{"id":40904,"date":"2020-05-26T10:32:50","date_gmt":"2020-05-26T10:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=e0d38b4f8835f2742ac30da7ec8d6fe9"},"modified":"2020-05-26T10:32:50","modified_gmt":"2020-05-26T10:32:50","slug":"games-battles-are-a-taste-of-things-to-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/games-battles-are-a-taste-of-things-to-come\/","title":{"rendered":"Games battles are a taste of things to come"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Barry Collins<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
26 May, 2020<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

It used to be the porn industry that led the way in technical innovation \u2013 or so I\u2019m told. Nowadays, the games industry is a better barometer. Right now, it\u2019s starting to go through the licensing pains that will soon be felt across the computing spectrum, and you\u2019ll doubtless be shocked to hear that it\u2019s us consumers who will feel that pain most acutely.<\/span><\/p>\n

I recently wrote a feature in\u00a0IT Pro’s<\/em> sister magazine,\u00a0<\/span>PC Pro<\/em>, about the burgeoning games streaming services, one of which was Nvidia GeForce Now. This arguably launched with the most enticing business model \u2013 a bring-your-own games service that allows you to play titles you\u2019ve previously purchased on Steam, Uplay or other online games stores. Nvidia provides the streaming infrastructure, for up to \u00a35 per month, you bring the games.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At least, that was the theory \u2013 a theory that upset some of the games publishers, who hadn\u2019t agreed to have their games on GeForce Now and demanded that they were removed.<\/span><\/p>\n

This brings us to a philosophical dilemma: what constitutes a \u201cPC\u201d? Steam and other stores allow users to install their games library on any PC they own, but it seems some games publishers don\u2019t believe that what Nvidia is offering can reasonably be classed as a PC at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

I see both sides of the argument. GeForce Now isn\u2019t a PC in any conventional sense. Unlike rival Shadow, which hands users their own Windows instance and lets them install what they like, GeForce Now users never see a Windows desktop. Instead, they pick from a graphical menu of preinstalled games and can play them on demand using a variety of devices, as long as they\u2019ve already purchased the game from a supported stores or direct from the publisher.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Games publishers, used to being paid afresh every time a customer installs their game on a new platform, are narked that they aren\u2019t getting a cut from Nvidia. And without their games, Nvidia doesn\u2019t have a business. Nvidia, on the other hand, is doing all the heavy lifting. It\u2019s providing the server infrastructure, the bandwidth, and clearly doing all the optimisation work itself, since publishers weren\u2019t even aware their titles were on the service. Why should those publishers expect to be paid yet again when it\u2019s Nvidia that\u2019s bearing all the cost and hard graft?<\/span><\/p>\n

If your response to that question is a Gallic shrug, a yawn of non-gamer\u2019s ambivalence, don\u2019t be nonchalant: these are the types of questions that will soon have to be dealt with right across the software industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

Streamed desktops are the future. In ten years\u2019 time, we won\u2019t be buying laptops or desktops with bundles of local processing power and storage, we\u2019ll be buying dumb terminals more akin to <\/span>Chromebooks<\/span><\/a>. <\/span>Windows<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>macOS<\/span><\/a> and even <\/span>Linux<\/span><\/a> instances will be streamed, and then we\u2019ll have the interesting conundrum of how <\/span>apps<\/span><\/a> are licensed on such platforms.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the moment, for example, if you buy a <\/span>Microsoft Office subscription<\/span><\/a> or Adobe Creative Cloud, you get to install the client software on as many systems as the licence permits \u2013 <\/span>not very many in Adobe\u2019s case<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, what happens when we\u2019re effectively renting our OS from Microsoft or Apple? Will they adopt an Nvidia-like approach where the OS becomes invisible to the end user and you take your pick from a selection of apps in their stores? If that\u2019s the case, you can expect Microsoft and Apple to demand a cut of app subs revenue and the whole licensing model is up in the air. Or will they go for a Shadow-like route, where you stream a Windows\/macOS instance and things carry on much like they do today, with you paying for an OS subscription and software subs on top of that?<\/span><\/p>\n

Last decade saw the demise of the one-off licence \u2013 the idea that you buy a piece of software and have the right to use it indefinitely, as long as you can still find a PC to support it. Aside from Serif\u2019s Affinity packages, I can\u2019t think of a piece of software from a major publisher that\u2019s still clinging to that old model.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The difficult bit is predicting where we\u2019re headed. The squabble between games publishers and Nvidia is just a warm up for what\u2019s to come, with software publishers trying to retain their margins and the OS vendors determined to take a cut. We\u2019re already seeing this with the Windows Store and Mac App Store.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One thing\u2019s for sure: it won\u2019t be good news for us, the customer. Just as you have to pay twice if you want to play the same game on Windows, Mac or mobile devices, I can well see that happening with the streaming platforms that will emerge. It\u2019s going to be an ugly, expensive fight.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barry Collins<\/p>\n

26 May, 2020 <\/p>\n

It used to be the porn industry that led the way in technical innovation \u2013 or so I\u2019m told. Nowadays, the games industry is a better barometer. Right now, it\u2019s starting to go through the licensi…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":408,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/408"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40904"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40938,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40904\/revisions\/40938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}