Was Sony right to be cautious? (pic: Sony)
A reader explains why they’re pleased that subscriptions aren’t selling as well as expected and yet single-player game sales are soaring.
The best news I have heard in a very long time for video games has nothing to do with an announcement or rumour or even a positive review, but the fact that Games Pass and PS Plus have been exposed as the bad idea that they are. The report basically says that subscription services for games have hit a ceiling and they’re not growing any more, and publishers have realised that actually they’re better of just carrying on making single-player games instead.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the bad decision making of publishers and it really is hard to see how Sony could have thought PlayStation Showcase was a good idea, while everything related to the Activision Blizzard acquisition has been embarrassing for everyone involved. But even things like making a mess of the release schedules, with big new games always coming out within just days of each other, shows how badly organised and stubborn they are.
In this case though I think it’s a case of publishers being reasonably sensible at first, as I’m sure the idea of being the ‘Netflix of games’ must’ve seemed really tempting. Especially as Microsoft had started to prove that the idea could work with Game Pass, and so Sony felt they needed to compete with their own equivalent.
Only this time it turns out that Sony was right, to be wary of the idea, and despite everyone criticising them for not releasing games day one on PS Plus, it seems they were right to say that it didn’t make sense to just give away your most popular games. When you put it like that it does seem ridiculous that Microsoft thought the opposite.
Everyone thought Microsoft could afford to absorb the cost and lose all that potential income but it seems that even they need to make money at some point, which is why they ended up raising the prices.
You might be wondering, though, why I’m glad that the whole thing is being exposed as just a fad that doesn’t work. It’s simple, it’s because I don’t like anything that distracts from the normal business of making video games.
More importantly, it’s because what they’ve realised sells a lot better is single-player games, and that is exactly what I want more of.
One of the problems with subscriptions is that they’ve found that people only have time for a few games at a time, so having access to more doesn’t really help them. So now Sony and Microsoft know that what really sells, what really makes the money and makes people want to buy a particular console, is high-end single-player games. Not live service titles or even normal online multiplayer but proper games.
To me that is fantastic news and I hope it will convince Sony to give up their current obsession with live service games and stop Microsoft from ever going down that route. Hopefully it will convince other publishers to give up too, as I notice more and more going in that direction.
The problem is that even though the results how that subscriptions aren’t that popular I can’t see Microsoft giving up that easily. After all, it’s one of the main reasons it wants to buy Activision Blizzard. I’m sure they won’t stop Game Pass entirely, but I now wonder whether big games like Call Of Duty will take quite a bit longer to appear on the service, just like they haven’t put Diablo 4 on it.
It all seems so unsustainable and the sort of thing that’s likely to turn the industry upside down for years before it’s fixed. But now, hopefully, we’ll avoid that happening. Or maybe I’m being too optimistic and they’ll just blunder on ahead anyway…
By reader Gantree
Is it a failed experiment? (pic: Microsoft)
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A reader explains why they’re pleased that subscriptions aren’t selling as well as expected and yet single-player game sales are soaring.