Facebook Inc on Monday launched several cloud-streamed games in the Facebook app and on the browser. The free-to-play games like “Asphalt 9: Legends” and “WWE SuperCard” are playable instantly, with no downloads required.
The company also disclosed that about 200,000 people play its cloud-streamed games per week in limited regions.
VP of Play, Facebook, Jason Rubin in a blog post wrote, “we’re not spinning off a separate cloud gaming service. All cloud-streamed games are playable in the same way you play games now on Facebook — whether it’s in our Gaming tab or from News Feed. No special hardware or controllers needed – your hands are the controllers since we’re launching with native mobile games. And you can play these games with a mouse and keyboard on a desktop. More than 380 million people play games each month on Facebook, and people will play cloud-streamed games right alongside those playing instant games in HTML5. And if we do our jobs right, you won’t notice how the games are delivered.”
Facebook’s gaming offer is smaller in scale than premium cloud-based game streaming services like Google’s Stadia, Nvidia’s GeForce NOW, or Amazon.com’s Luna, which are competing for users in a high-growth market.
The feature will be available to Android and web users, for now, Facebook said, while it was working on alternative options to launch the feature on Apple’s iOS.
“Apple treats games differently and continues to exert control over a very precious resource,” the company said, adding it is unsure if launching on Apple’s app store is a “viable” path.
