- Amazon’s gaming boss believes ballooning hardware prices could push more hardcore gamers towards cloud streaming services
- He claimed that the price of consoles increasing by ‘six, seven times’ would mean some gamers being ‘priced out of the market’
- He believes that the RAM crisis and rising prices will not ‘go away right now’
Amazon’s GM of gaming, Jeff Gattis, believes that the rising cost of consoles and PC components could push more hardcore gamers towards cloud streaming via services like Amazon’s own Luna.
In a recent interview about the service, I asked if Gattis expects cloud gaming to become a more popular option for core gamers as traditional systems become much more expensive.
“Yes. I wouldn’t have said that 18 months ago, and I would 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 seeing the Steam Machine prices and the PlayStation and Xbox rumors. When you get to $1,000, $1,500 hardware […] you’re going to see more people priced out of the market. They will 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 someone the other day that when I was back on Xbox a few years ago, we had our Series S console on sale [for a] holiday. I think it was around $199. To think about a two to three year time frame, we’ve gone from $200 to what will probably be six, seven times that price.
“I understand it’s a RAM crisis, it’s worldwide, but I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon.”
However, he was careful to clarify that hardcore gamers moving to the cloud is not a core part of Amazon’s strategy: “It’s not our strategy to accelerate it, but it’s a nice tailwind if it happens, and it’s realistic to think it could be.”
The comments come as Amazon rolls out a Fire TV update that allows Amazon Prime subscribers to stream games such as Fallout 4 or Fortnite directly from Prime Video via Luna in an attempt to get more eyes on the service.
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