Ubisoft Likes Cloud Streaming, But Not Its Subscription Models

A lot of companies believe that streaming games from the cloud is a way for games to be delivered in the future. But there's still some kinks to be worked out, especially when it comes to effectiveness.

During a recent panel sponsored by Akamai (as transcribed by GamesBeat), Ubisoft vice president of partnerships and revenue Chris Early explained that the company realizes the great potential behind cloud streaming but thinks there's a different way to approach it than automatically with subscriptions.

"For us, it's a question of addressable market," Early explained. "We believe that there are plenty of people who are willing to play the games that we make today if we can deliver it into their hands in a way that they're willing to pay for. Today, our 150-million customer base buys our games, and as we all know here in this room — we've all got friends who stopped playing games because they didn't buy the last console or didn't upgrade their PC, who still reminisce about games. We saw that about a game we announced recently [Starlink] where Star Fox is going to be a character. There was an amazing outpouring of nostalgia that created at the press conference. They're there."

As far as why a subscription based model may not work, Early said, "I actually view subscription gaming as inhibiting our progress, and I'll give you two examples.

"One is with PS Now. I think that's a great technology for getting streaming content to people, but we don't make the money as a publisher — we don't make the same amount of money as we would even just putting stuff on sale. So why bother, from a publisher's standpoint?

"The technology is great for a player. I can play anything anywhere instantly! It's awesome technology, which is inhibited by the business model. So charge a PlayStation Plus add-on to be able to stream any game you own to any device you own. That's a great service for the player. It's going to start people adopting that streaming concept in more places. You'll be able to get to a place where you have more people focused on streaming.

"There's a similar challenge with your business model. We see it works. We're believers. You've capped it with a subscription plan, where publishers aren't able to make money. On the other hand, you could just sell the game and let people have the five-minute experience while it downloads, or pay you an add-on price to be able to continue to have fast access in many more places. With the subscription, it's just giving it away."

Once companies get latency and other issues worked out with cloud gaming, then sure, it could certainly have a future. But for now, some folks are still questioning its effectiveness so it's hard to see just how effective it'll be for the future.