We do free-to-play games, we do latency-tolerant games, at least to get started,’says Jason Rubin, Vice President of Play for Facebook. We don’t guarantee 4K, 60fps, but you’re paying $6.99 a month for us. We’re not going to get you to buy, like a joystick, a piece of hardware. “The explanation why Facebook is using the cloud, according to Rubin, is that it opens up the kinds of games it can deliver. Before switching to HTML5 for its Instant Gaming app, the company started off with Flash-based successes like FarmVille in gaming more than a decade ago, but all of those technologies are comparatively limited to smaller, simplified experiences.”
Instead of developing a console gaming rival to compete with Stadia or xCloud, Facebook relies exclusively on smartphone gamers. Because of what Facebook frames as accessibility limitations outlined in Apple’s App Store terms and conditions, Facebook cloud gaming service will arrive on the desktop platform and Android, but not iOS. Recently, the iPhone manufacturer revised its rules to allow these games to exist, albeit in a more cumbersome capacity than the platform creators had anticipated, requiring them to send consumers to the App Store first before being able to stream a gaming title on their platform to the cloud.
