In these past few months some of the biggest gaming news have been centered around the ongoing chaos over at Xbox. Whether it’s the release of Redfall being a hot mess of boring gameplay and poor performance, the jaw dropping showcase of Starfield, or the big story for today, the (teased) acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

A lot of people have been talking about it from different sides, the business of it all, what it would mean for Activision Blizzard as a studio, the consumer’s possible fears and of course, the issue of UK industry competition analysts blocking Xbox’s path of conquest. I mean a move like this by Xbox’s part does feel like when Disney just started buying companies left and right in Hollywood.

But there’s too much big business talk, industry standards, competition, market monopoly over cloud services and those kinds of BuzzFeed clickbait words. And yes, there are a lot of concerns as to what it would mean for Xbox to add Activision Blizzard to their lineup of owned studios. I mean they already have Bethesda studios, it’s no small thing to own the creators of Elder Scrolls, Fallout and the upcoming Starfield. And now imagine that plus Call of Duty, Word of Warcraft and Overwatch. Now that’s heavy hitting.

But again, this is all just mumbo jumbo industry talk. What could Xbox buying Activision actually mean for the regular gamer, or even for the non-gamer people out there that just like playing Mario Kart with their friends or downloading a mobile game from time to time.

Well, there might not be any immediate reaction or big change, but in the long run this could be a BIG change. This entry is going to be a little different from my dumb rants and story time shenanigans, but bear with me. I’ll still try to make it a light read.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CLOUD MAN!

The cloud. Such a millennial concept, absolutely revolutionary and frustratingly annoying to deal with at times – just like millennials (according to boomers). The introduction of “cloud based” services kinda creeped up on us and we didn’t really notice until it was too late. Almost every platform nowadays uses some form of cloud system, be it for storing messages and files with Google Drive, keeping a backup of everything in your devices with iCloud or just streaming movies with Netflix. Everything exists in the cloud whether you want it or not.

And honestly for a lot of these things it’s awesome. Being able to access work files from anywhere or watching a YouTube video on your phone to then stream into your TV, the existence of the Cloud is amazing. But it also depends heavily on your internet speed and access, which can be pretty annoying. 

We all hate sitting like idiots in front of the TV watching the little loading circle in the corner, while the episode we were watching froze up during the most intense scene.

But that’s mostly fine, you know? You can just give it a few seconds, wait until your roommate gets off the FaceTime call with their girlfriend and enjoy the smooth play of your movie. But if you’ve ever played an online game, the internet getting slow and the game freezing up is a biiiit more annoying than a YouTube video getting stuck.

The famous “lag” doesn’t come from an evil wizard in the headquarters of your internet service provider, stopping to ponder his orb and screwing your kill streak, it happens because the connection speed with the servers somewhere in China got slow and now you’re stuck running into a wall for 2 minutes. In other words, the cloud got cloudy and your game didn’t know hat to do.

So far the gaming experience hasn’t been THAT much influenced by the cloud -other than online gaming- and streaming services, at least not like the mainstream media being taken over by YouTube and Netflix. Cloud services have only really been a part of things like having Steam games save files stored in a cloud, making them accessible from any computer, or digitally downloading games on a console and having the game data backed up in the cloud or stuff like that.

Even with online gaming, that is only a small online connection, you’re not streaming the game into your console. Rendering graphics, sending and receiving information about your inputs, the heavy lifting of gaming is done by the console you own, not a mystical wizard pondering his orb and magically rendering your game at 60 frames per second in ultra high definition. 

Although that might start changing.

PLAY FROM ANYWHERE YOU WANT!!! WELL, SORT OF…

At some point during the first years of life of the PS4, Sony introduced the Remote Play option, which allowed PlayStation owners to stream their consoles to a computer or mobile phone – although let’s forget about the mobile phone part – allowing them to play without having to actually use a TV. Are your siblings or roommates using the TV and you want to play some Bloodborne? Worry not, now you can lock yourself in your room and play on your computer that can’t even run Minecraft. Well… as long as your internet connection is stable that is.

This was one of the first times where the idea of playing a video game streamed from  somewhere else was pulled off. Playing on a console that is not in the same room as you seemed pretty neat, and honestly it is. I had to share a TV with two older sisters who were, for some reason, more interested in watching a movie than watching me play video games for hours. Insane, I know.

And then you know, things kept moving, internet connections got better and faster, more accessible wifi, better technology and eventually, in 2019, Google released the first – at least official – game streaming platform: Google Stadia. This would be the first big game streaming service in the market, it would be the Netflix of gaming! Or so they said…

Just like Netflix, Stadia’s idea was that by paying a monthly subscription – and buying an extremely overpriced special controller and TV dongle – you could access Google Stadia’s gaming catalog and play any of their games, anywhere you had an internet connection. No need to have a super powerful computer or buy a PlayStation or Xbox, you could just load up Stadia on your computer or TV via the dongle, browse the games catalog just like you would browse Netflix’s, and then just start gaming.

It was a pretty cool concept, more so because it came at a time when games, consoles and gaming PCs started to be a bit more expensive, and most times you would have to think through what new game you wanted to buy, because let’s be honest, buying every new game that comes out nowadays is a big hit to the wallet.

And a few systems like Stadia already kind of sort of existed. PlayStation had the free monthly games for PS Plus subscribers, letting you add that months game to your game library and download anytime you wanted to play it – as long as you had an active subscription – and you also had the Xbox game pass, which allowed you to access a huge catalog of games by paying a monthly subscription. 

Game Pass was closer to what Stadia proposed, the idea that you had access to the complete Game Pass collection with the subscription was better than Sony’s chosen route of “claim it while you can” monthly game. But in both cases, you still needed to own an Xbox or PlayStation console, and while $10 bucks a month for a big catalog of games is cool, $350+ dollars for a new gaming console to play that catalog of games is not what I would call “a steal”.

THE WIZARDS ARE COMING…

Stadia proposed a service that would make gaming more accessible and consumer friendly, you wouldn’t need to spend hundreds of dollars just to play 1 game on the new console, you could just pay a Stadia subscription and play away your heart. Whether you want to play a new game or you just want to try multiple games you missed on in past years, Stadia made it easier and cheaper than ever before.

And other companies also saw the possibilities this could bring. In 2022 Amazon started their own game streaming service called Luna, Xbox Game Pass also started offering streaming to computers and mobile devices and Sony… well Sony didn’t really do much, but other companies started to dabble in game streaming apps. Moonlight, Steam Connect, Castor, Nvidia with GeForce Now, there are plenty of options out there for game streaming.

Right about now you might be thinking “But how is Xbox buying Activision Blizzard important to all of this?” or “What were those weird orb pondering jokes from before?”. Well, the answers to those questions are more connected than you think.

At the end of last year, Google announced that they would be shutting down all Stadia services during the first quarter of 2023, making all of the novelty Stadia hardware useless and thousands of people losing not only access to their games, but also losing save files, bought in-game content and just all around the ability to play games.

This would be like someone coming into your house before Netflix existed and taking all of your DVDs, satellite antennas and cables, leaving you with a useless controller and a TV that only shows a static screen. 

This represented a loss so big for some people that Google got hit with multiple lawsuits because, with Stadia shutting down, they wouldn’t be returning any of the money spent on their platform, because oh yeah I forgot, while Stadia offered free access to certain games with a subscription, you still had to buy specific games at FULL PRICE in order to play them. 

Again imagine buying a physical copy of a game or a movie at Walmart, and then a few months later a Walmart employee comes into your house and takes it because they’re closing the store. Shifty deal if you ask me.

And with the fall of Stadia other companies might try to fill the hole that Google created. It clearly showed there’s a market for game streaming platforms and that it is possible. People are more used to paying a subscription for access to a catalog of streamed goods, and like the gaming company always does… if movies can do it, why not games?

Xbox already has a pretty good grasp in the gaming subscription world with Game Pass. The catalog of games offered by Xbox is already a chunky one and they can be played with or without owning a brand new Xbox as long as you have a decent computer, a stable internet connection and a subscription to Game Pass. So what would happen if some of the biggest IPs joined that lineup?

Activision Blizzard owns some of the biggest names in gaming, Overwatch, Call of Duty, Diablo and World of Warcraft only to name a few. Most of those games are sold for almost every console, but Call of Duty alone is one of the biggest game franchises and sells millions of copies every year for Playstation, Xbox and PC alike. It really doesn’t matter what console you own, you can probably play it. But that’s the thing, you still need a console.

Now let me ask you this, when the PlayStation 6 and Xbox 5000 come out and you want to play the new Call of Duty, if you are given the option between paying $600+ for a console or paying a $15 monthly subscription to play the same game plus another 50 games, which would you choose? And what if by paying that subscription you could also play those games on your phone or tablet? Or download an app in your grandparents house and log into your account to play there?

Well, I think that’s what Xbox is aiming for with this deal. And look, they’re going to do it whether or not the deal goes through, that’s just the future of gaming and Xbox knows it, but if they can have the orb pondering wizards of World of Warcraft and Diablo IV joining their ranks, that’s going to be a bigger deal.

Activision Blizzard owns big games that right now aren’t associated with any one specific console, and Xbox is promising to keep it that way. But giving your competitor access to the game doesn’t mean that you can’t offer a deal so good, that people are going to prefer giving their money to you instead of them.

ONE PLATFORM TO RULE THEM ALL

I’m going to assume that, like most of us, you pay multiple streaming platform subscriptions every month just to enjoy cool content. I don’t know about you, but sometimes it’s pretty annoying to keep track of all the subscriptions I have. Netflix, Spotify, HBO Max, Crunchyroll, dang dude, there are just so many. 

Wouldn’t it be nice to just pay for one big platform that puts all of your favorite platforms into one single app or service? Yeah, welcome to pay per view cable buddy. And wouldn’t it also be cool to have a service like that, but for all video games?

Those cable TV services like Sky or Dish where you paid to have access to ESPN, Disney Channel and MTV are about to have a comeback by putting all the streaming platforms in one place and charging for access to all of them. Movies and tv shows have already made the jump to streaming, and it seems pretty clear to me that gaming will follow shortly.

With a global economy on the verge of collapse, it’s harder to own a shiny new gaming console or PC, or own anything really. Gaming can be a pretty expensive hobby and I don’t think it’s going to get any cheaper, but maybe cheaper alternatives like what Stadia proposed will start arriving.

Xbox is leading the charge already on this front and it can be awesome, hell I would love to be able to play all the latest games coming out for the PS5 or Xbox Series S, but I don’t have the money to buy a console, so if I can pay a monthly subscription to play them, count me in.

The only problem I have with this is the previously mentioned problem of the Walmart employee coming in to take away my copy of Bee Movie. I like owning stuff, you know? And I love hooking up my old GameCube and playing the games that I bought years and years ago, so what if I want to replay a game I bought digitally but Sony decided to take it out of the play store? Well, just like Stadia locking their users out of everything they thought they owned, it was never theirs… so, tough shit I guess.

I think the future of game streaming is awesome and makes cool games more accessible, but also gives too much power to companies like Xbox to one day just flip a switch and oops, you can no longer play old Call of Duty games, better buy that new one. 

People might rage about it and fight back, but at the end of the day what can they do? They agreed to the terms of service and I’m sure somewhere in there it says something confusing about them being able to do that at any moment.

We get mad when Netflix takes down a TV show or a movie because they no longer own the rights, or just because they canceled the show. You are mad for a week until you find a new show to rewatch for the twentieth time, and then you keep going with your life. 

But what will happen when Xbox becomes the Netflix of gaming and they decide to take down a beloved game from the only place where you can play it? I don’t know about you, but I think angry gamers have a worse track record than fans of Too Hot to Handle when it comes to defending things they like.

Game streaming is upon us and it will be big when it is done correctly and smoothly. Xbox might be the one doing it and the Activision Blizzard deal could be, well, a big deal in the console wars.

I just hope that this doesn’t mean the end of physical game copies or digital storefronts – it probably won’t be – so I’ll leave with this: if there’s a game that you want to be able to play for years to come, don’t trust on companies to keep the game running on digital stores and maybe buy it physically. God knows I regret not keeping my physical copy of Viva Piñata.