Game Subscription Services [GamePass, PSNow, EA Access, Stadia+, etc] *spawn*

[Deleted member 11852]

Yes. This seems to apply to others too, like Ubisoft, EA, Amazon, and Sony. Pretty much anyone who offers a subscription service. They need to feed it too .... What will the others do to have success with their offerings?

I am outside of EA's offerings because I have no experience, nor Amazon. The difference between Microsoft and Sony - aside from the obvious - is that GamePass exists on the promise of big game drops regularly, hence the acquisitions. To deliver on this requires a fair bit of management behind the scenes. I have no idea what Sony are offering because it's all a bit vague. As a user/subscriber, neither is advantageous as I don't know what Sony will deliver, or when Microsoft will their games deliver. so.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

PS++/v2 feels like a me-too situation, but the financial difference is that Sony did not spend £80 billion in the last year to make PS++/v2 appealing. As for "success", as in commercial success (net profits), that is yet to be demonstrated on Microsoft's side. I think Netflix's situation is an example of how volatile success can be. We can see how successful how various bits of PlayStation's business is for Sony, but for Microsoft/Xbox it continues to remain a blackhole of financial speculation.

 

[Dr. Nick]

Similarly, Eurogamer posted an editorial today which is a mix of thoughts, but seems to ultimately conclude that recent experiences like needing to delay Starfield, Redfall (along with Halo Infinite), could mean Microsoft's need for GamePass is to deliver games on a regular cadence will result in more AAA games being considered too ambitious and being retargeted as AA games to get them out quicker, and on a more predictable timetable, xx months/years in the future when the need to drop a new GamePass title.

I did not read the editorial yet just going off of your post, but it would also be another explanation for need to buy someone like Activision-Blizzard and possibly more. Microsoft Needs AAA games to attract people to the service but needs AA to provide games to play while people are waiting for those AAA release. AA won't grow the service much and AAA takes a long time but having a good mix will keep people on the service.

 

[see colon]

I am outside of EA's offerings because I have no experience, nor Amazon.

EA's subscription model is a bit different from Xbox in that they rarely (ever?) launch games into it, but instead games enter the service after an amount of time. At this time, there is usually DLC to buy, or in the case of their sports games, they make money on the surprise mechanics of Ultimate Team. I have a theory that adding half-old sports games keeps the online player base active, which keeps people playing, and ultimate team producing profits. And I think that's the business model. if no one is playing then no one is paying, and you want to keep your whales playing.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I did not read the editorial yet just going off of your post, but it would also be another explanation for need to buy someone like Activision-Blizzard and possibly more. Microsoft Needs AAA games to attract people to the service but needs AA to provide games to play while people are waiting for those AAA release.

I'd agree with this, and Call of Duty could have been that reliable as clockwork annual Holiday drop it is looking likely that Microsoft are doing to move away from that cadence. Inevitably we'll see a situation where a bunch of Microsoft Studios all complete a their projects within a month of each other and it will be interesting to see how they get released. Will they just drop them all, or hold some back.