Deutsche Telekom’s cloud streaming service is discontinuing service: MagentaGaming will be shut down at the end of February after a short period of operation. Telekom justifies this step with insufficient demand for the Stadia competitor service.
First, “Caschys Blog” reported on the impending end of MagentaGaming. Deutsche Telekom confirmed the report to heise online: “Unfortunately, MagentaGaming was not accepted as hoped, so we decided to discontinue the service,” said a spokeswoman. Telekom is no longer accepting new orders for the service. All subscriptions should expire on February 26th, customers should be informed by email on January 25th.
MagentaGaming started in August 2020 after a long beta phase. The concept: If you subscribe to MagentaGaming, you can play all of the subscription games for free. This differentiates MagentaGaming from Stadia, where many titles have to be purchased separately, and Nvidia’s GeForce Now, where games have to be purchased on separate platforms. Telekom offered MagentaGaming one month free of charge to all interested parties, after which the service cost 7 euros a month.
heise show on “Cloud Gaming”
Weak range of games
The range of games is probably MagentaGaming’s biggest weakness: high-quality games such as “Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons”, “Control” and “Ghostrunner” remained the exception, most of the approximately 120 games included are unknown titles with a low budget. Telekom itself names “Garfield Kart”, “Asterix and Obelix: XXL3” and “Police Helicopter Simulator” as highlights of the subscription portfolio – game enthusiasts are not addressed in this way.
The difficult position of cloud gaming overall may also have contributed to the early end of MagentaGaming: Game streaming on various end devices, which was hotly debated a few years ago as the future of video games, has not yet been able to gain widespread acceptance. Although gaming graphics cards and consoles have been rare for months, many gamers still prefer gaming on local hardware. Google’s Stadia service also fell short of expectations, and developer studios opened for Stadia were closed again. Google is now trying to establish Stadia technology as white goods for third-party manufacturers.
Two other players in the cloud gaming market are Nvidia and Microsoft. Both rely on cloud gaming as an additional offer: With Nvidia’s GeForce Now you can stream titles that you have already bought elsewhere. And Microsoft’s xCloud offering is integrated as an extra in its Game Pass game subscription service, which installs titles locally by default.
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