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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Subscribe to play all company games?

There was a time where every games I wanted to play had to be physicaly bought through a store. Now I realise that my videogame collection on the shelf hasn't increased that much but I still have plenty of games here and there on hard drives on different devices. 

While I was thinking about how did this happened I realised that a good portion of the games I have on 360 are from EA (Mass Effect,  Shift, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge) and Microsoft (Halos, Kinect games, Forzas). I thought that maybe I would pay a subscription to have access to all of their games without buying them. I'm not talking about removing other forms of access like buying games a pieces. Generally I don't play games for that long and just want to move on to newer games so keeping them is a waste of space (incredible that I say that, I used to collect games lol) and I would like to pay for some access to them without buying them. If I wanted to buy them I would get the option to buy just like when you're playing a demo. 

I'm not playing as much as I used to and I would like to pay less to play games I want.

Let's say EA charges you 100$/year, 60$/6 months and 35$/3 months would you do it? If not why and what do you think will happen when games go full download? I think I would!



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I wouldn't because I don't like to be tied down like that, I can find games cheap enough myself, and this increases the level of surveillance power the company has (though I don't believe it will be long before that kind of thing is unavoidable however you buy games)

Also I don't really follow one publisher around so much apart from Nintendo, who are likely to be the last major publisher to implement something like that.



Back in the days of yore (Circa 2005, I want to say), Time Warner had a great service called GameTap, for PC. It was a subscription service that came with a great UI and gave you unlimited access to thousands of PC and emulated platform games, old and new. It ran something like 50 bucks a year, and was literally the Best Thing Ever (tm). Think of Steam, only with a subscription instead of having to purchase everything.

Then TimeWarner sold it to some UK company that completely fscked it over and it became garbage.

TL:DR, yes, I absolutely would pay a subscription to a service with unlimited access to games like that.



Check out my Youtube Let's Play channel here.

I would if it was every game ever made, DRM free.

In other words no.



The problem is how do you decide how that money gets split among the developers?

With many games and third party developers, generally the publisher makes their money back and then developers start getting some sort of royaly from each game (and there are many variations on that). So if EA were take $100 from you to play their backlog, how do you decide who gets the money?

Should that be counted as a sell for all those major games listed? What about the smaller ones? What about the ones I never play? How much of that subscription fee goes to EA and gets split among the chosen developers?

It seems like something like that would only screw the developers.



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TWRoO said:
I wouldn't because I don't like to be tied down like that, I can find games cheap enough myself, and this increases the level of surveillance power the company has (though I don't believe it will be long before that kind of thing is unavoidable however you buy games)

Also I don't really follow one publisher around so much apart from Nintendo, who are likely to be the last major publisher to implement something like that.


I think Nintendo should go that way. Some sort of Nintendo Channel would be beneficial to them if they don't want to compete with hardware anymore. They have enough followers and have a style of their very own.



twesterm said:

The problem is how do you decide how that money gets split among the developers?

With many games and third party developers, generally the publisher makes their money back and then developers start getting some sort of royaly from each game (and there are many variations on that). So if EA were take $100 from you to play their backlog, how do you decide who gets the money?

Should that be counted as a sell for all those major games listed? What about the smaller ones? What about the ones I never play? How much of that subscription fee goes to EA and gets split among the chosen developers?

It seems like something like that would only screw the developers.


Devs would get more money depending on many things like how many times their games are played and for how long. Also if someone wants to buy their game that person's money would go directly or in part to the devs.



Jazz2K said:
twesterm said:

The problem is how do you decide how that money gets split among the developers?

With many games and third party developers, generally the publisher makes their money back and then developers start getting some sort of royaly from each game (and there are many variations on that). So if EA were take $100 from you to play their backlog, how do you decide who gets the money?

Should that be counted as a sell for all those major games listed? What about the smaller ones? What about the ones I never play? How much of that subscription fee goes to EA and gets split among the chosen developers?

It seems like something like that would only screw the developers.


Devs would get more money depending on many things like how many times their games are played and for how long. Also if someone wants to buy their game that person's money would go directly or in part to the devs.

Again, shitty system.

It punishes smaller games and games with little replay value.  Just because I play through Mirror's Edge once and spend 8 hours but then spend 20 hours on Mass Effect 3 and Call of Duty doesn't mean they should get more money if I actually liked Mirror's Edge more.  

And what about bad games that take a long time? 

And what if Square Enix decided to do that?  That would be great for the Final Fantasies and other RPG's but what about something like Tomb Raider where it will probably take 8-ish hours?  Should those developers get penalized?  Just because a game is long doesn't make it better.

And money would never go directly to the devs, that's just a sad truth.  



twesterm said:
Jazz2K said:
twesterm said:

The problem is how do you decide how that money gets split among the developers?

With many games and third party developers, generally the publisher makes their money back and then developers start getting some sort of royaly from each game (and there are many variations on that). So if EA were take $100 from you to play their backlog, how do you decide who gets the money?

Should that be counted as a sell for all those major games listed? What about the smaller ones? What about the ones I never play? How much of that subscription fee goes to EA and gets split among the chosen developers?

It seems like something like that would only screw the developers.


Devs would get more money depending on many things like how many times their games are played and for how long. Also if someone wants to buy their game that person's money would go directly or in part to the devs.

Again, shitty system.

It punishes smaller games and games with little replay value.  Just because I play through Mirror's Edge once and spend 8 hours but then spend 20 hours on Mass Effect 3 and Call of Duty doesn't mean they should get more money if I actually liked Mirror's Edge more.  

And what about bad games that take a long time? 

And what if Square Enix decided to do that?  That would be great for the Final Fantasies and other RPG's but what about something like Tomb Raider where it will probably take 8-ish hours?  Should those developers get penalized?  Just because a game is long doesn't make it better.

And money would never go directly to the devs, that's just a sad truth.  


A) how does netflix do it?  i believe they make deals with individual companies to decide on a fair price.

B) if psn+ has taught me nothing else it's that bad games get tossed aside very very quickly when you have access to a lot of content. a long, bad game will never get more playtime from me than a short, good game.

 

OT - yes, very much yes.  I love psn+ very much!



twesterm said:
Jazz2K said:
twesterm said:

The problem is how do you decide how that money gets split among the developers?

With many games and third party developers, generally the publisher makes their money back and then developers start getting some sort of royaly from each game (and there are many variations on that). So if EA were take $100 from you to play their backlog, how do you decide who gets the money?

Should that be counted as a sell for all those major games listed? What about the smaller ones? What about the ones I never play? How much of that subscription fee goes to EA and gets split among the chosen developers?

It seems like something like that would only screw the developers.


Devs would get more money depending on many things like how many times their games are played and for how long. Also if someone wants to buy their game that person's money would go directly or in part to the devs.

Again, shitty system.

It punishes smaller games and games with little replay value.  Just because I play through Mirror's Edge once and spend 8 hours but then spend 20 hours on Mass Effect 3 and Call of Duty doesn't mean they should get more money if I actually liked Mirror's Edge more.  

And what about bad games that take a long time? 

And what if Square Enix decided to do that?  That would be great for the Final Fantasies and other RPG's but what about something like Tomb Raider where it will probably take 8-ish hours?  Should those developers get penalized?  Just because a game is long doesn't make it better.

And money would never go directly to the devs, that's just a sad truth.  


Smaller games with little replay value don't sell that much anyway. Games like Mirror's Edge never sold as much as Mass Effect so they never got the same revenur anyway. Bad games are not supposed to sell that much.

It's not just about how much time you spend playing the game but if you played it. I think it would be a great system that could replace renting and could give money to devs instead of giving money to Stores. Also if you want to buy the game nothing stops you from doing so.

There's also one big advantage for devs. Games that cost 60$ are that expensive because of many things including packaging, saving on these could see games sold for way less than what they're sold today so gamers could spend the same amount of money but getting more games. How about not choosing whether you get COD or Halo for but get both for 60$ or just pay your subscription to play the game.

devs don't make that much already, they need publishers and publishers rape them, so gamers can buy less games... with a subscription it would allow more devs to make money since they games would be included in the subscription instead of having to buy it and choosing another because your finances tells you you can afford only one.