The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

[SilentBtAmazing]

Anyone hear about the new service EA is launching on XBox Live? Subscription service mirroring the PS+ thing. For $5 a month (or $30 for a whole year) you get access to some games and a 10% discount on all EA DLC and micro-transactions.

Point the first: The beta of the project consists of FIFA 14, Madden 25, Peggle 2, and Battlefield 4 - all of those games people are most likely to have anyway (for the target audience; I doubt video game enthusiasts are gonna be on board).

Point the second: How much digital content would you have to buy for a 10% discount to be worth it, narrowed solely on one publisher's games for one console?

I don't like any of this. It cements something I pointed out when the XB1 was revealed - that EA and MS are strange bedfellows over the XB1. This is all a bad move for EA, because they're putting so many of their eggs in a basket that is losing momentum (to illustrate, last month sales of Watch_Dogs for the X360 outsold XB1 units).

I basically disagree with all of this. I don't own FIFA, I own an Xbox One, and I am interested in several upcoming EA titles. Why wouldn't $30 for FIFA and some preview / discount stuff seem like a good deal to someone in my situation?

Also I know that it's a given around here that Xbone is doomed but everyone thought the same of the original Xbox back then too. Xbone's future is really uncertain but Sony's salty response to this announcement makes you think they perceive it as a threat.

On this weeks Rebel FM, one of those guys basically interpreted Sonys reaction as their nervousness about Microsoft being willing to step out as a middle man and pointed out that eventually Xbone could become a platform where that is a more common practice. It's not inconceivable, even if you don't agree with it.

Also this doesn't seem anything like the PS virtual rental service based on my limited knowledge of two programs I have not used personally

(Edited because prematurely submitted on my phone)

[Merus]

So Twitch started muting streams that contained copyright audio - including their own stream, and most video games with music. They also announced that streams will be archived for two weeks, at which point they'll be deleted.

 

I can't help but think that Twitch just committed corporate suicide. It looks like people are migrating to Hitbox, or maybe Ustream.

[miffy495]

Huh. Good thing I watched all the IT streams when summer started. I had a good 3 months of catching up to do, which would not exist by the time I got around to watching them under twitch's new policies.

[Murdoc]

 can't help but think that Twitch just committed corporate suicide. It looks like people are migrating to Hitbox, or maybe Ustream.

Until google potentially buys them too.

[Merus]

If Twitch starts hemorrhaging users, would Google still buy them? That's the question. 

[Golden Calf]

I'm pretty sure the deal's already been done.

 

Plus, I think they're after their technology more than their userbase. Youtube doesn't have a userbase problem.

[Gormongous]

I think they're after their technology more than their userbase. Youtube doesn't have a userbase problem.

Well, they have a big userbase problem, just not one acknowledged by them.

[Golden Calf]

Well, they have a big userbase problem, just not one acknowledged by them.

 

Haha fair enough. Twitch has it even worse in that department, so I guess it's a match made in heaven.

[Merus]

I'm pretty sure the deal's already been done.

 

Plus, I think they're after their technology more than their userbase. Youtube doesn't have a userbase problem.

 

I thought YouTube's streaming was pretty good, though.

[Henroid]

Yeah I have no idea what that Twitch shit was all about today. None of it makes any sense to me, it really does feel like they don't understand what made them popular.

 

 

Oh, sure. For much of its life it stuck with basic online purchases. It wasn't until later that the added Plus, more ads and other things to beef up its revenue, which was a good move from a biz standpoint. I guess I wanted to point out that online infrastructure for a game platform is more constly to maintain than most people would guess, and that might be one of the motivations for Sony to charge so much for Now. Or maybe it's just miscalculation. Or greed. Whichever.

 

(This is Cloudeagle, by the way.)

 

 

Oh sweet, heya Cloud.

 

I definitely agree about the cost. It's something I've argued with people about in the past regarding XBL. People are furious that Gold is a subscription but still gets ads. They think it's absolutes of one or the other, without taking into consideration the substantially low yearly-cost of subscription. It at best minimizes ad appearance. If XBL went all-ad for revenue or at least operational cost, well, people would be standing up constantly saying, "McDonald's!"

 

As for Sony though, I think this is greed. They're on the road to recovery with the PS4 and it feels like they're impatient about rebuilding their brand name.

[osmosisch]

If Twitch starts hemorrhaging users, would Google still buy them? That's the question.

I'd estimate that this manoeuvre was caused by the Google takeover. They've been doing this sort of thing on Youtube for ages now, right?

The archive thing is baffling at first sight but that too could be a Google move, to more clearly delineate their brands (twitch for streaming, yt for watching archived things)

[Gormongous]

The archive thing is baffling at first sight but that too could be a Google move, to more clearly delineate their brands (twitch for streaming, yt for watching archived things)

 

Which would be great if they were interconnected, as in a full Google account allows Twitch plays to be automatically converted into and stored as YouTube videos permanently, but Google's not been as good as it used to be about making sure all its services actually talk with each other in sensible ways.

[Nachimir]

Google have become pretty terrible at design. There are so many google products that used to work well, and nowadays I feel like I have to fight with the design because it's demanding ever increasing bandwidth, or it's unstable, or it pesters me and can't disable mobile notifications without disabling all desktop ones, or Chrome can only use the higher powered GPU on my laptop; reducing battery life from eight to three hours, etc.

 

My favourite is this: near the end of a youtube video, I'll tend to start reading the description. When the video actually ends, I'm partway through reading and it automatically swaps the description pane out for the SHARE IT. PLEASE SHARE IT PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE pane, which isn't annoying at all.

 

I'm incredulous at the Twitch thing. It's breathtakingly dumb, and if Twitch keep doing the big stands they've had at trade and consumer shows for the past year or so, it's going to look even dumber.

[SecretAsianMan]

I don't watch very many live streams so the Twitch thing doesn't directly bother me but I understand the sentiment going around.  One thing I did see mentioned somewhere is that this might be a potential opportunity for the indie scene to gain ground if they implement their terms of use properly.  I would be amused to see indie games being marketed in a way that makes sure to mention they can be streamed without muting their audio.

[Bjorn]

I think the reaction to this is kind of silly.  If you read Twitch's announcement, the archival thing makes total sense:

 

We also discovered that 80% of our storage capacity is filled with past broadcasts that are never watched. That’s multiple petabytes for video that no one has ever viewed.

 

Who thinks it's a good idea for Twitch to archive a billion hours of footage that no one is ever going to watch?  It's not really on them to store, for free, every gripping minute of your 183 hour pursuit of every feather in Assassin's Creed. 

 

Paid subscribers get 60 days of unlimited storage.  Twitch does have to make money, and it makes sense for a premium feature to be greater flexibility in storage.  Permanent archival still exists as well.  You can store highlights forever, and highlights can be up to 2 hours long.  It's a poorly named feature.  And there is a (currently broken) YouTube exporter to make archiving on YT easier. 

 

 

My favourite is this: near the end of a youtube video, I'll tend to start reading the description. When the video actually ends, I'm partway through reading and it automatically swaps the description pane out for the SHARE IT. PLEASE SHARE IT PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE pane, which isn't annoying at all.

 

I hate that, so much. 

[Nachimir]

Ah, I was talking about the implementation Content ID and muting streams.

 

Content ID is not bad tech, and has a bunch of uses for rights holders, platform holders and viewers. For instance, I was really annoyed in the early 90s that my TV couldn't tell me what song was playing, and we have the tech to solve it now. Instead, Twitch have plumbed it into auto-mute, which is really dumb and doesn't solve rightsholder royalties or user access to music for videos. We have the tools to solve these thing intelligently, rather than just trigger a load of false positives while sweeping the problem under the carpet.

 

Edit: It's like using a bottle opener to open beer by smashing the bottles.

[Wordherder]

Looks like Sony's grand experiement is over:

 

In a notice released today, Sony Computer Entertainment said that it will end support for Playstation Mobile on Android devices.

 

The service, which allowed users to purchase and play games, will continue to exist, and those who use a Playstation certified Android device running OS 4.4.2 will be able to use the application with no issues. Users who decide to upgrade to OS 4.4.3 or later may begin to encounter errors, such as not being able to access the store. According to a FAQ found in the notice, the upcoming Android L OS won't have any access to the store.

A firm reason for the end of support was not given, however SCE notes that it's looking to focus efforts on the Playstation Vita ecosystem. Last week Sony released update 1.75 for the PS4 which added, among other things, 3D Blu-Ray playback for the console.

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/08/06/sony-to-end-playstation-mobile-support-on-android

 

Huh. I know that Sony truly whiffed the service's first incarination (Playstation Suite) with little support. Did the same thing happen with Playstation Mobile?

[Bjorn]

Ah, I was talking about the implementation Content ID and muting streams.

 

Content ID is not bad tech, and has a bunch of uses for rights holders, platform holders and viewers. For instance, I was really annoyed in the early 90s that my TV couldn't tell me what song was playing, and we have the tech to solve it now. Instead, Twitch have plumbed it into auto-mute, which is really dumb and doesn't solve rightsholder royalties or user access to music for videos. We have the tools to solve these thing intelligently, rather than just trigger a load of false positives while sweeping the problem under the carpet.

 

Edit: It's like using a bottle opener to open beer by smashing the bottles.

 

Yeah, I was responding specifically to the archival thing, which people are equally up in arms about it seems.

 

It's worth noting that actual streams are not affected by the auto-mute, only archived video.  It's still bad, but not as bad as some people have reported.  They also killed Justin.tv and just mass deleted everything with little warning. 

 

I'm kind of agreeing with this take, that these moves are the results of panic, not getting ready to be acquired by Google.  The Google deal fell though, or is increasingly likely to fall through, and Twitch is hemorrhaging money. 

[JonCole]

I just think the content ID stuff is shitty because it takes a false positive-heavy tool and indiscriminately executes punishment based on it. When I say false positive, I mean not just in terms of this music was misidentified, but also that some stuff is being muted even if the original music wasn't licensed to any music publishers to begin with.

 

Who thinks it's a good idea for Twitch to archive a billion hours of footage that no one is ever going to watch?  It's not really on them to store, for free, every gripping minute of your 183 hour pursuit of every feather in Assassin's Creed. 

 

Paid subscribers get 60 days of unlimited storage.  Twitch does have to make money, and it makes sense for a premium feature to be greater flexibility in storage.  Permanent archival still exists as well.  You can store highlights forever, and highlights can be up to 2 hours long.  It's a poorly named feature.  And there is a (currently broken) YouTube exporter to make archiving on YT easier. 

 

I don't think anyone thinks it's a good idea, put that way. But when everything that's supposed to make that decision make sense is broken or poorly documented, then people get pissed off "irrationally". Also, potential solution - when Twitch is officially acquired by Google, maybe they can make it so you can link your Google Drive account to your Twitch account so that you can control exactly how much space is allocated to archiving and it manages that space dynamically based on resolution/bitrate preferences and the amount of Drive space you pay for.

[Henroid]

My only criticism of the archiving change is that they don't allow for indefinite storage for their partners / people that pay. I'm sure that 80% of unwatched archived content is from free users. The people paying into Twitch probably have the most worthwhile content to watch from an archive. But I guess the answer I'm asking for would've been discriminatory in some fashion.

 

And speaking of non-discriminatory actions, back to the discussion about the auto-mute content ID system! So, 30 minute lockout of audio. What's the average length of music that's copyrighted again? I forget. It sure as hell isn't a half hour per song.

[JonCole]

Have you heard the new 30 minute Kanye track? It's CRAAAAAY

[JonCole]

Twitch is doing a AMA on Reddit - http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2cwfu2/i_am_twitch_ceo_emmett_shear_ask_me_almost/

 

Conclusions thus far:

• 30 minute muting is due to "scan resolution" and will be reduced as they refine their algorithms. So I guess whatever software they're using is fairly imprecise.
• They are planning to actually identify why something was flagged, which isn't the case now lol?
• They are also planning to make sure there is no original music flagged (wtf, why is this happening at all?)
• There is currently no formal appeals process in place for reversing the takedowns - your only avenue is to "send [them] a counter-notification that is compliant with the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”)" to [email protected], whatever the hell that means.
• They insist that this tech will never come to live streams.

In other words, they implemented a piece of shit system and plan to improve it to a tolerable level of give and take in some indeterminate amount of time.

 

Also, prolific streamer Cosmowright weighs in, including on why highlights are insufficient - http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2cwfu2/i_am_twitch_ceo_emmett_shear_ask_me_almost/cjjo9e0

[Twig]

Also, prolific streamer Cosmowright weighs in, including on why highlights are insufficient - http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2cwfu2/i_am_twitch_ceo_emmett_shear_ask_me_almost/cjjo9e0

Ouch. Not only did Twitch respond to his question with non-answers, the non-answer got downvoted to oblivion.

[Merus]

See, there are ways to get around the storage problem. For video that almost no-one watches, you can put it on high-density archive tape, for instance. When someone goes looking for it, you say 'hang on, gotta get it out of the archives'.

 

I think it's worth pointing out how Reddit solved their cashflow problems. They lost money for a long time, which they eventually solved by putting a meter on the front page showing premium membership sales, and how much they needed per day to be able to grow. (People are able to gift a month of premium membership to others for specific posts, which are specially marked.)

[Ucantalas]

I think it's worth pointing out how Reddit solved their cashflow problems. They lost money for a long time, which they eventually solved by putting a meter on the front page showing premium membership sales, and how much they needed per day to be able to grow. (People are able to gift a month of premium membership to others for specific posts, which are specially marked.)

Even cooler is, when you get gifted some it shows exactly how much server time was covered by that gift. One month of Reddit Gold is approximately 231 minutes of server time for the website.