Netflix allows downloads for offline viewing. It’s not a persistent portable copy. Just local files for replay through the Netflix app when you don’t have a reliable connection, or to mitigate data caps. This is how things like Xbox game pass work. Some shit is always on the service, some of it is limited time. When it’s no longer part of the package the files go away, and you can no longer play/watch just as you can no longer stream it.
There have been multiple past attempts at a literal “Netflix for games” that all used that approach. With the consoles seems like it’s mostly back catalog and first party stuff that’s persistent, with new releases rotating in and out. Downloads have been a necessary approach given broadband penetration and home internet speeds. And there are very good reason to use it even as connections improve. The major reason to stream games is to offload the rendering/processing work to a different piece of equipment.
Which is only necessary if you don’t have equipment.
Netflix is kinda an old revenue model. Specifically syndication and cable TV. Netflix either produces it’s own material, or licenses existing material. Then distributes it via it’s publication venue. I this case a web site. Traditionally a cable network. Netflix makes it’s nut collecting subscription fees (just like HBO), and pays a fixed fee schedule to licensees.
It’s a new distribution vector, an additional one through the internet. The console’s subscription systems work the same way. You pay a fixed monthly fee, and get access to play any game currently on the service. You aren’t purchasing single games, or getting ownership of set of games forever. For your money you get to play what is on the service, when it is on the service, however long it’s on the service.
In terms of new distribution, and how that might work for the games business. Doing that outside of an extant console system gives you access to all those people without equipment. Those who can’t afford or don’t want to bother with it.
Unfortunately those people also tend to be the people who don’t have unmetered, reliable, high speed internet. Because they can’t afford it, or because it doesn’t exist near them.
Yes and no. There’s some validity there. But you also have things like merch, licensed spin offs. Even movie and TV companies seldom make their money just off the piece of media. Or even off that media at all, for stuff like kid’s TV shows (especially in the 80’s). Blizzard/Activision has probably made more off World of Warcraft novels than most reality TV shows make in their entire distribution cycle.
Additionally the tail for sales back in the day wasn’t neccisarily that short. Console games in particular often stayed on shelves for years, and sold persistently. PC games there was a pretty rigid system of price drops and reprintings. Followed by a “gold” or “game of the year” re-release about 2 years out for anything remotely successful. There was also the expansion pack thing for PC, which could keep things going for a number of years.
But if you look at the 90’s, just as an example, the best selling game in a given year would move something like a million copies. It was a much, much smaller market at the time.
One thing that I think get’s over looked is costs and price. Standard price for a newly released game has always been about $60. If you average out across platforms and generations.
$60 in 1995 dollars is $101.85 now. The cost of a game has nearly halved, even as costs and scale have gone up astronomically. It routinely costs a quarter of a billion dollars or more to launch a AAA title. As much as a tent pole blockbuster. But there are lot more of them.
And as you hit on there’s a lack of ancillary distribution. Unlike a movie where you can sell people multiple tickets, then rent them a copy, then sell them physical copies, then get it up on streaming services and premium channels. Then run it on syndication for years through a devolving series of basic cable, broadcast, and finally local affiliate stations and international markets in the developing world.
With games you sell some one one copy. Then you need to produce another one if you want to get more dollars out of them.
Digital distribution has already added some legs to this. Since you don’t need to produce physical runs and try to sell them through you can exploit old IP persistently just by listing it. Sales, free play periods, relatively cheap compatibility updates are especially good for this.
Getting that material up on some sort of subscription service, to get them syndication dollars would fit very nicely with that. And that’s mostly what the console subscription services are about.
But the publishers/devs aren’t going to get involved if they can’t get some money for that old IP. And such a service is not going to have much luck attracting people off having a deep catalog of outdated material. They’ll need the latest and greatest releases for that. The producers will be willing to trade some of that sales revenue on the new shit, if the money is there on the back catalog.
And that’s likely where Nvidia’s problem lies, and at least some of the issue with Stadia and the others. You tell everyone who will listen that you’re going to replace the primary revenue stream with something that pays less. Rather than add a new one. And then the back end of it doesn’t pay enough on the older stuff where any exploitation is good. Content producers are better off selling a million copies at a dollar during a Steam sale than they are getting half a cent a user from millions of users.
It doesn’t actually solve their problem. And the base idea isn’t compelling or practical enough to attract enough user so companies have to play ball.
The working examples are from Xbox and Sony. Who both produce and publish material themselves. So they have their own compelling, desirable content to attract people. And a walled garden machine to tie it into. So they have that leverage on user base.
Netflix ran into that same issue. Without any of their own content, when the money from streaming became good enough. Content producers began to pull their material, because they wanted a bigger piece of the pie and could get a better deal elsewhere. Netflix had to respond by producing it’s own content.
Now that content is the primary reason to have Netflix. Not their selection of last year’s movies and 20 year old TV.
(Sorry that’s so long. Short on sleep and I kinda got lost).
