I’ve seen Mat Piscatella talking about this, and it seems like his take is, paraphrasing, “it values different games”. Some games see far more success with the broad access they get to subscriptions, and some see less, which seems to be corroborated by the author of this article.
Subscriptions have become the new four letter word, right? You can’t buy a product anymore.
I mean…you can for anything in Game Pass, but that’s not the case for Nintendo.
Without wishing to portray myself as a comprehensive researcher … I have come across one study of Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus that appears to bear elements … showing that in contrast to the music or movie and TV industry, these subscription services have not “substantially cannibalized existing revenue streams”.
And I think a lot of that has to do with how much longer we spend with a given game than any song or movie. And even in television, every current show is on some streaming service, and you really can’t buy those, but in games, it’s the opposite. With few exceptions, you can just about always buy the game, and they’re often not present on a subscription service. When games are sold, they tend to command a higher price, too.
Then, not mentioned in the article, are weird cases like Indiana Jones or Doom, where they’re quality games that don’t sell many copies despite impressive pedigrees, presumably because everyone knows they can get them on Game Pass. But then games like STALKER 2 or Clair Obscur, with low-ish review scores and basically no pedigree, respectively, sell plenty of copies despite being available for far cheaper on Game Pass. Some of this might be the association with Game Pass being for Microsoft-owned studios or something, and Microsoft is aiding that association by making fewer lucrative deals for third party studios.
I’ve seen Mat Piscatella talking about this, and it seems like his take is, paraphrasing, “it values different games”. Some games see far more success with the broad access they get to subscriptions, and some see less, which seems to be corroborated by the author of this article.
I mean…you can for anything in Game Pass, but that’s not the case for Nintendo.
And I think a lot of that has to do with how much longer we spend with a given game than any song or movie. And even in television, every current show is on some streaming service, and you really can’t buy those, but in games, it’s the opposite. With few exceptions, you can just about always buy the game, and they’re often not present on a subscription service. When games are sold, they tend to command a higher price, too.
Then, not mentioned in the article, are weird cases like Indiana Jones or Doom, where they’re quality games that don’t sell many copies despite impressive pedigrees, presumably because everyone knows they can get them on Game Pass. But then games like STALKER 2 or Clair Obscur, with low-ish review scores and basically no pedigree, respectively, sell plenty of copies despite being available for far cheaper on Game Pass. Some of this might be the association with Game Pass being for Microsoft-owned studios or something, and Microsoft is aiding that association by making fewer lucrative deals for third party studios.