EA: Cloud Gaming Could Bring in a 'Billion Players Into the Gaming World' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 27 November 2019 / 2,335 Views
Electronic Arts began testing its cloud streaming service Project Atlas in September with FIFA 19, Need for Speed Rivals, Titanfall 2 and Unravel available across multiple devices. The service will be similar to Google's Stadia, Microsoft's xCloud and Sony's PlayStation Now.
EA's chief technology officer Ken Moss spoke with GamesIndustry about cloud gaming and their partnership with Microsoft.
"With streaming, our motivations are to be where the players are so that they can play our games wherever and however they want," said Moss. "Our actions are consistent with that.
"How cloud gaming evolves is uncertain right now, but it's going to bring in another billion players into the gaming world. We say we're at 2.6 billion or so right now. We want to make sure we're at the forefront, but also get the early learnings so we know how to change how we build our games in that world.
"Our partnership with Microsoft is a big deal. We're really excited that they are believers in cloud gaming and that they're pushing hard. Our own investment is also a big deal to us. They are helping us get very direct learnings. They're natural extensions of work we have done in the past with things like Origin.
"They allow us to have this direct connection with players, and frankly we're just scratching the surface. You should expect us to actually look to partner a lot more than we have in the past."
"There's a broad spectrum of things you need in order to achieve this vision," added Moss. "You need to have right infrastructure, for sure. You need to have the software running on that infrastructure that knows how to do streaming.
"Streaming games is more complicated than streaming movies or music by an order of magnitude, and that software is really important. You need to have the experience so that it's good for players. And last, but certainly not least, you need to have the content.
"If you don't have all of that, you're probably going to struggle. So on the infrastructure side the players you mention are certainly important. We are not going to pick up a shovel and open data centres and start investing those kind of dollars, but there are a lot partnership opportunities where you can piece together all these different areas."
"We've seen in other forms of entertainment that cloud streaming has been most effective when partnered with the subscription model," he continued. "When those two come together is when the magic happens in other forms of entertainment. We see the same thing happening in gaming. We've been pushing forward on the subscription front pretty effectively. We have our PC subscriptions, we have an Xbox one, and now we have a PlayStation one.
"We're in the learning phase. We've been in [subscription] for a few years now. We have over 200 games in our PC subscription. We've been able to study what kind of behaviours people have. That will help us figure out what games to make and what games to partner with. Today you need to buy a whole game and hope to like it.
"A subscription world view is that you're going to invest an hour and see if you want more. We are getting that learning. The truth is that people do like to play different games. Even hardcore fans of one franchise want to take a little vacation and try something else."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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