When Every Screen is Interactive
As part of my day job I’m often in a position where I need to speak about gaming and esports to audiences that are familiar with neither. Inevitably, the question of “what’s next/exciting” in gaming comes up and, inevitably, I feel like I throw a wet blanket on the intention of the question.
To the casual observer, hot buzzwords like AR, VR, the “metaverse” (we’ll get into that one another day), and the inevitable encroachment of perennial-technology-buzz-favorite “crypto” into the gaming space are the expectation. The reality is that the greatest innovations gaming has offered are much more subtle. As a practical example, platforms like Steam and its impact on the digital distribution of media have done more for technological progress and impact on broader consumer entertainment than any current VR headset.
So with the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3), an event stuffed to the gills with gaming hype, still very near our rearview mirrors we are presented once again with the opportunity to reflect on what’s next in gaming. True to form, my humdrum take is that Microsoft’s vision for multi-platform play is, by far, the most interesting and impactful for the future of gaming - certainly for marketers and executives, but arguably even gaming enthusiasts (though yes, I’m also ultra-hyped about Metroid Dread).
Why? Though nothing about the showcase was particularly ground-breaking at first gloss, the implications are clear – a path through which a wide variety of gaming content could be played on basically any device.
This eventuality has been a long time coming. But to fully understand this future we need to talk about mobile gaming, and a defunct gaming service.
Stay with me on this.
Do you not have phones?: Mobile & Accessibility
We’ve come a long way since Snake, and so has the industry essentially birthed from the nigh-indestructible Nokia 6110. Mobile gaming is serious business, and in many respects one of the phenomena truly fueling the fire of gaming growth. The reason is simple enough – nearly everyone carries a phone, and from the onset mobile phones have had gaming built into their core functionality.
In short, more gaming devices in more hands leads to more “gamers.”
However, to the occasionally (I’m being generous) curmudgeonly legions of PC and console gamers, mobile games are often dismissed as flimsy cash-ins for revenue-hungry developers. Even as games with increasing sophisticated mechanics beyond match-3 or other new-gamer-friendly tropes are published on mobile platforms, including “AAA” franchises from PC and console gaming, the reception amongst gamers has occasionally been…tepid.
Despite the early cynicism, even the crustiest of “traditional” gamers have found that as the power of phones increase the experiences have become sufficiently awesome enough to warrant attention. Suddenly, gaming on a mobile screen was not just a convenient opportunistic diversion, but a serious outlet for immersive gaming experiences.
At least to a point - while science fiction paints a picture where portable devices can accomplish almost any task, in practicality the most likely solution is that most of the “heavy lifting” for complex computation tasks (such as, say, rendering advanced graphics and physics) will have to be outsourced from hardware that cannot fit in your pocket.
But Can it Run Crysis?: Content & Cloud
Enter “cloud gaming” as the oft-heralded union of portability and power. Microsoft enters this arena with the 1-2 punch of both gaming subscription services (Game Pass) and cloud gaming service (xCloud). This combination exploits the most glaring weakness of Stadia, the mainstream exemplar of cloud gaming, despite its foundations on Google’s bedrock of technology.
The killer app is…killer apps – more specifically, gaming content. Microsoft has it, Stadia doesn’t – and that’s a problem we’ve seen before.
Believe it or not, cloud gaming isn’t new – hell, it’s not even “last decade” new. The ill-fated OnLive is the most prolific project to chart these waters, and like so many before, ran up against the shoals of a dearth of content (notwithstanding questionable business decisions).
The various flavors of “Xbox” game passes present not just considerable consumer value, but a broader strategy where Microsoft doesn’t really care how you play the games, so long as it’s in their ecosystem. Similar to how the Streaming Wars may be evolving beyond a conquest of video content to consumer attention more generally, round 9 (or so) of the Console Wars may similarly be establishing new fronts – one where the console device isn’t the point.
This does not mean there aren’t some technological hurdles – simply ones that are less niche to gaming, and that is a significant distinction. The barriers needed to access these experiences are not purpose-made devices, meaning that similar to how the proliferation of smartphones minted legions of gamers, gaming can once again ride within the Trojan Horse of general lifestyle tech (e.g. smart TVs, broadband internet, etc.). As always, the general rule is that as barriers to access are removed and perceived value constant or increasing, adoption of a given product becomes increasingly likely.
A Chicken in Every Pot and a Game in Every Screen: Becoming Mainstream
So, where does that leave us and how does this explain why the Microsoft’s showcase at E3 was so significant:
Mobile gaming opened the door to millions of gamers by putting a gaming device in every pocket, largely demonstrating that accessibility is among the biggest precursors to gaming becoming mainstream.
Cloud gaming opens virtually any device to virtually any type of gaming content.
Microsoft is painting a vision where not only virtually any screen can be a gaming screen, but said screen will have a rich slate of gaming content to display.
While my take on the future of gaming is, true to form, perhaps not as exciting as some of the other buzz-laden topics around gaming, the Microsoft showcase was the clearest path the industry has seen to massive amounts of gaming content being accessed by an equally massive audience.
High accessibility and great content - two of the most fundamental yet important factors for gaming to truly be centered as mainstream entertainment. We’ll go over the other two in a few weeks (stay tuned!), but for now business decision makers need to reconcile that not only is gaming growing, it’s accelerating on the tailwinds of a growing array of consumer tech.
Will you be ready for mainstream gaming?