Gavin Baker has recently posted a long series of tweets sharing some post-E3 thoughts focusing on focused mainly on things that are important for investments.
Gavin Baker, a former Fund Manager for Fidelity, has recently posted a long series of tweets sharing some post-E3 thoughts. He focused mainly on things that are important for investments, but it’s also a great take on the whole modern industry and the trends that will shape it.
Streaming is becoming a real thing with projects like Stadia, but Baker thinks that we’ll have to wait for it to have a significant business impact until mid 2020/early 2021. Projects and ideas need to mature, and that’s pretty logical. It’s all about the basic steps of technology acceptance — streaming is great and that’s the future, but people just need some time to accept the idea they don’t need to have a powerful stationary console.
Baker also noted that you shouldn’t compare game streaming and traditional services like Netflix. “The content “head” is dramatically more important in gaming vs. TV/movies where the “tail” is much more important. Movies from the 1970s and 1980s are likely viewed at over 10,000x the frequency at which games from the 1970s and 1980s are played. Older TV shows like the Office and Friends are top 10 streaming shows today.” Yes, we have “old” games like League of Legends and CS:GO, but they are being continuously updated, so that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Also, we can’t forget about the social aspect of games today – people want to play games with their friends.
Speaking about Stadia, Baker noted that it’s quite impressive, but publishers seem to use it just to get something from existing platforms. “Result is not enough “head” content today to succeed.”
Baker also shared some thoughts on the states of console wars:
Microsoft somehow repeated the mistakes of PS3, making Xbox One initially more expensive and less powerful with a worse value for gamers – that’s how the PlayStation team took a better share. Baker thinks that there will be no similar mistakes this time, “so share should be roughly stable.”
When it comes to cycles, they are becoming less relevant thanks to backwards compatibility, digital libraries and cross-platform play, plus there are mid-cycle upgrades like Xbox One X and PS4 Pro.
Baker appears to be a believer when it comes to the promises of 8k HDR gaming at 120 FPS:
What are your thoughts on the modern industry? What are the other important trends?