The days of shelling out hundreds of pounds for a dedicated console may be numbered, according to Amazon's head of gaming Jeff Gattis, who has predicted that rising hardware costs will drive more players to stream their games online.
In an interview with the BBC, Gattis argued that as technology improves and the price of consoles and gaming PCs climbs – Sony and Microsoft have increased console prices, and Valve's new Steam Machine starts at £879 – more people will question whether they need that dedicated device. "As hardware becomes more expensive, and as streaming technology continues to improve, I think you'll naturally see more people asking whether they actually need that dedicated device," he said.
“Amazon's Jeff Gattis says rising hardware costs will push gamers towards cloud streaming, as Luna integrates into Prime Video.”
Cloud gaming, which allows users to stream titles from remote servers onto phones, tablets or controllers without downloading, has long been touted as the future. But previous efforts have stumbled, most notably Google Stadia, which shut down in 2023 after failing to gain traction. Despite Sony and Microsoft offering cloud gaming as part of their subscriptions, most players still prefer installing games on their own machines.
Gattis believes there is a huge untapped audience beyond traditional console owners. "There are somewhere between two-and-a-half and three billion people who play games around the world, but only a fraction of those own dedicated gaming hardware," he noted. Streaming, he argued, could help those unwilling to spend hundreds or thousands on a console or PC.
Amazon's own cloud gaming service, Luna, already comes with a Prime subscription, but until now it has largely existed as a separate destination. The company has now announced it is integrating Luna into the Prime Video app – users on Fire TVs in the US and UK will find a "Games" tab alongside shows and films.
Christopher Dring, editor-in-chief of The Game Business, said there is likely an audience for high-end games like the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 who are "put off by all the technical requirements". However, he cautioned that streaming still faces obstacles, including the fact that many high-end games require a controller, and that major publishers may be reluctant to embrace the subscription model due to its impact on traditional sales.