I've found subscription services are an quick way to "own" everything and value nothing. Actually buying a game, even at a massive discount, hugely improves my chances of eventually playing it.
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Polygon: Spending 60 dollars on a game doesn’t make sense anymore
- Thread starter Proven
- Start date
I hope we can have both in the future. I rarely spend 60€ on a game, but in November I for sure will spend 60€ on Death Stranding. And I don't see these kinds of games survive with pure subscription services. The subscriber number must be massive to sustain single-player AAA games without MTX.
The only game I would play today from the PS1 era might be Tekken 3. The games I would play from the PS2 era are Tekken 5, WRC and GT4. The games I might go back to from the original Xbox are Rallisport Challenge, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Ninja Gaiden 2. The game from the PS3 era is The Last of Us.
Game ownership made a lot of sense because the tech was not there. Going forward though, we will see more and more companies embrace subscription models just because they make a lot more sense if the volumes are there. And these companies will try and generate volume by simply making their offerings available on other platforms, the first being PC.
It is not a matter of if, but when.
I'm one of those people who do like owning the games I love, while not opposed to streaming, I would also like an option to own those games as well in case anything happened like a licence ran out, something like PT, a patch that screws up the game or they try to do something like what Bethesda did with the Doom games on 360.
That being said, it's harder and harder to justify full price games here (reminder that the "Games never raised their prices" isn't true worldwide as games in the UK Have risen from £39.99 to £49.99-£54.99 in the past decade) when so many of them aren't of value at release, with most of the content coming later with only crappy pre-order bonuses or "event exclusives" (rolls eyes) to attempt to lure people.
WB games are the worst for this as their like clock work and why buy a WB game at launch when it's cheaper and more content rich when I buy the GOTY a year later?
Edit: Ownership laws really need to be updated for digital goods, even if you don't care about owning your games, laws as they are can be very exploitative and consumer rights are important for all purchases besides games. We shouldn't give up our rights just for convenience.
That being said, it's harder and harder to justify full price games here (reminder that the "Games never raised their prices" isn't true worldwide as games in the UK Have risen from £39.99 to £49.99-£54.99 in the past decade) when so many of them aren't of value at release, with most of the content coming later with only crappy pre-order bonuses or "event exclusives" (rolls eyes) to attempt to lure people.
WB games are the worst for this as their like clock work and why buy a WB game at launch when it's cheaper and more content rich when I buy the GOTY a year later?
Edit: Ownership laws really need to be updated for digital goods, even if you don't care about owning your games, laws as they are can be very exploitative and consumer rights are important for all purchases besides games. We shouldn't give up our rights just for convenience.
Problem is is that whilst there are more people playing games it hasn't resulted in a general growth for individual titles, most games have a natural ceiling they hit before plateauing out.
We already live in an age where a majority of third party games in particular have massive discounts but niche titles still sell 3m, good third party titles 3-6 million and the odd game that does super well and reaches 10-15million. Nothing as really changed in that regard. But budgets and time have changed and that does result in new problems for publishers to overcome.
For the publishers there is probably a big difference in the cut they take between a £50 game and a £30 game and i don't know if the numbers are there to make up that shortfall.
There probably is room to experiment but, whilst some publishers have abused their position with monetisation it is a fine margin between success and failure.
I do find I've become a bit of a tourist. The amount of games I play has increased, but my time spent per game has decreased. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing but I'm certainly seeing less of the later levels of games.