The online gaming market keeps growing bigger and bigger! From the classic Solitaire – www.solitairemasters.net – to the hi-tech contemporary games, people of all ages just love playing online games. The burgeoning revenue in the online games market is estimated to reach US$23.582 billion in 2021.
With a huge gaming market in the backdrop, there seems to be no end to the feud that exists between Facebook and Apple. This was further made obvious as Facebook launched cloud on Monday on Android and web, but failed to add a version for iOS users.
Citing “arbitrary” Apple policies, the social media behemoth announced both web and Android users can try free-to-play games in seconds without exiting the platform. Per CNBC, users can play a game streamed from Facebook’s data centers without first downloading the game onto their devices.
Of course there has to be a better explanation given to iOS users other than using its policies as excuses. “We don’t want people going to web Facebook 20 times a day. We have a great app,” Rubin said. “We would have to use Apple’s technology and browser on iOS, and that isn’t optimized to the benefit of cloud games.”
Lately, Apple tweaked its guidelines as regards its gaming services. The tech giant said that apps could offer a subscription to multiple games, but each game, however, needs to be approved by Apple and in its own app.
A couple of months ago, The New York Times reported that Facebook was introducing an in-app for gaming. The app according to NYT, is designed for creating and watching live gameplay. The app is expected to be launched this Monday, and signifies the company’s bold step at moving into the mainstream of online gaming.
The initial plan was to release the free app in June this year, but was brought forward because of the huge opportunity presented by the lockdown being embarked upon by virtually every country around the world.
“We’re seeing a big rise in gaming during quarantine,” said Fidji Simo, head of the Facebook app per NYT. Without a doubt, the global gaming business is booming, and Facebook does not want to miss out on this great opportunity to improve its income badly hit by low patronage in the area of digital ads.
Facebook’s gaming app has a feature called “Go Live” that allows users to upload streams of other mobile games on the same device by pressing a couple of buttons. Uploaded streams can then be shared to a friend’s personal Facebook page. This will make it easier for people to become amateur streamers—something that is not common to what we have in Amazon’s Twitch. “There are a lot of people who listen to music and say, ‘I can imagine myself being a musician,’” said Vivek Sharma, Facebook’s vice president for gaming. “People are watching streams and they’re like, ‘I want to be a streamer,’ and with Go Live it’s literally just a few clicks and then live, you’re a streamer.”
