How Sony will respond Game Pass?

[DonFerrari]

sales2099 said:

DPsx7 said:
They might be able to get away with a lower price if they make up for it with volume. But regardless it's not for me because I don't have a high level of trust in digital/streaming platforms. It's not saving us money by locking customers into a subscription. I prefer to pay once, get my disc, then the control is in my hands from then on.

I played 20 games on GP in 2019 alone. Played it, beat it, uninstalled, moved on to the next. I like to think I very much saved money playing 20 games for $15 a month. Games included day 1 Gears 5 and Outer Worlds (both $60 value at the time). 

Im sorry but this is a bad argument. Fear mongering and “what if” witch-hunts at its worst. 

Don't know all the games you played and how they would have costed if you waited for them to be cheaper. But let's say 15 per month on a year would equate 4 full games, you played 5x more so unless you waited a very long time (15*12/20 = 9 bucks per game) and perhaps some of those games you wouldn't have bought because they weren't good, it is very hard to say didn't save a lot of money or enjoyed a lot of your time.

Sure on the same note I have purchased hundred of physical, got 300 digital (mostly gifts from plus) and perhaps that costed me a little over double what you are paying per month and all those games are either mine forever (the ones I care) or as long as I keep or whenever I renew my sub.

Now doing maths, let's say the average attach ratio of games on Xbox is 12 games per HW bought over 6 years of ownership, that is 60*12 = 720 USD at most (because there is some bought on sales), at the same time person paying 15 bucks per month over same period would be 15*72 =1080 USD (sure there will be some promotions), so yes at 15 per month math kinda balances out and gives MS some leverage (sure we also would have to excludes people that pay one month sub and play that game or 2 or 3 in the month and then quit, which could likely mean for the month that game release instead of getting 60 they got 15 for that game, but for the over 1 year game for third parties they would hardly be losing money, they get some bucks for the game on the platform that they aren't getting from stores, get some publicity that may extend legs for that game, etc). So if MS releases about 4 games per year on the service it basically equals the expenditure buying and subs if someone keeps their sub the whole year.

All in all, it certainly can be made a model where it is profitable to keep GP, it doesn't jeopardize other publishers and all.

But you can't deny that there is also the potential for MS to focus on more episodic games (let's say put a part of the game each month for some months or like a year), for eternal games that get those weekly or monthly update (like smartphone games, and some are very good and fun), F2P models on some other games and MP heavy where the people keep playing the same game for a long period? That is basically the reason I don't want Sony to follow same route since I like contained SP games. Also they were able make 3 games that sell 10M almost every year this gen so that would basically be similar revenue to MS having the subs without having to send part of that money to anyone else. But yep Sony could put those games after 1 or 2 years on PSNow and improve that service to generate more recurrent revenue together with PS+. We will see if Sony will respond when GP grows and bring more profit. Denying the model can be profitable and have quality is wrong imho though.

Last edited by DonFerrari - on 01 August 2020