- Amazon’s gaming boss thinks ballooning hardware prices could push more hardcore gamers towards cloud streaming services
- He argued that the price of consoles increasing by ‘six, seven times’ would mean some gamers become ‘priced out of the market’
- He thinks the RAM crisis, and rising prices, will not be ‘going away anytime soon’
Amazon GM of gaming Jeff Gattis thinks the rising cost of consoles and PC components could push more hardcore gamers towards cloud streaming, via services such as Amazon’s own Luna.
In a recent interview about the service, I asked whether Gattis anticipates cloud gaming becoming a more popular option for core players as traditional systems become much more expensive.
“Yeah. I wouldn’t have said that 18 months ago, and I will say our business model is not really predicated on this this massive shift where everybody turns in their consoles and PCs and comes over to cloud” he said.
“But gosh, when you start to see the prices of the Steam Machine and the rumors of PlayStation and Xbox. As you get to $1,000, $1,500 hardware […] you’re going to see more people that are priced out of the market. They’re going to consider other technologies”.
Gattis, who previously led platform and subscriptions at Xbox, went on to share an anecdote to illustrate just how much prices have risen.
“I was telling somebody the other day that when I was back at Xbox a couple of years ago, we had our Series S console on discount [for a] holiday. I think it was about $199. To think in a span of two to three years we’ve gone from $200 to what’s likely going to be six, seven times that price.
“I understand it’s a it’s a RAM crisis, it’s worldwide, but I don’t think that’s going away anytime soon.”
He was, however, careful to clarify that hardcore gamers moving to the cloud isn’t a core part of Amazon’s strategy: “It’s not our strategy to accelerate that, but it’s a nice tailwind if it does happen, and it’s realistic to think that it might.”
The comments come as Amazon rolls out a Fire TV update that gives Amazon Prime subscribers the ability to stream games like Fallout 4 or Fortnite from directly within Prime Video via Luna in a bid to get more eyes on the service.
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dash.wood@futurenet.com (Dashiell Wood)
