The Netflix model of on-demand streamed content is gathering pace across the internet because viewers find this format more affordable and convenient. Now, the Netflix model is going to lend itself to the mobile gaming space with a new product called Hatch. Vesa Jutila, co-founder and vice-president—content & commercial partnerships, Hatch Entertainment, said: “Hatch is a new kind of gaming streaming service, which plans to change the way people play games. We believe there’s a huge paradigm shift going to happen when gaming will be available on-demand, so it will be way more superior to experience great games, with no downloads, no worries about storage, etc.” At present in beta, Hatch is available on Google’s Android platform in 18 European countries.
“We started working on Hatch some three years ago as an internal venture at Rovio, the Finland-based game developer behind the smash hit Angry Birds game. When we realised Hatch will be a huge thing, we made the decision to spin-off from Rovio to form an independent company. The decision was made in the summer of 2016,” Jutila said. Even though Hatch is technically a Rovio subsidiary, Jutila says it is important for the company to be fully independent and neutral as it seeks to attract the best developers and games to be part of the service.
Hatch works in a similar fashion as any streaming service does and users stream the content rather than download them on their phone. This means the experience will be independent of the capabilities of the phone, as long as you have a strong and stable internet connection.
One of the interesting features of Hatch is the ability to add social elements into mobile gaming. For instance, while playing the game you can invite up to four friends to join the session. Plus, you can play games with them in real-time with voice chat.
Hatch is still very much in the development phase and the company has no plans to bring the service to other parts of the world, including India.“It makes perfect sense to start the service in Europe as it is our home base. We started Hatch in Finland and later expanded to a number of Western European countries. For now, we would like to keep our focus on Europe to optimise the service,” said Jutila.
The company, however, could launch the service in India by the end of the year as part of the beta programme. The Finland-based company recently set up a test data centre in Chennai, which it says will be used for cross-internal testing of technical performance and network quality.
“India is a very exciting opportunity. I really feel that the stars have aligned perfectly in the Indian market for something like Hatch. The mobile networks are improving, 4G is growing, and mobile data consumption has exploded through the roof. Streaming games make total sense for Indian consumers who typically don’t have access to high-end devices. Since the games will be streamed on the cloud, you don’t need to worry about downloading it on the device. This model, I think, is perfect for a market like India,” added Jutila.
Jutila explained that Hatch will replicate the freemium model of Spotify. In Europe, Hatch can be accessed for free, although it comes with ads. You can stream the game for free as the developer wanted to make it; the advertisement happens outside the game and not inside the game. Hatch wants to stick to this model whenever it launches the service in India and will gradually introduce a paid subscription option. The paid subscription promises to offer an ad-free experience and exclusive content. The price of the paid subscription model is yet to be decided for any market, including Europe.
Anuj Bhatia
