alt Hacker NewsWhy do they keep stressing the "games you already bought!!!" part? There is no charge to play the game on your own hardware. This pricing is for renting the GPUs, same as GeForce Now and plenty of other services. And it's a pretty solid deal for people who don't want to build a multi-thousand dollar rig for gaming 10-20 hours a week.
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Because the model is diverged from the existing model Microsoft established via Game Pass, which made game streaming part of the licensing, not an add-on to purchasing.
Feels bad to buy an expensive piece of hardware, a $60+ game, and then be asked to pony up another hourly fee to play it on your tablet.
Of course, free game streaming was never a viable business model, so this isn't unexpected, but people aren't going to love the change either way.
Seriously! They're not charging you for the "streaming" or for the "game you already bought" -- they're charging you for renting the Xbox in the cloud that is running the game, the GPU.
I get that it was free before as part of a subscription, but now GPU's are more expensive. Nothing that you paid for up-front is being taken away. The subscription plans just changed is all.
> There is no charge to play the game on your own hardware.
well, unless you want to play some peer to peer multiplayer, then there is a sub you need to pay
> Why do they keep stressing the "games you already bought!!!" part?
Because they're trying to push a specific narrative.
10-20 hours a week is a lot of gaming. Was it suggested that was a small amount and not worth the investment to have an actual machine? 10-20hrs over a month is more in the realm of streaming imo.
I strongly suspect that 'gamers rise up' style campaigns are promoted by the same people who promote the WEF as a boogeyman.
Cannot wait for "they want you to pay for the gas to drive a car you already bought!"
In the case of Xbox, you'd get something comparable to Xbox Series X (or S in some situations). So it's hardly comparable to a multi-thousand dollar rig.
Yeah, it sounds like a reasonable deal to me.
> Why do they keep stressing the "games you already bought!!!" part? There is no charge to play the game on your own hardware.
Correct, that is why the "to stream games you bought" qualifier exists in the title :)
> There is no charge to play the game on your own hardware.
They want to eliminate that. AIs will open source their games otherwise.
Rentals are not solid deals. They are designed to hamper ownership and force you to rent forever. At least be honest and say you think monopolies should be able to make hardware artificially unaffordable so people are forced to pay subscription fees instead.
And then one generation from now there are no more hardware consoles and you are stuck streaming games from the cloud from your thin-client smart TV. Yet another joy of actually having a physical thing taken away from us, yet again.
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GeforceNow is actually a weird service - you don't only rent the GPU. Nvidia needs to have a licensing deal with the game publisher you want to play (the game you already own). They removed quite a lot of games, because big names like ActivisionBlizzard, 2K and Bethesda withdrew licensing agreements. If I only rent hardware, I don't think I need permission by the IP holder whose software I intend to run there.