Push Square PS5

Video game subscription services sounded like such a sure thing even just a few years ago that we can't help but feel for the firms that have invested so heavily in them. Sony has PS Plus, but it's meant to supplement the existing order, not supplant it. Speaking of heavily invested, tech economic analysis firm Macquarie Science and Technology Fund, which has a vested financial stake in correctly judging which way the proverbial winds are blowing, says: "The majority of the game market doesn't really want a game pass.”

Portfolio manager Gus Zinn revealed some interesting tidbits regarding the all-in business model famously adopted by Sony's chief rival in the console space, Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios. This division seems increasingly positioned to become the industry's biggest publisher, short of a massive, sustained influx of paying subscribers. A paywalled article called "Microsoft's Games Business Falls Short" from The Information (thanks, ResetEra) paints a stark picture.

Several leading game studios have already resisted Microsoft's pitch, preferring to take their chances on the traditional market with conventional releases in future. Our industry is small, so if a big AAA team says no initially, that position is increasingly unlikely to change as time passes and opinion shifts according to new data.

Further, before completing its gargantuan acquisition of Call of Duty publisher Activision, Microsoft was banking on over 100 million Game Pass subscribers to its service by 2030. That's presumably the number the endeavour needed to achieve to be worth the massive investment, not just in money and time but also in re-educating its core audience on what a game is worth.

The article alleges that Microsoft (best positioned to make subscriptions "a thing" in gaming) would need to triple its current subscriber base in the next five years, which, being generous, seems extremely unlikely. Put another way, it would need to grow its subscriber base annually at an astronomical rate of 40% for the next five years straight, without fail — a cracking pace that it hasn't approached since the early days of COVID-19 in 2020.

Do you wish things might have been different, that perhaps Sony might have taken a crack at a proper, all-in subscription service? Or are you glad it has proven resistant to such a drastic change, largely maintaining the status quo? Let us know in the comments section below.

[source resetera.com]