes to some essential products. If you don’t make enough money to shop elsewhere, it doesn’t matter how many hobos Walmart kills, or how staunchly you are against hobo murder, you’ve got to shop at Walmart and risk getting hobo blood on your shoes. So even the very idea of voting with one’s wallet implies a level of privilege and elitism that many, maybe even most, people simply do not have.

    But sometimes, for some people, there are non-essential products and services that are “on the ballot” so to speak, and I would argue that for all people video games are firmly non-essential. And Ubisoft is one of those companies that is doing something I don’t like. Do your own research on the company, this article isn’t about taking a stance against Ubisoft. All you need to know is that I will not be giving them any of my money ever again. Again, this article isn’t about condemning a single company, so please don’t click away yet. I’m not asking anyone to do the same as me. Buy what you want. I only mention Ubisoft as an example, one that I’m personally passionate about, so I can explore how changes in video game sales channels affect my ability to vote with my wallet. (more…)

  • The Google Graveyard is NOT evidence of Stadia’s demise!

    The Google Graveyard is NOT evidence of Stadia’s demise!

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    The Google Graveyard is a myth. Well, it’s not a myth, myth. It’s right there. But the way it’s been used as a harbinger of Google Stadia’s inevitable doom is wrong. I’m going to tell you why.

    Ever since Google announced their game streaming initiative, called Stadia, large pockets of the gaming world have doubted its potential to succeed, and some outright hate Stadia for even existing. Now, believe it or not, I don’t necessarily blame them. Antagonism towards the unknown can be a natural reaction. I get it. Here’s this mega corporation, Google,  trying to buy it’s way into the living rooms of gamers who have already aligned themselves to companies and platforms that have had to work hard for years to earn that alignment. Stadia’s existence, to those devoted Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and PC fans probably feels disingenuous and pompous.

    But sometimes the justification of that antagonism is flawed. Such is the case with the Google Graveyard.

    The Google Graveyard is an online repository of over 200 apps, services, and hardware that Google has launched and later killed since Google’s creation in 1998. By contrast, Google currently has 224 active apps, services, tools, and pieces of hardware, many of which are so ubiquitous you probably forgot about them. You’re probably watching this video on YouTube, from a link maybe sent by Gmail, or you discovered this video in a Google search while listening to YouTube Music by way of your Google Fiber internet connection. Maybe you took notes while watching this video using Google Keep or a Google Doc on Google Drive, but then realized you liked writing in notebooks more, so you clicked an ad, served by Google, to buy some notebooks. But the notebooks came back damaged, so you called up customer service on your Pixel phone, using Google Fi phone service.

    I understand that this series of events is absurd. Nobody loves a single company that much. But my point is that when criticizing Google for killing off products, you’ve also got to keep in mind the many important things Google has maintained.

    But me simply stating that observation isn’t enough. Rather than simply reflecting on those numbers, we have to ask why a company, any company, would stop maintaining certain products. The short answer is, because those products don’t generate revenue.

    A for-profit company like Google exists to make a profit. Historically, Google’s main revenue source comes from their Ads service, which relies on users. The more users Google has, the more people they can sell ads to. There’s a trend with these cancelled services: they don’t generate revenue in-and-of-themselves. Rather, they aim to increase users, to then increase ad revenue.

    Of the 204 products currently in the Google Graveyard (as of 7/22/2020), 163 are services with ambitions to increase the number of users. If these services don’t increase user counts enough to increase ad revenue then shareholders are upset and Google has no choice but to kill the services.

    Simply put, if a product isn’t contributing to increased revenue, then it should be killed. This isn’t just a Google decision. This is a good business decision.If Stadia doesn’t contribute to increased revenue, either by way of game sales, hardware sales, service sales, or more engaged users that can be advertised to, then Stadia should be killed. Microsoft would make the same decision. Sony and Nintendo would as well. In fact, these big players in the gaming world have been doing it for years and to a much more aggressive extent than Google. Let’s talk about the Xbox Crypt, the Playstation Cemetery, and the Nintendo…another word for Graveyard. The Nintendo Necropolis.

    Google has canceled about 50% of its products in its 22 years of existence. Keep in mind, this 50% rate isn’t limited to just gaming hardware, which is another problem with citing the Google Graveyard as evidence of Stadia’s impending doom, but I won’t parse that because I’m going to show you that it doesn’t even matter. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft are much more egregious with killing products.

    I’m going to focus on first party consoles specifically. If I were to expand to services, apps, console accessories, and software, each of these gaming platforms would have a much higher kill rate. Imagine all of the controller and console stands, charging stations, and of course, games that are no longer available. How many games in all the various form factors are no longer produced? It’s important to realize that each game and each delivery mechanism–physical and digital–is a different SKU, and therefore a different product and should be factored into the respective company’s graveyard, if this graveyard debate is one you want to have. Which, again, the entire point of this video is that the graveyard argument doesn’t make sense.

    Xbox has released 10 consoles since 2001, with 8 of those either killed or in the process of being killed. That’s an 80% kill rate with an average of 0.42 consoles killed per year.

    Playstation has released 21 consoles since 1994, with 15 of those either killed or in the process of being killed. That’s a 71% kill rate with an average of 0.58 consoles killed per year.

    And then there’s Nintendo. Oh boy. It’s impossible for me to track down every official sku for every Nintendo console and handheld, so I stuck to the main ones. Nintendo has released 32 consoles over the years since 1977, with 29 of those either killed or in the process of being killed. That’s a crazy 91% kill rate with an average of 0.67 consoles killed per year.

    Stadia, on the other hand, has had one console/service since 2019, with 0 of those killed. I understand this is an absurd data-point, but that’s partly my point. If the graveyard argument must be honored, then we cannot look at just Xbox, we have to look at all of Microsoft. We cannot look just at Playstation, we have to look at all of Sony. And I’m way too lazy to continue beating this dead horse.

    History shows that major video game platform companies kill a console roughly every two years. As streaming services become more popular, I estimate we’ll start to see things adapt, and we’ll see a major iteration of each streaming platform once every two years.

    You may be thinking, “but Caleb, many of the consoles you mention are iterations and evolutions of previous consoles. Why continue selling an Xbox One when there’s an Xbox series X?” I promise you, if the Xbox One, or the Playstation 4 could continue to drive profit, Xbox and Playstation would continue selling them. But competition with other platforms means consoles become obsolete, so those consoles get sent to their respective graveyards. If these companies could get by with selling the exact same console for 20 or 30 years, they absolutely would. But us consumers don’t let them. Therefore, products get killed. If anyone is to blame–or get credit for–the product graveyards, it’s us. Us consumers are the grim reapers.

    But if we are going to entertain that logic, as flawed as it may be, then you must also allow Google the benefit of iteration and evolution. One example is Google Play Music, which is slated to be sent to the graveyard at the end of 2020. Antagonists toward Stadia will claim this is yet another killed service without accepting that Google Play Music’s functionality is being absorbed into YouTube Music, which isn’t dead. Google Hangouts is becoming Duo. YouTube Leanback became obsolete as Smart TVs got smarter. Of course there are several examples of products that have been killed entirely without being absorbed into other products, but to ignore those that don’t follow such a path to death is irresponsible.

    Lastly, consider that the video game industry is a known entity. Google has a history of innovating with new products that aren’t aligned to such established frameworks. Often, Google is iterating upon the very search service that it helped pioneer in 1998. With such innovation comes great risk. I’m surprised only 50% of Google’s products have been killed, honestly. Because video games have an audience and a stable history, I don’t see Stadia getting tossed into the Graveyard anytime soon.

    Now, I’m not going to suggest that Google will never kill Stadia. I don’t know that any more than the haters themselves. But I can say that citing the Google graveyard as evidence of such an argument either way is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst. I don’t blame any of these companies for canceling products. That’s part of running a smart business.

  • Help me ditch physical video games in favor of cloud gaming!

    Help me ditch physical video games in favor of cloud gaming!

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    I’ve really taken to cloud gaming lately, specifically with Google Stadia. I love the convenience. I love the speed from a cold TV to a heated gaming session. But there’s one wall I can’t quite break down when it comes to dumping physical games in favor of an all streaming lifestyle. And that wall is literally physical. In this video I’m going to talk about why I find it hard to abandon physical video games and how I’m hoping to change that, so I can embrace the cloud gaming future. Come with me. Help me.

    I believe in physical media. Divorcing yourself from a belief can be hard. Wars are fought and lives are lost because of beliefs. Remember the Media Format Wars of 2024? You will.

    For me, when I want to break a habit or change a belief, I try to learn as much as I can about that thing. I learn about its history and its psychological power over me. I find that the more I understand about a belief, the easier it becomes for me to deconstruct it. And therefore when the mystery is removed I can disassociate myself from the belief.

    Sometimes this level of education and awareness can be a bad thing, like when I was a kid and I learned how cartoon animation cells worked with transparent cells painted over static backgrounds. After learning this I hyper focused on trying to see where the animated portions were over the static backgrounds. I couldn’t concentrate on the cartoon anymore. It was like my own little game where the increasing score measured how much I’ve ruined my own childhood innocence.

    But most of the time, breaking things down in this way is a great thing. So I dove in to learn about why I treat physical items in higher regard than digital items. And I want to share this information with you. Because maybe when the apocalypse comes and we all must adjust to a nomadic lifestyle to avoid being hunted by mutant cannibals, I can help you feel not quite as bad about leaving behind your stack of Nintendo Power magazines. But then again, toilet paper is going to be hard to find in the irradiated wasteland of future Earth following the Media Format Wars. On second thought, hang on to those Nintendo Powers.

    I found a scientific paper titled “Digital Goods Are Valued Less Than Physical Goods,” published in 2017 in the Journal of Consumer Research. But I’m dumb, so I found an article to explain the paper to me.

    The authors of the paper conducted a series of surveys and tests based on the assumption that in general people place a higher value on physical items than digital items. In one test they had a bunch of people dress up as historical characters. The researches gave physical photos of the event to some tourists and digital photos to others. The tourists were then asked how much they would be willing to pay, if anything, for the photos. The recipients of a physical photo were willing to pay more, on average.

    In another scenario, the researchers asked participants about how much they’d spend on digital or physical versions of popular movies and books. They paired this with personality type questions. Those who would pay more for physical versions agreed more strongly with statements like “I will feel like I own it”  and “I feel like it is mine” and “holding an clamshell xbox case fills my veins with a reverating energy that I must hold back for fear of demolishing mountains with a barely a punch and draining oceans in a single gulp.” That last statement probably wasn’t on the survey.

    In the end, the researchers concluded that physical items tend to afford a greater sense of ownership and are more enticing when there’s a possible sense of connection to it. So, if you have great memories playing a specific game with your dad when you were young, you might be more likely to want that game as a physical item than a digital item.

    The researchers also correlated that people who are disposed with a need for control will value physical items more than digital. But I don’t believe that. I’m not controlling. In fact, I’ve forced everyone in my family to agree with me that I’m not controlling.

    And though the paper doesn’t get into the ability to re-sell video games, reselling is absolutely worth mentioning. Practically speaking my physical games do have a transferable value. I can resell them if I want to. I cannot resell a digital game, at least not legally and not in the United States where I live. But even if I could, because we’ve already learned that in general people value physical goods more than digital ones, it’s a good assumption that the resale value for digital games would be less than physical. And with streaming platforms like Stadia or Playstation Now, well, you cannot resell a service.

    “But Caleb,” I hear you yelling, “digital game sales have been growing tremendously over the years.” That’s very true. In fact, in Q1 of 2019 digital games sales eclipsed physical games sales on the Playstation 4 for the first time. And by some measures, if you include computer game sales, digital game sales overall reflect about 80% of all game sales. What this means is that most people are better than me.

    My own personal hangup with embracing digital video games over physical video games, I think, is due to the idea that a person’s belongings act as affirmations of their identity, and as we learned earlier in this video, people have a stronger sense of ownership with physical media.

    In the same way that my t-shirts, wall art, and bookshelf all reflect that I love games and that games are a part of my personality, the physical games on my shelf do the same. It’s hard to surround your physical space with digital artifacts. Therefore, it’s hard to be confident with your sense of self identity. And that’s probably the most helpful thing I learned in this research binge. Maybe I’m not terribly confident in who I am. And perhaps this room helps to restore my fragile ego…or the games just look really cool. Yeah, let’s go with that.

    When I look around my gameroom, my love of video games is showcased everywhere. But the focal point of my game room is definitely the shelf of games. I don’t collect games. I just have games I really like or games I really want to play. I have a few games that are neither, but they are worth a bit of money, so I hang on to them for now. If I got rid of the framed art, the t-shirts, and even the books, I’d be sad, but I’d get over it. If I got rid of the games, I’d cry.

    So how will I cope with the inevitable digital future? First, I’ll continue with, what I’ll call, a transition period. I’ll continue to buy physical games while also subscribing to streaming and download services like Google Stadia, Playstation Now, and xCloud, if that service ever offers a way to stream to a TV without buying the console. This way, I can get more comfortable with digital gaming. I can let it live with me, like a stray cat. And over time I’ll get so comfortable with that cat that I’ll forget about its feral history. I start sleeping soundly, certain that this animal I’ve taken in and cared for won’t some day kill me in my sleep. And when that cat does kill me in my sleep, my final words will be “I told you physical games were better!!!!”

    The other thing I’ll do to cope with the inevitable digital future is actually more something that will be done to me. I believe that the forthcoming 9th generation of consoles, the Playstation 5 and the Xbox series X, will be the last consoles with physical media. So, the decision to abandon physical games will likely be made for me in about 5 – 10 years. If I want to play a 10th generation game, it will have to be digitally. I may as well get used to digital games now.

    Lastly, indications are that games will cost about 14% more in the next generation. If this increase doesn’t apply to digital games, then buying the cheaper, digital version through a cloud service like Google Stadia will be much more appealing. However, I’m very confident that both physical and digital prices will go up. But, maybe digital sales will happen more frequently to help offset the new price burden on the consumer.

    So how do you approach digital gaming? Do you prefer one format over another? Do you wrestle with the same anxiety I have about ditching physical games in favor of digital games.