When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Heres how it works.
That doesn’t mean others haven’t tried.
Once upon a time,AmazonandGoogleboth looked to Windows PC as a way to expand their yearly revenue.
Steam sales were once the pinnacle of gaming.
At least, their former Vice President of Gaming is.
But ultimately, Goliath lost."
That is an interesting choice of words when you compare market share.
Steam sales were once the pinnacle of gaming.
We never validated our core assumptions before investing heavily in solutions.
When a person is happy, they don’t look elsewhere because something else is available.
Often, you’ll hear players chant that exclusives can make a platform more appetizing.
Remember this gem?
How well has that worked for Epic?
Every week, they give out new games while maintaining a modest amount of PC exclusives likeAlan Wake 2.
Some others timed, likeThe Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria.
Phil plotting Steam’s demise.
Despite these benefits, I haven’t seen a continental shift to theEpic Games Store.
Most of my friends admit they won’t even get free games from Epic because it’s on Epic.
So, what kind of chance did Amazon have?
We acquired Reflexive Entertainment (a small PC game store) and tried to scale it.
Then, after buying Twitch, we created our own PC games store.
Our assumption was that gamers would naturally buy from us because they were already using Twitch.
Again, they failed to capture an audience even with games dangling on a stick in front of gamers.
Twitch games, Amazon Prime freebies, and evenDiscordattempt this occasionally with free giveaways.
Around the same time, Google tried the same thing with their product “Stadia.”
Neither gained significant traction.
Here, I think it’s odd to compareLunaand Stadia to Steam.
Steam has never been a streaming first platform.
Even so, it’s a storefront.
One that, even with the combined convenience ofTwitchandAmazon Prime, gamers couldn’t relate.
They’ve so far been uninterested in the platform’s offerings.Later, Ethan hits the crux of the issue.
Gamers, for all their magnificent money, just don’t care.
“The mistake was that we underestimated what made consumers use Steam.
We never validated our core assumptions before investing heavily in solutions.
That is the most reasonable explanation I’ve seen put forward as to why Steam continues dominating the market.
Every company that’s currently trying to outdo the king of PC gaming is larger than that of Steam.
Maybe that will ultimately be the game they can pivot a platform off of.
Lol, I laughed too.
