cloud gaming usa 2012
DESCRIPTION
Conference report. www.concept4web.comTRANSCRIPT
SAN FRANCISCO, 2012 REPORT FROM @JMARCHADIER
DAY 1September 11th
DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION POISED TO OVERTAKE PHYSICAL SALES
9:00 - 9:30
• Social games, mobile games are big business. Smartphones and tablets have proliferated. Multiplayer and f2p are the norm. Packaged good sales are collapsing.
• Social is the new arcade-style training wheels.
• Old singleplayer game costs 2$/hour. Multiplayer 0.15$/hour
• 2013-20120: content anywhere, packaged good still exists, consoles becomes multipurpose devices, f2p might go away, gamesbecomes services = growing audience
HOW DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION WILL CHANGE THE CONTENT, ECONOMICS
AND ECOSYSTEM OF GAMING 9:30 - 10:10
• EA invests 80$M on new platform developments, R&D
• Where ever you play, EA will be there. No magic behind multi devices experiences, focus on player habits
• Origin has been designed to push content to any device
• F2p will continue as a unique model to boost wider audience
• EA believes in cloud computing to stream tailored contents
• Acceleration of shifting star wars MMO to f2p
IS CLOUD GAMING AT AN INFLECTION POINT?
11:00 - 11:40
• Platform companies multiple consumer devices: fragmentation
• Ideal solution: one game, developed once, run as service from one place, btw you don't want piracy
• True GPU clouds are mandatory
• From 3 consoles and PC to tablets, tvs, stbs, ios, win8, android
BUILDING A SOLID CLOUD GAMING MIDDLEWARE PLATFORM
11:40 - 12:10
• 22% of Americans knows what cloud services are doing
• Current competitors offers including gaikai and onlive: lack of focus, OTT delivery, poor virtualization, expensive, inflexible business model.
• Ciinow focuses on software, not on services (+++value chain)
• Cross-provider multiplayer and interactive spectating support
MORE THAN SAVES: CLOUD SERVICES CHANGING THE WAY GAMES ARE MADE AND PLAYED
13:45 - 14:25
• Start in the cloud: player service. Then game and configuration saves. Framework custom publish (screenshots). Workshop
• Building games as frameworks (portal 2): lvl/coop in the cloud
• Frameworks for community to emerge. And for game dev between players and devs. Steam Greenlight. Support ideas.
• Founded to help any game genre and mechanics, as expected
THE BUSINESS OF CLOUD GAMING: ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT OR MICRO-TRANSACTIONS
14:25 - 15:25
• Xbox live is cloud: deliver social/content online capabilities. Customers wants all entertainment feeds at the same place
• Cloud is only a channel: players expects new tech features
• Gameforge focuses on web browser exp and then companion
• No hard answer on companion, but it drives engagement/sales
• Companion fills a gap only because the full promise of cloud gaming is not possible during those days
• 1st the game must be good THEN at mid-dev include business model, not before
FIXING CLOUD GAMING 16:15 - 16:45
• Cloud gaming 1.0 is pixel streaming, and it cannot scale
• Cloud paging (gaming 2.0 ): transmit virtualized code locally like drop box
• Managing software behavior for better network performance
• Using pc as the local proxy gpu at home for multiple devices
BUILDING A CROSS-PLATFORM CLOUD ECOSYSTEM AND ENGAGING PLAYERS WITH NEW, UNIQUE
EXPERIENCES 16:45 - 17:15
• The Cloud technology revolution is similar in many respects to the Cable TV revolution. Cable was used primarily as a way to distribute existing content.
• EVE has been designed as a sandbox, and this is why the community is still growing.
• Dust 514 - take people and bring them into the same sandbox, and connect the 2 games in Carbon : our cloud.
DAY 2September 12th
CHRONICLING THE EXPANSION IN CLOUD GAMING
9:00 - 9:40
• G-cluster is a pioneer in cloud techs, before onlive. Scalable for interactive services: japan, finland and france. Ready for US
• Partner with Orange, 226 millions of customers (net and tv)
• Game on demand with SFR: monthly subscriptions from 4.99 to 14.99 euros, but also short and long rentals. Billing supports
• 9 euros ARPU, and 10% conversion from f2p to subscription
FAIR & PARTLY CLOUDY 9:40 - 10:20
• Need for the creators: a full support for built-in billing solution
• With the cloud promise, game designers won't have to worry on leaving gamers behind, because everything is connected
• Think game as something bigger, not only running locally
• Beware of customer acquisition policy from publishers, there is a huge risk to split communities as no links are permitted between those systems (ps, xbox, apple)
PUBLISHER PERSPECTIVES ON CLOUD GAMING
11:10 - 12:10
• Cloud is the remote execution of games (companion/service)
• AAA is sexy, but cloud should be also for family and kids
• Should be a bridge tech, and deliver smartly content to players
• Publishers a now reactively retrofitting, we need to pro-actively make games with cloud in mind
• The games are now not only an experience, but a platform
HOW ARE NETWORKS EVOLVING TO MAKE CLOUD GAMING EXPONENTIALLY MORE ACCESSIBLE?
12:10 - 12:50
• Leveraging the video stream is the easy part. Biggest challenge will be on IPtv because of huge latency issues
• Cloud services is the perfect application in design, thanks to low cost and unique exchanges between gamers
• Client acquisition costs and operations costs are not accessible for the moment. Focus first on value proposition to optimize your ROI calculation.
CLOUD GAMING IN CHINA 12:50 - 13:05
• Market: 380M mobile, 400M tablets and 20M iptv
• Could Union is the largest service in the country. Multiple terminal and OS support
• Pricing: from free to single games, with 70% to publisher. We are running full games not demos. Including BI, smart bit rate.
• Virtualization OS manages multiple game instances on a single machine. VOS tech does video/audio and inputs
BUILDING A STRONG BRAND IMAGE IN CLOUD GAMING
14:40 - 15:10
• Returning churn by taking action: Medio predictive analytics
• Personalized experience drives lifts in usage and engagement
• Plan: data+, acquire better users, be data-driven
RAPID EXPANSION OF CLOUD GAMING: WHO ARE THE NEW PLAYERS?
15:10 - 15:30
• This is dangerous to lower the quality of the game to be able to go through the cloud streaming service. For the moment, publishers focuses on new content delivery
• Hybrid technologies is a good compromise, between cloud downloads and local game installs
• The availability of high-speed internet is not good enough to switch fully from local to cloud pixel streaming games
TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN CLOUD GAMING
15:30 - 16:00
• Ray tracing: algorithm to create images, physically based on light rays, programming easier. Cloud gaming since 2004
• Intel xeon phi prototype for ray traced (reference quake3 and Wolfenstein. Cloud setup, support for up to 8 cards / machine
• Scaling to thin clients, linear dependent on screen resolution, and linear dependent on frames per second.
• Voxel rendering: research from sven woop, millions of trees, billions of grass and plants. Photo realistic rendering.
THANK YOU!Questions: @jmarchadier