{"id":95934,"date":"2019-06-28T15:39:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T15:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/345796"},"modified":"2019-06-28T15:39:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-28T15:39:00","slug":"stadia-head-devs-publishers-and-players-arent-ready-for-a-subscription-only-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/06\/28\/stadia-head-devs-publishers-and-players-arent-ready-for-a-subscription-only-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"Stadia head: Devs, publishers, and players aren’t ready for a subscription-only platform"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The industry is in transition. Not every developer and publisher is ready to move to subscription yet.\u201d <\/big><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

– Stadia head Phil Harrison tells Eurogamer why Stadia didn’t launch as the fabled ‘Netflix for games’ some had expected it to be.<\/em><\/p>\n

Stadia\u2019s business model remained shrouded in mystery for months after the cloud-based game platform was announced. Just last recently, Google finally announced that games would be sold at full price on the system as with any other physical game platform, though subscription based libraries like its own Stadia Pro or Ubisoft\u2019s Uplay+ are being offered as well.<\/p>\n

But even Stadia\u2019s Pro subscription requires its subscribers to buy the bulk of the game they\u2019ll play on Stadia; a \u201cgrowing library\u201d of titles is promised as part of that paid service (alongside other features), but only Destiny 2<\/em> has been announced so far.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Eurogamer<\/a>, Stadia head Phil Harrison says that the decision to offer both that traditional sales method alongside the potential for subscription services was about giving players a choice in how they pick up games, since he says many players, developers, and publishers aren\u2019t ready for to make the jump to subscription services.<\/p>\n

“The industry is in transition. Not every developer and publisher is ready to move to subscription yet,\u201d Harrison tells Eurogamer. \u201cFrankly, not every gamer is ready to move to subscription yet. So we wanted to give gamers a choice so they could engage in the games they wanted in the way they wanted – and in all cases, without the very high upfront cost of buying a sophisticated device to put under their TV or on their desk.”<\/p>\n

In the full interview, Harrison discusses how the industry is \u201calready way past the physical digital tipping point\u201d as more players turn to purchasing games digitally rather than physically.<\/p>\n

The exact extent of ownership players have over their digital purchases can be a cause for concern with some, especially when that game is located only in a remote data center and never actually installed on a local device. Harrison tells Eurogamer that the value of paying full price for a cloud-based game on Stadia comes from the service\u2019s core promise of being able to play it on nearly any available screen, and theoretically at \u201cthe highest possible quality.\u201d The rest of that chat can be read in the full Eurogamer piece<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The industry is in transition. Not every developer and publisher is ready to move to subscription yet.\u201d – Stadia head Phil Harrison tells Eurogamer why Stadia didn’t launch as the fabled ‘Netflix for games’ some had expected it to be. Stadia\u2019s business model remained shrouded in mystery for months after the cloud-based game platform was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}