The American company Amazon on September 24, launched a game streaming service. The Internet giant expects to thus compete for a share in the nascent segment of the games market. Amazon’s competitors will be Microsoft, Sony, and Google, which have already launched their own similar services (Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Now and Stadia, respectively). As noted by the Financial Times, none of the four largest technology companies in the United States have games as their main business, but they all show increased interest in this market. For example, Apple does not produce games, but is one of the largest gaming companies in the world in terms of revenue from them.
Game streaming or cloud gaming allows users to access games without downloading software, buying discs or consoles. And since all the computer calculations necessary for the game process are performed at the facilities of the service provider (in the cloud), the player does not need an expensive computer either. According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon’s Luna game streaming service will be available on personal computers, mobile devices and Fire TVs from Amazon. You can play using a keyboard and mouse, as well as controllers Xbox One, DualShock 4 or your own, released for the opening of the service, the Amazon Luna controller ($ 49). The initial subscription will cost $ 5.99 per month. The service is currently only available in the United States. Currently, the service has more than 50 games available: mostly not new,
“This is just the beginning. Games are the new battleground for tech companies with a market value of hundreds of billions of dollars. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft all want to get involved. A few years ago, Amazon noticed that 35% of the evening traffic on their Amazon Web Services cloud platform was going to Netflix, and they launched the Amazon Prime Video video streaming service. Now the situation is repeating itself with games. About 15 years ago there were about 200 million gamers in the world, and today there are 2.7 billion. Neil Camping, an analyst in the technology sector of the financial company Mirabaud Securities, told the Financial Times.
The volume of the world games market this year, according to the estimates of the research agency Pelham Smithers, will reach $ 165 billion, and according to the estimates of the IDC agency – $ 200 billion. In the early 80s. of the last century, this market for reproduction facilities consisted of two-thirds of slot machines, and a third of game consoles. Since the 90s. personal computers gradually began to take their share, and since the 2000s. the expansion of mobile devices began, while the share of game consoles declined from almost 50% in 2000 to a projected 20% in 2020.The most popular game console so far remains Sony PlayStation 2: released in 2000 and sold 157 million PC. Released in 2013, the PlayStation 4 has sold over 110 million copies. But all of these numbers pale in comparison to mobile sales: since the beginning of the year alone, the three largest smartphone manufacturers have sold approximately 140 million units each. each. In 2020, Pelham Smithers predicts that mobile devices will account for $ 85 billion in gaming revenue, $ 40 billion in personal computers, $ 33 billion in gaming consoles, and $ 2 billion in other market segments, including game streaming.
According to the agency Markets and Markets, the cloud gaming segment of the global gaming market in 2019 brought in $ 306 million, and by 2024 will bring in $ 3.1 billion. With such growth rates, tech giants clearly have something to fight for.
