- Amazon’s gaming chief believes rising hardware prices could push more hardcore gamers toward cloud streaming services
- He argued that raising the price of consoles “six, seven times” would mean some gamers would be “locked out of the market.”
- He believes that the RAM crisis and rising prices will not “go away anytime soon.”
Amazon gaming CEO Jeff Gattis believes the rising cost of consoles and PC components could push more hardcore gamers toward cloud streaming, through services like Amazon’s own Luna.
In a recent interview about the service, I asked if Gattis anticipates cloud gaming becoming a more popular option for mainstream gamers as traditional systems become much more expensive.
“Yes. I wouldn’t have said that 18 months ago, and I will say that our business model is not really based on this massive shift where everyone is handing over their consoles and PCs and moving to the cloud,” he said.
“But gosh, when you start looking at Steam Machine prices and the rumors about PlayStation and Xbox. As you get to $1,000, $1,500 worth of hardware […] You will see more people who are out of the market because of the price. “They are going to consider other technologies.”
Gattis, who previously led platform and subscriptions at Xbox, shared an anecdote to illustrate how much prices have increased.
“I was telling someone the other day that when I returned to Xbox a couple of years ago, we had our Series S console on sale. [for a] holiday. I think it was around $199. To think that in a span of two or three years we have gone from $200 to what will probably be six or seven times that price.
“I understand it’s a RAM crisis, it’s global, but I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon.”
However, he was careful to clarify that moving hardcore players to the cloud is not a core part of Amazon’s strategy: “It’s not our strategy to accelerate that, but it’s a nice tailwind if it happens, and it’s realistic to think it could happen.”
The comments come as Amazon releases a Fire TV update that gives Amazon Prime subscribers the ability to stream games like consequences 4 either fortnite directly from Prime Video via Luna in a bid to bring more attention to the service.
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