Transcript: End of Gaming PC? Ambitious Vision of Highscore for Cloud Gaming

Natraj: Natraj is the host of Startup Project Podcast. He is an investor at Incisive VC, an angel investor, and a product manager. All opinions expressed by Natraj and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of the firms they work with. This podcast is informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon for investment decisions. Natraj and guests may maintain positions in the companies or securities discussed on this podcast. To learn more, visit the startup project.io. Natraj: Um, welcome to another episode of Startup Project. Uh, this week on the show, we have Ian from High Score, um, you know, which is a company that is pioneering how we play games in the future. Um, so I think this will be an interesting episode where we talk about all things gaming industry, you know, what is the value chain like? What are the business models of the industry and I think a whole lot more interesting things around gaming. Uh, with that, uh, Ian, welcome to the show. Ian: Thanks so much for having me. Uh, really glad to be here. Natraj: Uh, so just to set the context for our listeners, can you give a little bit background of who you are, you know, what was your journey before starting High Score and how did you, uh, you know, enter into gaming industry? Ian: Sure. I'm a second time founder, first time CEO. I, uh, previously started a company my sophomore year of college at Dartmouth. Um, ran that for about four or five years. We're based out of the research triangle area of North Carolina. Um, we ended up getting acquired in 2019 by a Payfac based in South Carolina. And then after that, um, you know, worked on a variety of open source projects. Um, had some interesting consulting opportunities. Um, had a unique chance to work with one of the original authors of Direct X, uh, which was a really awesome experience. And then, um, about a year and a half ago, uh, decided to start High Score, um, which is, uh, a new cloud gaming company that we're, uh, in the process of spinning up. Natraj: What were the open source, uh, projects that you were primarily interested back then? Ian: There's a variety of things, um, mostly around like different network tools and and concepts that, you know, I had just been sort of like ruminating on. Um, there were like a number of ideas we had kind of, um, kicked around at my previous startup just on the engineering team. And, um, I just was collaborating with a couple of folks from, um, you know, Orchard on, uh, these new open source projects. Um, it's just really like a fun time. Um, you know, one of the things we put together, uh, was like a open source peer-to-peer VPN project. Um, learned a lot doing that. It didn't work super well, but it was a fun experience nonetheless. Natraj: Nice. Um, so can you give a little bit peek into like how did you come across, um, you know, get into gaming industry? Like why start something in gaming? Ian: Sure. And what was the thought process like for that? Definitely. Um, I've been a gamer my entire life. Um, going back to, uh, I can remember my, um, fifth Christmas, my aunt, uh, gave my parents a, uh, a purple Game Boy to give to me. It was a Game Boy Color. And, um, I got it for an hour on, on Christmas morning and then my parents took it away and I never saw it again. So I think, um, I've sort of had this like pent up demand around video games my entire life because, you know, when I was growing up a lot of the time that I spent playing games was, you know, over at friends' houses, um, which was super fun because, um, it kind of worked pretty well because my friends would have like a console at home so they'd be able to play all the time. And the only time I would get to play was when I was over at their place. So, um, like a lot of times, uh, basically, um, my friends would just kick my butt constantly in games. Um, and you know, they were happy because they got to win and I was happy because I got to play. So I kind of had this, uh, maybe, uh, deprived, uh, childhood of gaming, which sort of made me really want to be in games more. I just have a real passionate love for games my whole life and, uh, when I got a MacBook, um, when I was in middle school for the first time, um, I think for a little bit, I kind of went off the deep end with gaming and, um, I can remember there were a handful of times where, um, especially with the the first Bioshock is a good example, I sat down to start playing the game and I don't know how much time passed, but I didn't get up until I completed the game. Um, and just a lot of experiences like that and I've been sort of an avid collector of games for for many years now. So just the opportunity to work on something in gaming is a real dream come true for me. And I'm very happy to be able to do it. Natraj: So you wanted to do something in gaming, you know, because of all this passion. Uh, so tell us a little bit about, you know, what does High Score aim to do right now and what is the product like? And was that the same original idea that you guys started with or did you have to like change over time and iterate and come up with what it is right now? Ian: Sure. Yeah, so, uh, with High Score our ambition is to eventually allow people to play any PC game on any device. Um, there's a huge back catalog of PC games, hundreds of thousands of games that, you know, for many people just aren't accessible for one reason or another, whether they don't have a gaming PC, um, or, you know, they primarily, you know, game on their phone, um, so they don't have a console, or, you know, their daily driver is an iPad. Um, I'm very much in the camp where I would love to be able to, uh, ditch my MacBook and live off an iPad. Uh, but one of the big things sort of holding that back is is gaming where, you know, I want to be able to play, to play games and, you know, that's not really possible to do on an iPad in a really meaningful way. So, with High Score that's that's really our ambition is to, um, sort of make it possible for people to, you know, access games wherever they are and sort of, uh, meet people where they are and for for gaming, um, and sort of, uh, democratize access to PC gaming as it were. Natraj: Um. Natraj: So the blocker for playing or like, you know, ditching your MacBook and just continuing with the iPad, like if taking that analogy, what is the blocker for games, uh, to be not working on an iPad versus working on a MacBook? Like what are the limiting factors there? Ian: Sure, it basically comes down to compatibility. Uh, most games are developed for Windows first, um, and then typically ported to whatever, you know, form factors the company decides that they want to support subsequently. Um, oftentimes even if it's a console game, um, and it comes to console first, it's originally developed on Windows. If and when it ever comes to, uh, Apple devices, it's usually much later and historically, um, you know, it's kind of interesting like Apple devices were actually like the original, original, original market for PC gaming. And, um, for a variety of reasons, uh, over the years that's stopped being true. Um, but today, basically, if, uh, support ever comes to a Mac for a game, it's it's much later. Um, if it ever comes. And you know, devices like Chromebooks, it's just not really feasible. Um, you know, there's a lot of reasons for this, um, largely to do with, you know, uh, the support in different game engines that a lot of modern games are built on. Um, like what they support as like export targets, um, and sort of the the challenges involved with, you know, compatibility. Um, big part of the reason that you don't see like a lot of, um, Windows games coming to Mac is, you know, performance issues. So like a lot of times games require pretty significant tweaks in order to be ported from one platform to another. Um, and you know, uh, developers, you know, in a lot of ways are are limited in terms of resources. Um, you know, games are incredibly expensive to make these days, especially at the AAA level. And, um, you know, that, you know, cost factor is not really coming down over time. It's it's rising, you know, as, you know, uh, fidelity requirements keep increasing, you know, the cost to make games keeps going up. And so, you know, when you're considering, um, you know, the investment in which platforms to bring your game to, um, that's like a real factor to consider. So, you know, if you have guaranteed success and you know that, you know, historically like 90% of the market for games has been on Windows, um, you know, for whatever reason that might be, you know, um, it's a lot harder to sort of make the case that you're going to bring your games to these alternative devices where they might not be well supported. Natraj: So it's almost like a funnel situation where a game first goes to Windows and if it is super successful and widely adopted, then they go into other channels like Mac and I iOS or Android, right? Ian: Exactly. exactly. The mini games never, never reach that gap. They never make the jump. They, you know, reach a niche audience on Windows and stay there. Um, you know, and they remain inaccessible to a huge chunk of people. Like if you look at sort of the the market for for desktops these days, it's very interesting because, you know, Steam does like a hardware survey, uh, every month and they publish the results of this and and you can kind of like look into it and see, you know, where people are accessing Steam. And, uh, you know, like 90% of it's on Windows, which is crazy because, um, Windows, you know, in terms of consumer desktop, um, only makes up about 60% of the market. The other 40% is about 20% MacBook, 20% Chromebook. Um, so there's this huge kind of like gap in the market where there are a lot of people that have Macs or Chromebooks, um, that basically can't play any games on them. So, you know, it's it's kind of this, uh, been this catch 22 where, you know, people don't want to sort of like make the jump because there's not a market, but there's not a market because people aren't making the jump. Um, so I think there's actually quite a lot of pent up demand, um, sort of in the, uh, you know, alternative desktop space, in as much as, you know, a MacBook is an alternative desktop to Windows. Natraj: And there's also this problem with Chromebooks, right? Chromebooks are built on this assumption that the hardware on which they are running is lightweight versus everything is browser based. So they theoretically have lower hardware capability versus some of the other like a Windows PC or even MacBook. Is that assumption a fair assumption? Ian: That is, uh, absolutely a fair assumption. Um, it's really interesting, uh, if you actually, there's a website called, uh, Proton DB, um, and I, I love this website. You can basically look at it and see a chart, um, they sort of have a pie chart of, um, sort of the support matrix for, um, different Steam games on different platforms. And you can see, um, sort of, you know, what games run natively on Linux? Not with, you know, Wine Proton Linux, but like actually native on Linux, what games are supported on Chromebook, uh, what games are supported on Mac, um, and so on. And I think it's, uh, it's pretty telling when you look at the, you know, the charts and you see that, you know, on native Linux, you know, you can almost count on, on one or two hands the number of games that are supported on native Linux. Um, the number of games supported on Chromebooks has been zero since they've made the site. Um, the number of games supported on Mac, um, has held steady at about, you know, 10 to 15%. Um, I think that number is actually a bit skewed. Um, because, uh, quite a lot of the games, and I see this all the time when I go through my Steam library, uh, quite a lot of the games that say they support Mac don't actually support Max anymore. Um, you know, you look at the game, uh, in your library and it says, you know, this game might not run on your machine because it requires a 32-bit OS, which hasn't been supported by, you know, uh, Apple devices for gosh, seven, eight years now. So. Natraj: So if you are a serious gamer or a active gamer, so your best bet is still to buy specific gaming hardware like an Xbox or PlayStation, is that your best bet? Like if you're continuously exploring new games and you're, you know, every week you're playing something. Ian: Yeah, I think a lot of people have just sort of, um, they either go in that camp if, you know, that's something that's accessible to them. I think a lot of people would love to have a gaming PC, but like buying a $3 or $4,000 gaming PC is just sort of out of the question. I know when I was growing up, that was definitely the case where, you know, I would, uh, ask my parents like, hey, you know, would you consider buying me this really expensive gaming PC and they'd be like, you know, if you really want it, you know, you can save up and buy it yourself, which, you know, for a 10 or 12 year old kid is, you know, a bit out of reach. Um, so I think there's there's been sort of a a history of people, um, sort of playing what's available to them, not necessarily what they would, you know, love to play ideally. I think you see this a lot on Chromebooks where, you know, I talk with my nephew, uh, pretty frequently and he tells me that, you know, he plays, you know, different games on his Chromebook that his school gave him. Uh, good example of this is, you know, he plays Retro Bowl on his Chromebook, uh, which is a browser game. Um, it's available on a bunch of different, you know, browser based game websites, um, because he can't play Madden. Like he would love to be able to play Madden, but it's not accessible on a Chromebook. So he's been kind of making do and playing what's available to him, um, which has been Retro Bowl. Um, but, you know, his preference would be to be able to play, um, like Rainbow Siege Six or Madden on his Chromebook, but he basically can't. Um, so I think, you know, I sort of experience this as a Mac user where, you know, I would see these new games come out for Windows and I'd be like, oh man, I would really love to be able to play Dead Space, but I can't. So I end up playing Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 again because that's what runs on my Mac. So. Um, I think kind of been this pattern. Natraj: There is this, um, interesting dynamic that happens if you look at like entertainment and media business that people talk a lot about like Hollywood or streaming business. You know, Netflix sort of also has surpassed the traditional players like Disney and Warner Brothers and Time Warner. Um, but if you look at the revenues actually, like gaming is the biggest entertainment industry, right? I think it's surpassed this in revenue by a multiple of five, I think or more. Last time I checked, like I remember it being around 200 billion or something per year. Um, I don't know where it is right now, but, um, it's it like the traditional media industry grabs so much attention while the actual money is being made in gaming and, you know, gaming related properties. Um, so I think a lot of people are really unaware of like the size, scale, and you know, what the industry actually and who are the main players. Can you give a like a brief overview of like how do you see gaming industry and how it is split? Ian: Sure. Yeah, I think this is a a pretty classic misconception. Um, the gaming industry today is, uh, I might be misquoting the statistic here, but I think it's if you combine movies, television, music, and books together, um, gaming is bigger by a factor of about 2x. Um, so it's just a really massive market. I think part of the reason people sort of overlook it even though it's this absolutely humongous market, um, is because historically gaming has had a bit of a stigma attached to it, you know, a lot of people don't want to identify as gamers. You know, it wasn't that long ago that, you know, the CEOs of some of the larger publishers, um, in the industry were getting called before Congress because people, you know, were sort of, uh, making assumptions that video games were corrupting America's youth. Um, I had some really interesting conversations with, um, some folks in the industry where, you know, um, they had a bit of a rough go because, you know, they would have to go, you know, talk to their congressmen or talk to senators and basically be like, you know, my game, you know, isn't a bad influence on children. You know, it's a it's a creative outlet. And, um, you know, I think we've come a long way in terms of how video games are perceived. Um, but I think we still have a ways to go before, you know, people really recognize games for what they are, which in my opinion is the highest form of art. You know, I think video games are sort of the the pinnacle of artistic media today. It's, you know, a combination of visual elements, uh, musical elements, um, story elements, so like narratives and then, you know, you're kind of, uh, synthesizing these things into a single product, which is then interactive. So, you know, the user can be or, you know, the person experiencing the art can be immersed in it. And that's really not something that's possible with any other kind of media. I think, you know, I could probably wax for a while on why I think games are sort of, um, the the real sort of, um, like benchmark by which other media should be judged. But I think, um, you know, if you experience some of the, uh, the games coming out today, I think they kind of speak for themselves. Natraj: And it's also at the cutting edge of, you know, technology. Like a lot of what, you know, gaming engines are now being used in Hollywood to produce, uh, you know, high VFX, uh, shows. Right? Like most of the technologies that came out of gaming are the ones now defining traditional media. Ian: Sure. Yeah, I think, uh, people were very surprised, but, um, if I'm not mistaken, I think, uh, everything everywhere all at once, I'm not sure if you saw this film, but, uh, they heavily utilized, uh, Unreal Engine in their VFX to, to make the film. Um, pretty, uh, you know, incredible results and, and, you know, I'm not sure how many Oscars it won, but I think it was several. Um, and I think that really says something when, you know, uh, other media is starting to be, um, driven by video games as sort of the key influence. I I think you've kind of seen this as well with, um, you know, a lot of the best stories from games are now being turned into quite successful television shows, uh, or movies. Natraj: The Last of Us being one of the example, right? Ian: Yeah. That's made it to HBO. So, you know, video games are now becoming prestige television. And I think that's that's pretty incredible to see because, you know, it really wasn't 10, 15 years ago that, you know, video games were pretty heavily stigmatized for, you know, one reason or another. Um, I think it's funny when you look back at old videos on YouTube, um, about like, you know, there would be these PSA videos, uh, put out by different organizations basically warning parents about the dangers of of video games. And I think it's it's funny to see now because a lot of parents that grew up, you know, in the 80s and 90s are now starting to introduce their young children to video games themselves. So, um, I think we're sort of starting to come full circle. Um, but yeah, in terms of television, uh, Fallout's like another great example. Um, the Super Mario movie, I think, might have been the most successful animated film last year. Um, you know, Nintendo is starting to open up theme parks. Uh, it's really incredible to see. Um, so I think there's a very bright future ahead for for video games and I think, um, you know, they're starting to be appreciated more for the art that they are and I think, uh, as we move into the future, that will only, uh, continue to become more true. Natraj: Well, can you talk a little bit about like who are the biggest game players and distributors and publishers today? Ian: Sure. Um, there are quite a lot actually. Um, and it varies pretty significantly by region. Um, so, you know, there's, um, the big western publishing houses, uh, which video games are kind of interesting, um, they sort of have, um, it it's almost a blend of the dynamics of the film industry and the music industry, uh, where a lot of times you have independent developers that will sign with a label, um, you know, which would be like a publisher. So, uh, I think you saw this with, um, Stardew Valley is sort of a a great example of this where, uh, the game was developed by one guy, um, almost entirely. Um, he did pretty much all the art and programming work himself and then, um, signed with a, uh, publisher, which I believe was Chucklefish, uh, for distribution. Um, so you kind of see some of the same dynamics of the record industry playing out in that way. Natraj: What does a publisher in gaming industry do for the game creator? Like what value does do they bring? Like I can understand a Disney being publisher for a movie, independent movie, like they bring distribution to atheatrical release or doing marketing. Like what does the value does a publisher, a game publisher bring? Ian: It's very similar and I think the roots of game publishing really go back to sort of the origins of the video game industry where, you know, uh, people were making actual physical copies, like printed discs or cartridges of games and putting them on store shelves and then people would go to the stores to buy those games, which to a certain extent is actually still true. Um, you know, with modern consoles people still go to GameStop, buy games, come home, put the disc in the machine and, uh, play the game. Um, so physical distribution in games is actually surprisingly still fairly significant. Uh, I think we're moving more and more to digital every day, but the physical component is still there and real. Um, I think the reason that has persisted is because people like to have a sense of ownership over their games. Um, I would almost put it in the same bucket as people liking to have records, like vinyl records, you know, of their favorite albums. It's very sort of a similar phenomenon, um, where, uh, people just really like the tactile feel of ownership of their games and, you know, like sort of the idea that they're not going to lose access to them and things of that. So I think that's a big part of the reason why physical media has persisted so long, um, in the games industry. Um, but really, um, I think, you know, when you're looking the dynamics between publishers and developers of games, um, it's sort of that historical context that, you know, you really have to understand as to why, uh, the industry is the way it is today. Um, you know, because it it wasn't really too long ago that, you know, in order to get your games into players' hands, you had to have a partner with, you know, physical distribution connections because otherwise, you know, how would you get them into the hands of people? So I think, um, sort of with the rise of Steam in the past couple of years and it sort of, uh, it's ascendance in the PC gaming world, that's becoming less and less true every day and I think we're start Mannor Lords is a really good example. Um, this is a game that just went super viral, um, maybe a week or two ago. Um, where, you know, it's developed independently and I don't think they have a real publisher associated with them. Um, they just sort of found their niche audience on Steam and were able to sort of make successful on their own. But I think a lot of developers are really good at developing games and, um, don't quite have as much experience in marketing and distributing those games. So I think publishers still serve a real and very important role in sort of helping bring, uh, art to the masses. It's kind of like, um, just because you're an amazing film director doesn't mean you're an amazing, you know, marketer or distributor of that film. It still is very helpful to partner with the major movie studio even if you fully have the capability to make the film on your own, um, just because there's a lot of, you know, skills and machinery, uh, inside those businesses that, you know, um, help with distribution in a very real and meaningful way. Natraj: So, uh, let's, uh, slightly shift gears and talk about what you guys are doing with High Score, um, and how can, uh, gamers use High Score? Ian: Sure. Um, essentially what we're doing with High Score is almost trying to replicate the feeling of having a gaming PC in the cloud. Uh, maybe the closest analogy to what we're doing is if you were to go to AWS and you were to rent a virtual machine and you were to ensure that it has Windows and you were to download and install Steam and then through Steam download and install all of your games and then figure out some third party solution to stream those games back to yourself, uh, whether that's, you know, uh, sunshine, moonlight, or Parsec, there's a couple of different solutions, um, that's really kind of most similar to what we're doing, but that's a terrible user experience to have to try to do that and, uh, requires some technical know-how, which a lot of folks don't have. Um, and we're really putting in the legwork to try to make that a good experience. It's a bit more of a gaming focus UI. Um, so it feels a little bit different, but on the back end, we're trying to preserve a lot of the functionality of, you know, a real gaming PC experience, um, where we support things like local saves, like mods, um, sort of things of that nature that you can really only get with an actual gaming PC experience. So it's a bit of a hybrid between, you know, sort of a console like experience and a pure like virtual desktop. Um, but we probably skew more towards virtual desktop, um, pretty heavily, I would say. Natraj: So, well, I mean, while I was doing some research for our conversation, one of the things I was confused is Steam is also saying that it's a cloud streaming platform in one sense, called cloud gaming platform. How was Steam and High Score different? Ian: Sure. Ian: Yeah, so, uh, Steam's streaming pretty much only works inside the home. So you have to already have a gaming PC with the game installed and then if you have the gaming PC with the game installed in your house, you can stream it to somewhere else inside your house. Natraj: Got it, got it. So this doesn't require it. Well, High Score doesn't require any of these streaming, uh, or having a PC at your home. Ian: Exactly. We take care care of, yeah, sorry. Uh, we take care of all of the infrastructure for you. So we, we build and run our own servers, we install them in data centers around the country and, uh, the games run on those servers and then are streamed to the user. Uh, whereas with, um, Steam, you actually have to have the gaming PC yourself. There there are similar features actually on both Xbox and, uh, PlayStation where, you know, if you have an Xbox in your house or you have a PlayStation in your house and you have a game installed on that PlayStation, you can then stream it to somewhere else in your house. And they're making, you know, devices to sort of make that a better experience. Um, but it's fairly limited because it only works inside of your house. And you also need to have, you know, some real hardware with you to be able to use it. Natraj: Uh, I mean, having developed cloud applications, this seems like a very hard problem, especially in terms of you know, if you think about the latency and in generally compute intensive, how compute intensive gamings are, uh, so what does it take for you to like take a game and make it compatible for High Score and how, how did you like, uh, and what does that mean like whenever there's a new game in the market, like how much effort does it take on your side to get it, you know, High Score compatible? Ian: Sure. Um, this kind of goes back to what I was saying about we're essentially taking a lot of the functionality of a gaming PC and trying to replicate that on our service. Um, we're almost game agnostic. Um, we support games programmatically. So when games become available, we don't even necessarily know exactly what people are installing or or playing on our service. Um, you know, users download and install copies of games, uh, to play on our service themselves. So like when you want to play a game, essentially you see a button first that says install and play, you click it, you wait for it to sort of get installed and then you're able to play it. But sort of, um, the reason that works is because it essentially is being installed on a Windows gaming PC in the cloud. Um, so if it's compatible with, you know, a standard Windows gaming PC, it's going to work on our service. So we don't have to worry about that too much because, you know, in a in a very real sense, even though we're very, uh, different from just owning a gaming PC, um, it's a very similar kind of experience in terms of compatibility and what you're able to do with those games and what you're able to play. Natraj: So, I mean, one of the observations I made is just Google had this product called Stadia, which is sort of similar, right? They promise that, you know, you can just stream games on your browser, but I think they also have a console that they were providing in order to play with it. Um, and I forgot if Xbox had some version of this or if they still do, but Google eventually realized, for some reason, that they shouldn't be in that business and closed it down, which I felt like was a premature decision because considering gaming is such a big industry, um, and, you know, Google being Google, I thought it was a significant industry to be part of. And I thought that decision was a little bit premature. But have you looked into why they stopped, you know, Google Stadia and, um, have you like looked into the strategy behind that? Ian: Yeah, um, pretty extensively actually and I've spent the lot of folks both, um, that worked on the project and were on the publisher side on the other side of the table from Google with this. I think ultimately Stadia's failure boils down to games. Um, you know, in gaming, uh, at the end of the day, it's all about the games. And I think, uh, Nintendo's done a very good job of showing that this is true where, um, they've sort of always beaten their own path and you know, had alternative approaches to hardware and, um, because they have Mario and Zelda and Metroid and Pokemon, you know, people will go where the Nintendo games are. And I I think that's sort of been true historically throughout the game industry. If you look back in the 80s when there was like the big video game crash, you look at why that happened, it's because the games weren't good. They're, you know, there weren't very many good games. Like a lot of the games that were being put out lacked quality. And I think, um, you've sort of seen this pattern recur over and over and over again where, you know, gamers go where the games are. And I think this was a big part of Stadia's problem, which when the service shut down, they had about 300 games total on the service. Um, and from the publisher's side, it was really difficult to bring games to Stadia because they had to be ported to Linux and not just, you know, Wine Proton Linux like the Steam Deck supports, um, but like Google's internal version of Linux. And it was a really non-trivial, you know, task to be able to bring a game to Stadia and from my understanding, uh, Google provided not insignificant support to publishers to make this possible. Um, for context, Steam adds about 40 games a day to their service. So when you have 300 games total, hopefully that provides a little bit of perspective on the Delta there, um, in terms of what's available to play. So, I remember I tried out Stadia myself when it came out. Um, and there were like five games on the service. I played Assassin's Creed for a little while, you know, if you just Assassin's Creed player. I got bored after a little bit. Um, and then I never came back to the service because they didn't have any games that I was interested in. I think, um, I briefly came back to the service when they added support for Cyberpunk and they were one of the only places that you could play Cyberpunk where it actually ran well. Um, but after I played Cyberpunk, then I didn't have a reason to continue using the service. So I think ultimately it boils down to game selection on Google's side and the infrastructure choices that they made, um, that sort of, um, caused issues, you know, in terms of game compatibility. Um, they had a lot of really interesting ideas and I think they did a lot of things really well. You know, in terms of streaming, the service actually worked very well and I think they showed that, you know, with the right infrastructure it's possible. You know, when, when Google was doing this, um, you know, one of the really big things that they did was they actually had custom silicon as part of, you know, um, their infrastructure. It wasn't really possible to do with off-the-shelf hardware, but I think we're just now reaching the point where with off-the-shelf hardware, this is actually feasible to do and to build the service, you know, um, that's comparable or superior in quality to what Google was able to offer. So it's kind of interesting to see how it's evolved just in the past couple of years, but I think, um, if you really dive deep on Stadia, ultimately boils down to games and the decisions that sort of led to the problem with game selection. Natraj: So in summary, the on the user side, they didn't have enough games to continue playing and on the publisher side, it was not easy to get those,