Google continues to try to disrupt the video game market with a new plan to offer ‘Playables” directly from its YouTube platform.
The company teased this via the YouTube help blog but offers few details on how the new offering will work or what game titles will be offered.
Earlier this year, Google closed down its streaming video game service Stadia after tepid interest from players.
That service competed with other streaming offerings like Sony’s Playstation Plus and Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming but failed to move the dial against these entrenched players.
This new strategy hints at Google’s desire to leverage YouTube’s massive 2.7 Billion user base to lock in usage beyond video streaming.
This has video game insiders worried.
Former Sony CEO Shawn Layden listed Google and Amazon as two of the biggest threats to the gaming industry.
Layden, speaking at the GamesIndustry.biz annual Investor’s Summit in Seattle, said that non-endemic players like Google represented ‘Barbarians at the Gate’ of the industry and threatened to reduce creativity and squeeze budgets of video game content makers.
The video game industry is a rich target for the big players with estimates of industry revenue exceeding $200 billion.
And yet Google has still not hit on a winning strategy to capture a significant portion of this cash cow.
It all comes down to content, and Google’s platforms and user bases don’t necessarily translate into good games that its users want to play.
Layden added that companies like Google ‘haven’t figured out that just having tech doesn’t mean you can make a game.’
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