Ubisoft Exec Says Gamers Need to Get ‘Comfortable’ Not Owning Their Games for Subscriptions to Take Off::An executive at Assassin’s Creed maker Ubisoft has said gamers will need to get “comfortable” not owning their games before video game subscriptions truly take off.
What’s funny to me is the streaming model for media already has shown this won’t work out well for gaming companies. When a new game drops people will sign up for a month, binge it, then cancel their subscription. They could try and trickle out DLC to get people to stay subscribed, but unless the DLC is significant people will probably just wait a while until a bunch of DLC is available then binge it again.
Personally I can only focus on one or maybe two major games at a time so I’d be happy to only pay a small monthly fee to one major game company at a time over paying for several $80 AAA titles a month.
The only way it works is if it’s a large company making deals with other companies.
If Sega had a subscription service, I wouldn’t use it, I’m a huge Sonic fan and I like Persona sure, but… most of their other IPs get the Banjo Kazooie treatment: IE: They just stand around, pose for merchandise, say “Hey remember when?”, while starring in exactly zero games.
Since I already own most of the Sonic games (I don’t have Sega Super Stars because I’m saving up for surgery and that seems more important than some loop de loops, sides I never finished Frontiers or Origins), all their other games are so old that if they’re not on some kind of pre-existing collection or re-release, they’re incredibly easy to emulate… meaning I’d probably just fire up dolphin instead of pay a subscription fee on the off chance that MAYBE they have Billy Hatcher, Sonic Heroes, and Shadow The Hedgehog, three titles that the average consumer doesn’t care about.
I can say this about any company really - Imagine Capcom did this, most of their old games are re-released in collections and the IPs that I really care about are Dead Rising (Dead IP and I already own them all on Steam), Resident Evil (Most of the games are old and easy to emulate whereas the newer games are mostly watered down remakes), Devil May Cry (already own them all on Steam), Mega Man (IP on life support and All of them are on Steam except for Legends and a few of the spinoffs), and Darkstalkers (Dead IP, already on Steam in multiple collections)… so I wouldn’t buy a subscription, and the casual gamer doesn’t have any real reason to want only Capcom games.
Microsoft’s gamepass makes sense because it’s a low price for a LOT of games, many of which aren’t even owned by Microsoft, and you can play them on platforms that aren’t the original platform (Wanna play the Rare Replay? This is the only way! Think they even have Enchanted Arms which… has no Steam Port… since it was released at a time when PC Gaming was dead due to the industry being afraid of pirates)
AND I STILL DON’T USE IT, BECAUSE MOST OF THEM ARE RELIABLY PURCHASABLE OR EMULATABLE! AND THAT’S EASIER THAN MAINTAINING A SUBSCRIPTION FEE ON THE OFF CHANCE THAT I’LL FINALLY GO BACK AND FINISH DOOM 2016 SOMEDAY!
breathes
And that’s not even getting into the fact that video games are an investment, I’m pouring energy into actually finishing them, I’m going back to older ones to see if I can do it better this time or find something missed, and after a long enough session even though I’m having fun, I’m actually tired because what I’ve done took effort on my part and if it was difficult it might even have triggered some kind of stress signal in my brain…
Meanwhile, a MOVIE based subscription service makes sense, because I’m probably just going to throw something on and kick back, there’s no investment on my part outside of what I’m paying…
I think in general, people forget this, Video Games demand something of the player. Movies do not.
A movie isn’t going to suddenly stop the story in order to challenge what you know about the film, then go “Sorry buddy, if you wanna watch the rest of the movie you’ll have to do better than that”, a video game? Well I guess you can look up the ending on Youtube… but that’s called giving up (Or acknowledging that the final stage is pure unbalanced bullshit that wasn’t properly tested… looking at you Freedom Planet and Manual Samuel… yeah even the Indie Scene has this problem…)
Of course a lot of modern games ARE movies, so what’s the point in actually playing Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed when you can save yourself the endless glitchfest and dull gameplay by just watching a Let’s Play lol, so maybe that’s why executives are getting confused…
I think the direct parallel was Netflix. It used to be the only platform of it’s kind with an extensive catalog, so it was a far easier sell for people to sign up and stay subscribed. Even at it’s peak though, Netflix never managed to kill off physical media because there are still fans who want to own that disc of their favorite TV show or movie that they could watch anywhere, anytime. Then when other media companies wanted to grab their share of streaming revenue by clawing back their stuff from Netflix and setting up their own smaller catalogs, thinking they would get the same retention that Netflix achieved, instead people started to play the subscription hopping game. In the wake of this, sales of physical media are even seeing an increase too.
I feel like Steam comes close to being the “Netflix” of games because even though it’s not literally streaming games and doesn’t use a subscription model, it still has an extensive catalog and acts as an alternative to owning physical copies of games which comes with both benefits and drawbacks. I’m pretty sure that if publishers keep trying to claw their stuff away from Steam though, that we’ll see a similar uptick in people returning to buying physical copies as a result.
Can you even get physical PC games anymore? I have an official flash drive with Psychonauts 2 on it, but that’s just because I was a backer for hte game
Yeah that’s true, I was thinking more of consoles but I suppose Steam doesn’t really have any bearing on that market. I guess the better equivalent for PC would be DRM free games where it’s downloadable, and could be backed up to physical media (not provided). 😅
Indeed, and we honestly have Steam to thank for there even being a PC gaming market, there was a period of time where PC ports basically didn’t exist, and developers when asked why basically turned around and said they want the game to be bought with money instead of being downloaded off of limewire… and before Steam came along, there really wasn’t an answer to that question as piracy really was more convenient than the actual PC market at that time.