lucidium said: Let's pretend you dont pay for PS+ until a game you want is offered... you buy PS+ and have have access to that game for the period of time you subscribed for. You are then, renting an old game for the sake of paying less despite said game being available, second hand or through standard rental services for cheaper. The thread makes no sense. The games are not free, you are paying to rent them, it is a rental services nothing more nothing less. |
Or, we may not pretend and consider real, actual ways to use the service. Try not pretending, then the thread will make sense to you.
Since we can now take not pretending, as the status quo, we can consider a person that pays for the annual subscription (the 50$ mentioned, time and again). He or she gets 13 games every month for every platform the service applies to. That makes it roughly 150 games per year, most of them being games several months old and of great reputation and value, like RDR, ACIII and Uncharted 3.
Now this person starts thinking: "why the heck should I buy Black Flag, since it most likely hit PS+ in a few months from now? Why not wait to get it for free?" Should it happen, wouldn't that hurt Black Flag sales?
Now let's take it a step forwards... PS4 does not have a strong games library, through which one might choose the next PS+ "free" game. What would that be in six months from now, given the fact that one game is being offered each month? Could it be Killzone Shadowfall? Possibly. So, the person above gets to keep his/her subscription and avoid buying any game he can resist not to.
To conclude, a potential buyer of Black Flag, or Killzone, or whatever is lost. The profit made through him is instead substituted by what percentage of the 50$ subscription applies to each of the games above. If more and more people act thusly, will it not hurt the industry in the long term and developpers mostly?
I hope it makes sense now. I guess it was soundly described in the first place, but I also guess you wanted to skip it all. All the arguments, for or against, all the replies, just to post your off-topic agenda of PS+ games not being truly free, but instead rented, old games one could get otherwise.