Facebook is the latest tech giant to get into the world of cloud gaming — but the company is offering quite a bit different than the competition.
Unlike Amazon or Google, which both offer standalone cloud gaming services for a fee, Facebook is introducing cloud games on the existing app — several of which are playable right now.
“We’re doing free-to-play games, we’re doing games that are latency-tolerant, at least to start,” says Jason Rubin, Facebook’s vice president of play.
“We’re not promising 4K, 60fps, so you pay us $6.99 per month. We’re not trying to get you to buy a piece of hardware, like a controller.”
“We give away a lot of stuff for free because that is a business for us,” says Rubin. “Don’t undervalue just having people engage with communities on Facebook. That is what we do.”
Users can play games without downloading them on their mobile devices. The purpose of launching this service is to facilitate the distribution of mobile games. The company is not trying to compete with Nvidia, Microsoft, or Google.
Apart from allowing users to play instant games via its messaging service and News Feed, the new service also lets users set up a player name and an avatar. Moreover, players can cross-play and challenge their opponents while playing the cloud version of a particular game.
Facebook’s cloud gaming service also focuses on how developers will be able to advertise their games. Instead of the usual screenshot or maybe a short clip of gameplay, the service will allow developers to create demo versions of their game that people can play instantly.
