The RAMpocalypse, and more specifically the obscene price inflation it’s driven, sucks for just about everyone with an interest in gaming. But one person it maybe doesn’t suck for is Amazon Gaming boss Jeffrey Gattis, who said in a recent interview with The Game Business that high hardware prices could be good for Luna, the company’s cloud gaming business.
Gattis said cloud gaming has historically “been a little bit of a solution in search of a problem,” thanks primarily to the relatively low cost of consoles. Because of that, Amazon’s goal with Luna hasn’t been to supplant consoles, but rather to expand gaming to players who for one reason or another aren’t interested in buying the requisite hardware.
Given the way prices have gone (and will likely continue to go), Gattis thinks, probably not incorrectly, that demographic is probably going to grow—and therein lies the opportunity.
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“We saw the Steam Machine opening at $1,000,” Gattis said. “We hear rumors about consoles, because of the RAM crisis, pushing up over $1,000 in Gen 10. So, I do think you get to a point at which more people will be in the consideration set for a cloud gaming solution, just because of the sheer cost of buying dedicated hardware.”
The rising cost of games is also a consideration: “Games can be big investments, to go buy a $70 game, to go through the download experience, to pair a controller, and then spend hundreds of hours, in some cases, to complete them. So, we see an opportunity to serve a group of people who haven’t really been well served because the console and PC companies are mostly focused on those hardcore players.”
Amazon jumped into mainstream gaming with both feet several years ago, but despite having limitless money to throw at the problem it was never able to make serious inroads: Its biggest success was the MMO New World, and that one wasn’t big enough to dodge the bullet when Amazon decided it was time to take the whole enterprise out behind the woodshed.
But now, according to Gattis, Amazon knows exactly what it’s doing. “For the first time in a long time, I feel like we have a single gaming strategy. We understand what we’re doing, we understand what we’re not doing, and we’re executing against it. And time will tell how well we can execute and how right we are about our thesis.”
One of the challenges facing Luna is the selection of games it offers: Leading with AI-powered Judge Snoop Dogg is not the sort of thing that gives me high hopes for a platform. It does, however, afford me the opportunity to run the trailer!
Gattis said Amazon is trying to encourage a wider range of publishers to put their games on Luna, a process that includes convincing them won’t cannibalize conventional sales—and ties into his belief that high hardware prices could be a boost for the platform.
“The reality is, at least the pitch that we keep making—and it is the truth—is that this is about reaching players that a lot of those games are never going to be able to reach,” Gattis said. “Particularly in a world of $1,000 consoles.”
I’m personally dubious about cloud gaming in general: That arises in part from personal bias—I live in a rural area with internet access that would never support serious cloud gaming—but even so, infrastructure concerns are real.
Despite that, I think Gattis is probably correct: Skyrocketing hardware prices are going to force some people away from conventional PC and console-based gaming, and to some extent—based largely on how effectively it’s able to fill the gap—that’s going to be a boost for Luna.
