[jabbany]

Right! That's the problem with streaming services today: it's not a better experience for many people/use cases when it comes to consuming games. It only really works for someone who (1) plays mostly popular AAA titles as soon as they come out, (2) who plays _a lot_ of games relatively regularly, and (3) is OK with losing access to older games eventually. Clearly these people exist but I don't think there are that many of them...

I'm a very casual consumer of games (I play a mix of big popular titles as well as small niche indie titles) and Steam is an amazing experience for me compared to all the alternatives. I can get games during discount events and play them when I have time, knowing that the games in my library will be there available for me to download even years into the future on whatever PC device I happen to have then should I want to re-experience them. Having a monthly streaming service makes no sense to this kind of use case where (1) games are diverse (2) usage is bursty not regular (3) on-demand access to old titles is desired.

I think one way to get more people onto streaming, is to, like mentioned above, (1) make available a new pay-per-use $/hr model as an alternative to subscription, (2) keep the roster constant, do not cycle games out every month, cycle them out every decade if you have to, and (3) use actual compute pricing for the actual type of compute used: games that need a high-performance GPU? charge cloud GPU prices, indie titles that can run on a potato? aim for just CPU instance prices.

Of course this is never going to happen. The industry is hungry for that sweet, sweet, MRR. Nobody* is selling perpetual licenses anymore. It's all about showing that you have perpetual faucets of revenue these days.