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Staff Report
Until Facebook’s announcement of Gameroom, their newest endeavour, there were two main ways in which you could access and play games online. You could play online browser games, such as Euro Palace online casino games, or you purchase the online game from Steam. But that Facebook has thrown their hat in the ring, we will soon have another option: Gameroom. But how much exactly do we know about this Gameroom? Is it going to be a good or a bad method for accessing games online? Will it have initial issues or will it go off without a hitch? We do not yet know the answers to these questions, so we will have to wait and see. But in the meantime, let us review what we do know about Facebook’s Gameroom.
It appears that Gameroom will be in direct competition with Steam, and that it is less of a contentious issue with niche browser games, such as online casinos. Facebook is convinced they can compete with Steam and their hefty average of 125 million active users due to the reach that they have on Facebook’ a considerably large social media tool in their pockets. Already at the top of the social media pyramid, Facebook is a force to be reckoned with, and should Gameroom take off, Steam should start to worry about their future as the top online gaming platform worldwide.
Gameroom is offering gaming developers a very similar deal for hosting their game on their platform; a cut of thirty percent. They are not undercutting Steam on their price point, which means that these two gaming platforms will go head to head on other factors such as number of active users and general user experience of the platform –letting people choose the top platform themselves. The marketing prowess of Facebook could also be an appealing feature to game developers when they are choosing where to host their new game.
But it is also important to note that the games Gameroom will be able to host are not big blockbuster games, but smaller ones. So it is not a case that Gameroom will be stealing very big clients from Steam –that is still a part of the market over which they will have complete control. Gameroom will only host games of a maximum 200MB, and will at a later stage consider hosting slightly bigger games, that still come in at under 500MB. As such, the threat of a complete takeover is not a very real one, and not much source of concern for the moment.
Just because Facebook is successful it does not mean that it’s development of Gameroom will be. Google’s Google + was not met with the same amount of exuberance, and did not gain much momentum as a platform. Some think that Gameroom may meet the same end as Google + in that regard. However, the Beta is only open to developers for now, so we will have to wait and see!
