Facebook is refreshing its aging gaming ecosystem, the company announced Monday. The social media giant is getting in on the cloud gaming trend, planning to use that technology to stream AAA free-to-play experiences directly to its users in browsers and on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. In so doing, Facebook joins Google, Microsoft, Sony, Nvidia, and Amazon, all of which already have cloud gaming services in development or on the market. Except Facebook’s cloud games will be free for anybody to try — so long as they have a Facebook account.
The beta launches Monday on Android devices and on the web.
Of course, none of this comes as much of a surprise. Facebook showed its hand in December 2019, when it purchased European cloud gaming provider PlayGiga for a reported €70 million ($78 million). This pivot to cloud gaming is a huge technological shift for Facebook, which has traditionally allowed developers to use on-platform technology like HTML5 to build and run games for its users. What is surprising is how much Jason Rubin, the company’s vice president of play, is downplaying the transition.
Polygon spoke with Rubin via Zoom in advance of Monday’s announcement. He emphasized that Facebook’s focus will initially be on free-to-play titles, like the racing game Asphalt 9: Legends. All of these cloud-based experiences, he said, were hand-picked to be “latency-tolerant,” meaning they’ll be games that don’t rely on rock-solid local infrastructure, clear connections, or nearby data centers.
“We’re farther away from every other cloud product in what we’re trying to do than they are from each other,” Rubin said.
He hopes people enjoy the experience, which will allow them to start playing alongside friends on their timeline simply by clicking on an advertisement for a given game. But, if it doesn’t work out, he says he’s not going to get bent out of shape about it.
“If you don’t like it, that’s fine,” Rubin said. “But, we think over time we’ll get better and better at delivering these games, we’ll have more and more facilities, and it’ll get more likely that people keep playing on our platform.”
Rubin emphasized that Facebook isn’t launching its own game-streaming service — like Google did with its Stadia platform — nor will it be building its own specialized controller. Players will be able to play these games using a mouse and keyboard, or the touchscreen on their phone. Facebook also won’t be bringing in marquee console titles from publishers like Bethesda, CD Projekt Red, or Ubisoft, and won’t be charging a subscription fee — unlike, say, Amazon’s newly announced Luna service, which will cost $5.99 a month when it rolls out in early access.
“No investment, no promises,” Rubin said.
The calculus is pretty simple. It’s all about getting these cloud-based experiences in front of Facebook’s millions of existing users here in the U.S. It will work for many people...
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