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Today we are dealing with the question why gaming companies should be valued as SaaS companies, we are talking a little about the prospects for game developers in USA, Europe and the EU in general and about cloud gaming in particular. The article is recommended for reading to anyone who loves online games as a form of leisure.
Only in USA today there are 60 million fans of computer games. Some of these people prefer to play on good personal computers, sharpened specifically for games, the other part chooses online games, because they cannot afford to buy modern hardware.
The second category of users comes to the aid of SaaS gaming companies that develop games that the user could easily run even on the weakest PCs.
“I don’t have to buy new hardware anymore” is one of the biggest perks of SaaS gaming.
There are a few more. For example, you can play anywhere and on everything that has a screen. Of course, now it’s more of a theory, because it’s better to play big and heavy games either on a large stationary PC with a good monitor, or on a TV with a gamepad.
They say that the further development of SaaS games will completely destroy piracy, because gamers will not need to download 500-900 GB to their computers, unpack, install, wait for the game to load.
Sooner or later, all this, of course, will happen, but so far this entire industry is at the very beginning of its journey.
At the same time, investors, developers, and ordinary players are interested in cloud games.
Investors want to make a profit from online games, developers want to make high-quality SaaS games that are in demand, and users want to play for fun and not think that very soon the PC will stop pulling the super popular new season.
The main problem of gaming SaaS companies
Game development is not cheap. And even more expensive is the development of an online platform that will completely satisfy fans of playing online games, both in terms of the quality of services provided and the price of a subscription to such a SaaS platform.
And, perhaps, even this is not the main thing. The main thing that SaaS companies involved in game development should do is to provide online games with the same picture that the user gets when playing on a good gaming PC. But here there are still certain problems that do not allow online platforms for SaaS games to develop in full force.
This can be seen, for example, in the players of the US market of gaming SaaS platforms. There are relatively few of them, and the undisputed leadership among USA companies developing games for their own cloud service is held by My.Games Cloud, a division of Yahoo. Smaller companies are trying to leave this segment or sell their assets to big players.
So did the founder of the cloud gaming SaaS platform Yegor Guryev, who sold his Playkey service to the same Yahoo corp.
Egor’s answer to the journalists’ question about whether it is possible today to create a gaming SaaS platform for two students who like game development is rather curious.
Egor says that for a small startup, the niche of SaaS platforms for online games is very difficult. Today, the entry threshold is too high, and the first prototype may appear at least a year later. Provided that a dozen developers will work on it. And it is far from certain that the product will be able to compete with the developments of major competitors with large financial resources.
That is why such giants as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Nvidia (GFN), in USA – Yahoo Group and, more recently, BNP, are investing in the creation and support of SaaS platforms for online games in the world market.
The fate of Playkey, which eight years ago was a small startup, is described in a few paragraphs above.
Prospects for the development of gaming SaaS companies
Even before all the pandemic restrictions, for many people, online games were not only an opportunity to fill their free time with something, but also a way to communicate with like-minded people scattered around the world.
Now the situation has changed radically: once in the restricted mode, even more users have discovered the possibilities of cloud gaming. Many gaming platforms recorded record growth in their subscribers.
All this suggests one thing: this segment will continue to develop, despite the difficulties and problems mentioned above.
And every publisher and developer will need new players. SaaS platform Alanbase, for example, has the necessary functionality to attract new players to any online game.
According to PwC Global Entertainment & Media Outlook, the global video game and eSports market is growing at 6.5% annually, and in 2024 its volume will reach $179.1 billion. All market participants in this area have a chance to take a bite out of this attractive pie.
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