Adding a bit more to the discussion on whether game subscription can be “the future”, it looks like despite the heavy push made in the past decade, subscriptions only make up 10% of total video game spending in the US.
Link: https://nitter.net/MatPiscatella/status/1747660051269988522
Sauce, anyone?
There’s a link in the post description
- It wasn’t there when I commented it
- I want the source for this person’s statistics. They’re an industry analyst, but still
Yeah that would be great. A single tweet can sound well-informed but I don’t know if this guy is an expert with a pile of data or just a person capable of chatting shit!
Yeah I was going to say: who’s this guy?
Found this after a very quick search: https://www.npd.com/about-npd/industry-experts/mat-piscatella/
Mat Piscatella’s career has spanned the entertainment software industry, including tenure with Warner Bros and Activision. His industry experience ranges from business planning, analysis, and forecasting to operational and strategic planning. A self-proclaimed “game geek,” Piscatella has worked in the industry for close to 15 years.
Video game brands he has worked on include Call of Duty, LEGO, Batman: Arkham, Guitar Hero, DreamWorks, Mortal Kombat, and Marvel. Piscatella regularly works with key industry trade associations and is collaborating with colleagues on new initiatives for NPD. He has extensive experience presenting to and advising senior leadership for the video game industry.
His experience outside of entertainment software include marketing and sales roles for IRI and Banana Boat Suncare. He has an MBA in marketing from San Diego State University, and a BA in political science from California State University, San Bernardino.
Do micro transactions or even battle pass type things count as subscriptions in the data he’s referring to? Or buying subscriptions/passes with in game currency that was purchased with real money?
I think it’d be more appropriate to compare the upfront cost of a game (and the revenue from it) vs additional revenue generated by people who already paid that upfront cost.
Don’t worry we won’t have have to worry about subs being dominant. Oh wait you meant subscriptions
Ok but jokes aside in some cases a subscription is necessary. Probably a bad example but Netflix needs to operate servers that I can get behind if it’s reasonably priced
However games and services that offer a subscription that don’t need it, unless I REALLY like it, I think it’s plain bad
And frankly I’m kind of a hypocrite here paying for planetsides “premium” service even though they could keep the lights on without it
I kinda went off on a rant but even it only makes 10% (which to me is definitely a big number but seems smaller than it is) of sales it kind of sends a message that this a way to extract more money from people like me that go “hmm well I like the game I guess I’ll pay $120 or more a year for this yes this a sane financial decision”
TLDR: subscription bad but I’m personally using one :(
Gotta love when people start making shit up in order to do a ‘gotcha’. Especially when they usually don’t read any additional materials to back up their incompetent viewpoints.
I am personally against subscription models and prefer to pay for a product but I’m not going to just ignore the benefit that sub models have provided to the industry.
What a lukewarm take. A quick glance to the subscription video-on-demand market should be fairly informative to the future of video game subscription services.
Right now they’re still in the honeymoon phase, that is to say the “offer better value to capture a market” phase, of enshitification.
Not at all surprising he’s getting pushback.
I mean… yeah. Turns out that having models and looking at the actual data and analyzing the market tends to land on lukewarm takes. The hot takes are for the press and the trolls.
FWIW, I don’t have visibility on subscription growth at all, so I’ll have to take his word for it, but none of that sounds unreasonable… except maybe for the fact that the hype may make people make bad moves and double down in ways that are harmful. A degree of fearmongering can be useful, if only as a deterrent.
I think there are plenty of valid criticisms of the subscription model, and the reasons for those criticisms are the same as many of the reasons growth has flat lined. Labeling criticism as fear mongering seems like overly reductive spin, especially when this analyst doesn’t seem to be interested in addressing those criticisms.
It’s like saying “data shows very few people die annually from eating tide pods, therefore maybe we shouldn’t be so scared of eating tide pods.” Like, no, it’s because nearly everyone realises it’s a very bad idea that nobody dies from it.
You’ve crunched the numbers correctly, but have drawn the exact wrong conclusion.
There are valid criticisms, for sure. I was not in the original thread, though, so I don’t know how willing to address those he is, but it’s a valid point that it’s not an all or nothing proposition. You can point out that subs aren’t overtaking the market in gaming without implying that they should.
I’d be more interesting in debating whehter subs are additive or not. I do know of anecdotal mentions of stunted sales on sub-forward releases, but I’d love to see more data about it (and what that means about revenue eventually, too).
But none of that influences the concerns on preservation one way or the other.
Honestly, I don’t think you’re right about the reasons growth has flatlined. I think the sub model just doesn’t fit gaming best. The content just doesn’t work well with the rotating carrousel of new and new-ish games most subscriptions have. I think Nintendo could be onto something, in the way Netflix was early on, in that you may be more willing to pay a fee to just have access to every single game before a certain point and from the beginning of time, but nobody is gonna figure that one out anytime soon.
I’m not sure there ever was a honeymoon phase for game subscriptions. They generally still push you to buy dlc/season passes. They still segment stuff into pre-order bonuses that you don’t get in a subscription. You already have titles leaving the service.
I’m not sure there ever was a honeymoon phase for game subscriptions
Couldn’t you repeatedly get gamepass for a month for £1 or similar? Assuming they don’t offer that anymore, I think the honeymoon is over!
Not really.
Video on demand works because the content is short and you need a large variety in a pay period as a consumer.
I don’t just watch one show or movie in a month, it’s several. So bundling makes sense.
It’s also fairly commoditized. I will watch what movies are available on Netflix, not like I’m extremely committed to watch a single given movie as long as the general selection is good. Maybe there’s one or two films a year I care about seeing that specific film before it rotates into a subscription service I subscribe to (and if not, meh).
For video games, it’s maybe one title a month that I really care about playing and then I only have time for that one game. But I only really care about setting aside time for that game and a lot of the other options out there you couldn’t pay me to play.
They are very different markets and a subscription model isn’t necessarily the future or even what’s most profitable for a company to offer (as Sony was recently acknowledging).
![Veteran Videogame Analyst: Subscription growth has flattened [in video games]](https://files.catbox.moe/k1njrt.png){kind=link}