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Forums - Gaming Discussion - What is your opinion on gaming subscription services?

 

My opinion is best summed up as:

Subscribed to at least one and like it 36 36.36%
 
Subscribed to at least one and not a fan 6 6.06%
 
Thinking about subscribing 6 6.06%
 
Was a subscriber and lapsed 4 4.04%
 
Will subscribe for big games and then drop 4 4.04%
 
Zero interest at all 28 28.28%
 
None of the current subs ... 8 8.08%
 
Other 7 7.07%
 
Total:99
IcaroRibeiro on 29 April 2021
SvennoJ said:
IcaroRibeiro said:

I know value proposition and pricing, ownership, availability issues and etc are the main points discussed here

But why nobody is talking about the opportunity to give any game a try without spending more money? 

I feel absolutely miserable paying for a game and then hating it. I feel I already spend way too much time reading, watching and informing myself for games before making a purchase 

I also hate the feeling of not buying a game that I actually will love because I need to make choices. And I know there is hundreds of games that I will love if I play, but I will never discover because I can't afford paying for anything only to give a 2 hours try 

For instance, when I want to see a new anime series on Crunchyroll it's perfect, I can watch as much as I need to make a proper judgment and if I don't like I can just drop it and move on 

I pick a new anime, movie and music after looking for it for 5 minutes. Yes I don't bother losing my time making a bad choice 

Meanwhile I need to spend days, sometimes even weeks, choosing games before buying to avoid losing my money  

A place where you can play some hours of a game without paying is the most important value on subscription services imo 

In reality, if I have an option of paying full price for every game I beat ever if it means I should not pay for games I stop playing before 5-6 hours I would call it an awesome deal. I lowkey feel at least half of the games I buy I finish only for the sake of making my money more "worth it", and I hate this feeling as well

We had demos for that and game try outs. Plus there's always the refund option on Steam and other services. And before you could trade games in to get most your cost back. First month after release trade in prices were always pretty high. That option is now also nearly killed.

It's nice to try out new things for 'free', yet you're in a curated limited pool which will shrink over time as more streaming services pop up and gain popularity. The same that happened to Netflix. So while trying out new games, you're limiting yourself to what's available on the streaming service.

Another thing against streaming, the disappearance of demos and trial play periods.

Never liked demos. 

Trial play is great, however almost nobody does that and I'm a Switch owner. In 2 years on Awirch I can barely remember 6 games with trial period, all for Switch online users (I.e. a paid service) and all of them for like 3-4 days before being removed again

Reselling games is boring af. It's useful and I've bought may games second hand already, but  unfortunately not everywhere in the world is USA when you can find a physical copy of everything let alone find someone or some store interested in buying it 

So nothing you are saying is factually useful. You are reliant in the good ill of publishers to give us demos (bad) and trials (good but rare) or spending your time looking for someone daring to spending money buying a second hand game 

GP will solve this by it's own nature, so why bothering?



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IcaroRibeiro on 29 April 2021
Runa216 said:



My point is, it really is or should be a 50/50 debate based on what matters to you, but reading this thread gives me some weird impression there's more malice and aggression just below the surface than there really should be. like it's a fight just waiting to break out, not a discussion.

Clownery

You call people who cares for their wallets not true gamers then wonder why there is malice and aggression in this thread? 



LudicrousSpeed on 29 April 2021
Cerebralbore101 said:
LudicrousSpeed said:

You don't need a sub service to kill off physical media, the progression of technology will do that for us. Before GamePass was a thing, digital sales were climbing and climbing. The PC market has been dominated by digital for a long time now. Consoles are going that route. Next time you're in Walmart or Target or Best Buy, check out the tiny tiny music CD sections. Games will hit that mark eventually.

The difference between GamePass and physical or buying a digital copy is that I don't expect to be able to play the game forever. I'm aware it can go away. When I buy DLC for a GamePass game, I know if the game leaves the service, I'll have to buy it or lose access to that DLC. It's part of the package.

Regarding chopping up games to sell in chunks, that's another thing that started long before GamePass. And GamePass doesn't make it easier to do this or anything, GamePass games are all available outside of the service. Why would MS allow publishers to put incomplete games on their service? Doesn't make sense.

@Bolded No, it just makes it monetarily necessary. People spending $120 a year on Gamepass can't replace the revenue from people buying their own games at $60 each. That revenue has to come from somewhere, so if Gamepass winds up completely changing the industry you can expect GaaS and MTX to be pretty much be all there is.

"Why would MS allow publishers to put incomplete games on their service? Doesn't make sense."

MS releases incomplete games themselves. Look at the sorry state that SoT launched in. Look at how much Gears 5 is a GaaS mess. Look at grounded, which is still in early access. Of course they're going to allow other publishers to put incomplete games on the service.

And how many DLCs has Sea of Thieves and Grounded put out? It must be a lot, since you said it’s “monetarily necessary”. I know you’ll need to check a wiki or something since you don’t play the games, I’ll wait.

Gears isn’t a GaaS mess. If you want to see a GaaS mess, look at Evolve, Avengers, Division 2, Destiny, Last of Us multiplayer, Forza 5 or 6, etc etc. You have this weird obsession with Gears having skins you can grind for or buy. You don’t understand what GaaS is, clearly.



Libara on 29 April 2021
Cerebralbore101 said:
LudicrousSpeed said:

You don't need a sub service to kill off physical media, the progression of technology will do that for us. Before GamePass was a thing, digital sales were climbing and climbing. The PC market has been dominated by digital for a long time now. Consoles are going that route. Next time you're in Walmart or Target or Best Buy, check out the tiny tiny music CD sections. Games will hit that mark eventually.

The difference between GamePass and physical or buying a digital copy is that I don't expect to be able to play the game forever. I'm aware it can go away. When I buy DLC for a GamePass game, I know if the game leaves the service, I'll have to buy it or lose access to that DLC. It's part of the package.

Regarding chopping up games to sell in chunks, that's another thing that started long before GamePass. And GamePass doesn't make it easier to do this or anything, GamePass games are all available outside of the service. Why would MS allow publishers to put incomplete games on their service? Doesn't make sense.

@Bolded No, it just makes it monetarily necessary. People spending $120 a year on Gamepass can't replace the revenue from people buying their own games at $60 each. That revenue has to come from somewhere, so if Gamepass winds up completely changing the industry you can expect GaaS and MTX to be pretty much be all there is.

"Why would MS allow publishers to put incomplete games on their service? Doesn't make sense."

MS releases incomplete games themselves. Look at the sorry state that SoT launched in. Look at how much Gears 5 is a GaaS mess. Look at grounded, which is still in early access. Of course they're going to allow other publishers to put incomplete games on the service.

You should really do some research on the definition of what a GaaS game actually is, your definition is just hilariously wrong.



SvennoJ on 29 April 2021

It's clear we're just going in circles, the value proposition is simply too great.

And yes, there is an underlying tone of MS vs Sony going on as well. However Sony is doing the same with PS Now, Sony introduced the 'free' games with ps+ (as an answer to Live Gold) and online passes. Sony is adding MTX as well. The only difference between PS Now and GP is the budget for user acquisition behind it.

This thread goes kinda hand in hand with the 7th vs 8th gen thread. It seems most people didn't like 8th gen all that much, 7th gen being heralded as much better. So the consensus seems to be there that game creativity/variety is in fact declining. Same with BC, rather playing old games with better graphics/fps. And game subscriptions are perfect for that.

Gaas also has its popularity, which is understandable considering the majority of players always gravitated to yearly franchises. Plus the ongoing success of Fortnite can't be ignored. Game subscriptions fit perfectly in there, the big publishers can simply update their Fifas and Cods with a steady income instead of coming up with a new campaign and/or direction. Not that Fifa did that anyway.

For me the writing is on the wall, the same will happen as what happened to tv. Initially it was great to have access to all kinds of 'different' shows from across the world. Now it feels like I'm scraping the barrel while all the stuff I'm interested in is split over different streaming services.

GP does make releasing incomplete games more 'excusable'. A game on gamepass from day 1 gets far less scrutiny than without gamepass. Same with games released on ps+ day one (there are some). It's 'free' so it's allowed to release incomplete.

Anyway I wonder what gaming will look like in 5 years. The current boost from the pandemic will be long gone, the recession will be in full effect and more competition/fragmentation in subscriptions services which will have to start earning a profit at some point.



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SvennoJ on 29 April 2021
Ryuu96 said:
SvennoJ said:

For me the writing is on the wall, the same will happen as what happened to tv. Initially it was great to have access to all kinds of 'different' shows from across the world. Now it feels like I'm scraping the barrel while all the stuff I'm interested in is split over different streaming services.

As someone who watches a lot of shows, I actually think TV Shows in recent history have been better than ever 👀 If anything I have too many shows to watch, it can be annoying they're split across so many services but for the most part I'm covered with Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ and as a Brit, I've always been kind of screwed by the availability of TV Show content so not much has changed there

Damn Americans, hoarding their content, not making it available in Europe until years later, even when everything was on Netflix we had to wait for some stuff, if the streaming services start supporting Europe more though that would be better for me.

Debate for another thread though! I do love talking about the TV Shows I watch though...

3 streaming services, vs one cable that included a lot more, at least over here. At its height hundreds of channels, video on demand (no extra cost), and always plenty to watch through DVR (skip commercials, auto record series etc). Now I hardly watch cable anymore, all the good shows are locked behind different streaming services, reality tv is what's left mostly.

Currently I'm watching the barrier on Netflix. (Spanish version of the usual apocalypse trope). It's getting annoying already. Before that Sisyphus: The Myth, Korean version of time travel apocalypse trope. Got very annoying. Now if the brits wouldn't hoard their Dr. Who I would have something more decent to watch ;) It used to be on tv here, gone to some subscription pay wall.

Anyway MS is serious about expanding their store
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-04-29-microsoft-will-slash-its-own-store-cut-on-pc-game-sales
It's a horror to use though, but maybe it will improve. I wish MS would stop locking up your HDD with their installs. I want to leave Steam and buy FS2020 again on the windows store, however then I wouldn't be able to access and manage my own HDD space and have to jump through hoops to apply fixes to the game or change settings through usercfg.opt. So Steam it is :/



Cerebralbore101 on 29 April 2021
LudicrousSpeed said:
Cerebralbore101 said:

@Bolded No, it just makes it monetarily necessary. People spending $120 a year on Gamepass can't replace the revenue from people buying their own games at $60 each. That revenue has to come from somewhere, so if Gamepass winds up completely changing the industry you can expect GaaS and MTX to be pretty much be all there is.

"Why would MS allow publishers to put incomplete games on their service? Doesn't make sense."

MS releases incomplete games themselves. Look at the sorry state that SoT launched in. Look at how much Gears 5 is a GaaS mess. Look at grounded, which is still in early access. Of course they're going to allow other publishers to put incomplete games on the service.

And how many DLCs has Sea of Thieves and Grounded put out? It must be a lot, since you said it’s “monetarily necessary”. I know you’ll need to check a wiki or something since you don’t play the games, I’ll wait.

Gears isn’t a GaaS mess. If you want to see a GaaS mess, look at Evolve, Avengers, Division 2, Destiny, Last of Us multiplayer, Forza 5 or 6, etc etc. You have this weird obsession with Gears having skins you can grind for or buy. You don’t understand what GaaS is, clearly.

Lol, I've put well over 100 hours into both Animal Crossing and Splatoon 2. Would still need to check a wiki to be able to tell you how many updates either game has gotten. I don't need to consult a wiki to be able to tell you that neither game is heavily monetized. Splatoon 2 has a $20 single player DLC, and both games need Nintendo Online. There's some Amiibo's but the content they offer is meaningless, and Amiibos are physical statues with a low cost to profit ratio.

Could you (or someone else) tell us how much money, or grinding you would need to spend to get all the stuff in Gears 5 or SoT? If I wanted all the skins in Gears 5 how long would I have to grind for all of that? What if I paid for it all in the store? Same goes for SoT.


Libara said:
Cerebralbore101 said:

@Bolded No, it just makes it monetarily necessary. People spending $120 a year on Gamepass can't replace the revenue from people buying their own games at $60 each. That revenue has to come from somewhere, so if Gamepass winds up completely changing the industry you can expect GaaS and MTX to be pretty much be all there is.

"Why would MS allow publishers to put incomplete games on their service? Doesn't make sense."

MS releases incomplete games themselves. Look at the sorry state that SoT launched in. Look at how much Gears 5 is a GaaS mess. Look at grounded, which is still in early access. Of course they're going to allow other publishers to put incomplete games on the service.

You should really do some research on the definition of what a GaaS game actually is, your definition is just hilariously wrong.

That's rich! I made an entire thread on the subject of what GaaS means. Not only that, but I made it just for you over a month ago! Clearly, I did my research. Why don't you either do your own, or jump into that thread, to enlighten us as to how Gears 5 and SoT somehow aren't GaaS games?

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/244470/what-games-would-you-consider-to-be-gaas-what-gaas-games-are-good-or-bad/



LudicrousSpeed on 29 April 2021
Cerebralbore101 said:
LudicrousSpeed said:

And how many DLCs has Sea of Thieves and Grounded put out? It must be a lot, since you said it’s “monetarily necessary”. I know you’ll need to check a wiki or something since you don’t play the games, I’ll wait.

Gears isn’t a GaaS mess. If you want to see a GaaS mess, look at Evolve, Avengers, Division 2, Destiny, Last of Us multiplayer, Forza 5 or 6, etc etc. You have this weird obsession with Gears having skins you can grind for or buy. You don’t understand what GaaS is, clearly.

Lol, I've put well over 100 hours into both Animal Crossing and Splatoon 2. Would still need to check a wiki to be able to tell you how many updates either game has gotten. I don't need to consult a wiki to be able to tell you that neither game is heavily monetized. Splatoon 2 has a $20 single player DLC, and both games need Nintendo Online. There's some Amiibo's but the content they offer is meaningless, and Amiibos are physical statues with a low cost to profit ratio.

Could you (or someone else) tell us how much money, or grinding you would need to spend to get all the stuff in Gears 5 or SoT? If I wanted all the skins in Gears 5 how long would I have to grind for all of that? What if I paid for it all in the store? Same goes for SoT.


Libara said:

You should really do some research on the definition of what a GaaS game actually is, your definition is just hilariously wrong.

That's rich! I made an entire thread on the subject of what GaaS means. Not only that, but I made it just for you over a month ago! Clearly, I did my research. Why don't you either do your own, or jump into that thread, to enlighten us as to how Gears 5 and SoT somehow aren't GaaS games?

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/244470/what-games-would-you-consider-to-be-gaas-what-gaas-games-are-good-or-bad/




Feel free to quote me and reply when you find out how many paid expansions and MTX there are in Grounded or Sea of Thieves, thanks.



Cerebralbore101 on 29 April 2021
LudicrousSpeed said:
Cerebralbore101 said:

Lol, I've put well over 100 hours into both Animal Crossing and Splatoon 2. Would still need to check a wiki to be able to tell you how many updates either game has gotten. I don't need to consult a wiki to be able to tell you that neither game is heavily monetized. Splatoon 2 has a $20 single player DLC, and both games need Nintendo Online. There's some Amiibo's but the content they offer is meaningless, and Amiibos are physical statues with a low cost to profit ratio.

Could you (or someone else) tell us how much money, or grinding you would need to spend to get all the stuff in Gears 5 or SoT? If I wanted all the skins in Gears 5 how long would I have to grind for all of that? What if I paid for it all in the store? Same goes for SoT.


Libara said:

You should really do some research on the definition of what a GaaS game actually is, your definition is just hilariously wrong.

That's rich! I made an entire thread on the subject of what GaaS means. Not only that, but I made it just for you over a month ago! Clearly, I did my research. Why don't you either do your own, or jump into that thread, to enlighten us as to how Gears 5 and SoT somehow aren't GaaS games?

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/244470/what-games-would-you-consider-to-be-gaas-what-gaas-games-are-good-or-bad/




Feel free to quote me and reply when you find out how many paid expansions and MTX there are in Grounded or Sea of Thieves, thanks.

1. Abilities are not locked behind paywalls. There are tons of the exact same abilities on gear you can get in-game that do the exact same thing often better. https://levelskip.com/action-adventure/Splatoon-2-Amiibo-Unlockable-Gear-Guide

2. You don't have to buy an Amiibo to get the gear. You just have to scan one.

3. When you buy an Amiibo you get a physical statue that is worth actual money. Not only that, but the price on Amiibos go up as collectibles. So you can literally buy some Amiibo for whatever gear you want, scan it, and then resell it on ebay/amazon if you so desire.

4. I own a grand total of three Splatoon Amiibos. Got them on sale for $9 each. None of them unlock anything worth a damn. Gear you can earn in game looks better, and has better stats. You have no idea what you're talking about.

5. There are over 250 shirts in Splatoon 2. A grand total of 13 of them can be unlocked via Amiibo. That's just 5% of the total shirts in the game. We can expand this to shoes, and pants to conclude that about 5% of Splatoon 2's cosmetic content is tied to Amiibo. Even less if you consider that changing your hairstyle/gender/eyecolor is free. https://splatoonwiki.org/wiki/List_of_clothing_in_Splatoon_2

Last edited by Cerebralbore101 - on 29 April 2021

LudicrousSpeed on 29 April 2021

Shitting on people who play Gears 5 because you can unlock some cosmetics like skins, meanwhile you spent $30 on Amiibo to unlock some gear and abilities. Hilarious.

Still waiting to see all those paid expansions you referenced earlier, by the way.