Apparently the concept is heating up. But I don’t think people realize how expensive being the Netflix of something is.
Netflix is $8.4B in the red. That’s right now, at the height of their near-monopoly, at the highest point of their brand. Minus 8 billion dollars. Netflix only distributes videos and they spent 12 billion dollars in 2018 to buy or create content. That’s absurd and insane. It’s like me right now buying a 2-story house in Brentwood with money I don’t have and everyone would be like “duuuuuude fuck yeahh!!!!!!” and I would buy 3 others with my friends’ money while feeling super confident. That’s craziness.
Can y’all slow down the madness? Seriously.
A Netflix for games would also probably need way more bandwidth. Especially with big games. Final Fantasy 15 in 4K is 85 motherfucking gigs. 85 GB. They say watching Netflix consumes about 1GB/hour. For just one big game, say 40 GB, you would be able to watch 40 hours of Netflix. GTA5 is 75 GB. The numbers are talking and screaming in your face “LOL”. Also, anyone outside big cities would never be able to play recent games due to not-perfect connections? It’s already bad, that would make the situation far worse.
And if you think that you’ll be able to have people spend additional money while they already pay for the “all you can eat” model, think again. Netflix grew because it’s cheap. And if you think that people will pay a monthly fee to play 2D games that they can play in a bazillion ways already, think again.
It’s not even that it’s going to be though, It’s that it’s unsustainable as fuck. I don’t understand the appeal, the “challenge” to push for even more convenience. There are people with their lives at stake behind all that. And if game developers’ only chance to reach an audience is through three or two streaming services, it’s going to be the end for 90% of us.
I sure don’t want that at all.