Amazon baffled that throwing money at a problem doesn't work
Amazon thought it could compete with Steam because it was so much larger than Valve, but Prime Gaming's former VP admits that 'gamers already had the solution to their problems'
It's really interesting to see how out of touch with reality these folks are, really an eye opening article.
It’s very simple, really. The meteoric rise of the gaming industry is unparalleled in entertainment so of course it quickly attracted an entourage of greedy finance people with dollar bills in their eyes who wouldn‘t even think of touching a controller or even watch a game trailer. They‘re in it for the money and think in numbers and spreadsheets. That‘s the root of many problems plaguing AAA studios today.
You would think a game journalist would at least have heard of Luna though. Even when it was dead on arrival.
the problem is, they see the market like its a brand recognition situation, which pc gamers it isnt exactly that. PC gamers are very incentive based buyers and will opt for something else if the incentive is "worth it" for them. the problem is, most platforms are really terrible at generating this incentive for consumers. GOG does with drm. free content, and to a lesser extent, epic does it with free games and tight unreal integration.
I'll give an example that wont happen because someone looking at the numbers wont let it happen. Amazon for example could easily develop a propietary media reader, and invest in a physical media printing line, and basically become the defacto publisher for physical pc releases if they wanted to, giving PC players a HUGE incentive on buying on their platform (enabling the buying, selling, and trading of used games on pc), and could easoly also be the platform that buy/sells used copies. we all just know they wont because they dont want any of the risk and cost associated on doing so.
If Gaben wasn't in it for the money, he wouldn't be able to afford a fleet of 6 mega yatchs worth 1 billion and costing him 100 million per year just to maintain. He grabs 30% and enjoys his soft monopoly just like every other big videogame store.
A lot of that 30% goes to things other digital stores aren't even close to offering. Also, if your game does well enough the cut Steam takes is lowered, albeit this only really happens for very successful games.
Yup. Gabe's... Unethical to say the least. I have not respect for anyone with even a single mega yacht. And he has so many.
Our assumption was that gamers would naturally buy from us because they were already using Twitch.
i am amazed at how they were able to connect the dots with this one. naturally, like twitch is instantly a game store.
or am i missing a feature they had to bridge a gap here?
Anyone who saw Rings of Power knew this.
The baffling thing about RoP is that they had a budget multiple times greater than the Jackson movies and still made substantially worse looking armor and weapons.
Like, forget the scripting issues, how do you not just hire as many of the same companies as you can find?
I thought the first season had its moments but some of those armors... Oof.
That wasn’t the case. In 2023 dollars, the LotR trilogy had a budget of around $513 million, eventually resulting in about 12 hours of finished product. RoP has a budget of about $150m for around 9 hours. So the trilogy spent $42m per hour compared to RoP’s $16m per hour.
So that's why they never give away steam keys.