Amazon today officially unveiled its new cloud gaming service Luna at its annual Alexa Hardware event. It makes it an immediate competitor to a number of other services from Google’s Stadia, Micro .ft’s Exclusive, Sony’s PlayStation Now, and a number of other major game publishers eager to try out the code on how to stream video games on the Internet.
But with an explanatory interview Protocol Published after the event, Amazon’s Mark Whitton, vice president of the company of entertainment devices and services, reveals a very important question surrounding Luna that was not answered during the revelation: What is the business model? And from what we can get from the interview, it looks like a cable of video games for the full and worse.
Says Whitton Protocol K will not follow the Luna Stadia model, which is free but users need to pay for individual games to stream on the platform. (You can also pay for Stadia Pro to get access to 4K streaming, access to a small but well-developed library of free titles, and other features.) Is a bundle. -For the Ultimate Tire. With that configuration you can stream any 100-plus games on the game pass platform but only on an Android device right now.
Instead, Luna will offer individual “channels” for partner publishers, built just like Amazon’s Channels platform, which can add Prime subscribers to subscriptions to the personal TV streaming service as Amazon d-sns, all built into a monthly powered by Amazon. Is. The price of these channels will be kept different and there will be a difference in sentimentality and restrictions, although the details are thin at the moment. The service will start shortly after launch with only a small number of users with two channels.
The first channel will be one called Amazon-branded Luna Plus, which looks like the Stadia Pro it offers 4K streaming and “unlimited hours of play”, but it goes ahead with a 5.99 access in dozens of games. Mass. It’s not clear what that game list looks like, in addition to the initial slate, including a confirmed title Resident Evil 7 And Control, But the model already gives Luna a slight edge over the stadia, with subscribers not having to pay for most of the titles they want to play. In fact, it doesn’t look like Luna will allow users to pay for any games; Right now, it looks like you have to subscribe to a channel to access anything on the platform.
The second channel will be from major game publisher Ubisoft, which is offering the same features as Luna Plus (although Ubisoft restricts users to one stream per account instead of the two allowed on Amazon’s channel) and probably the most accessible, if not all, company-wide. Of the library. Amazon won’t say what the Ubisoft channel will cost, but it could be higher than the Luna Plus and higher than the UPL Plus, the. 14.99 subscription service Ubisoft launched last year.
White said, “You’ll see other channels over time Protocol. He added that game publishers are “very excited about the idea.” It’s unclear how to say, titles of indie games or midseed publishers that may not fully support Luna Channel, or if Luna Plus exists, will be added. It is also not clear how the treatment will be dealt with by competitive cloud-priority companies such as Micro .ft and Sony. That said, Electronic Arts, which operates on its own cloud gaming platform, partnered with MicroSt. Earlier this month for the Xbox Game Pass, suggesting we could see EA’s Play subscription on Luna.
But more generally, why aren’t publishers excited? For cloud gaming, Luna’s structure looks sleek, mostly because it’s structured similar to the current streaming TV landscape. Just as Amazon Prime gives you free access to Prime Video with your monthly or annual payment, Luna Plus will give you access to any game that can acquire cloud gaming rights in exchange for its monthly fee, which it can then increase. Early access period.
In the meantime, if you want to pay for additional games from other publishers, you can buy buy access from that publisher’s Luna Channel in the same way that you subscribe to HBO or Netflix separately through the Amazon Channels platform. Amazon will handle all billing and subscription logistics, and presumably Amazon will receive all monthly subscription revenue cuts in exchange for managing Amazon account sign-ups and, more importantly, will give full Luna service on its AWS cloud computing platform. This whole thing sounds like a basic cable package with a separate pay-as-you-go or a cord-cutter to pay for half a dozen streaming services with a sling TV or YouTube TV subscription for your cable for access.
All of this sounds great for game publishers looking forward to monetizing the new distribution channel, but models like Nvidia’s GeForce Now hope it could be a little bad news for gaming fans. Nvidia’s model lets you play games on a number of screens, including the Mac or Android phone you already have through Valve’s Steam Marketplace.
But the service initially met with strong opposition from game publishers when it went out of beta and Nvidia began charging for it earlier this year, largely because some publishers did not explicitly allow Nvidia to share their intellectual property from the cloud server. Following some high-profile efforts such as Activision Blizzard and Take-to-Interactive, many publishers then returned to Nvidia’s platform. But the GeForce Now situation explains how the industry’s largest game makers see the benefits of cloud gaming primarily as a way to sell games to new customers (or access to games through subscriptions) and to give more to existing ones. Ways to play the title they already have.
Cloud gaming is still in its infancy, of course, and every major player is experimenting with the business model to find out what sticks to use. With the introduction of Luna and Amazon’s channel-based approach, we’re seeing yet another gamble on how the future of game distribution will be shaped. At the moment though, Amazon is adhering to a successful sample of how many television bundles and sales are on the internet today. Whether it is a prudent move will depend on whether customers see a substantial advantage in Luna and what it offers to add even more fees to its growing list of monthly subscriptions.
