Gamers in 3 years: Nooooo you can't force me to upgrade to the Ultra Deluxe tier if I don't want to watch ads every 20 minutes, also I'm already paying for 4 other game subscription services
there was this one meme i recall where if a sequel to a game comes out anytime, the gamers would immediately start rebuking it and call the previous entry better... only for them to consider the sequel better after some years pass or after the sequel's sequel comes out.
don't have that meme with me though, or else i would've posted it here.
I think i saw that meme if it was about Civ. But civ does suck until all the xpats are out
Me sowing: Haha fuck yeah!!! Monopolies are so convenient!
Me reaping: Well this is practically highway robbery. What the fuck.
Its netflix all over again
They've already started enshitification slowly too, removing the $1 discount for your first month, ahead of starfield's release
All my friends use it "oh it" s on game pass!" Yeah, guys, I know it's cheap, I don't fault you for that, but could you at least be less enthusiastic and more critical of this horrible thing that is going to turn everything left that isn't games as a service in to gaas hell? I'm just asking for a little disgust, a little righteous anger, a little scorn. Yeah, it's the only game in town, but just admit the devil is dealing from the bottom of the deck, for me?
Game pass was cool for exactly that period of time last year when I got like, 8-9 months of it for like 1$ each, alternating between the ultimate and normie version, with 3 months at once one time. Now it's full price and I don't really bother lol
Basically. I used the conversion trick but I'll probably not renew it.
I really think the direction this service goes depends what happens in the console market. Next gen release will be make or break for it, if they establish too much dominance then they'll go to shit, whereas if there's still major competition then it will remain a competitive selling point they try to keep worthwhile. Sony's market share is 50% globally and 90% in several countries whereas Microsoft have 25% global and like 10-25% in a bunch of major countries. I even recall their FTC case suggesting they only had 21% share.
It's more than just a good deal for consumers and offers a lot of benefits to developers as well.
For instance, a revenue stream from game pass provides developers the option of developing a live service game that doesn't have mtx, f2p, or other live service bullshit (sea of thieves, astroneer, and deep rock galactic for example). Redfall (lol) was able to remove all of it's mtx, f2p, and other live service hooks after it became first party (according to devs). Of course game pass games have the option of including all of that stuff still, despite being included in game pass (Minecraft dungeons also has paid expansions for instance, although still no mtx or f2p stuff).
It doesn't just benefit non-traditional design (like live service games without the live service revenue model) but also non-traditional content. Scorn would have never seen the light of day in its current form if it was distributed through traditional channels, regardless of publisher.
Even games as widely beloved and praised as Dead Space struggled to turn a profit. So they butchered the series to try and make it work before ultimately killing it off.
The scenario you describe is one possible doom outcome, for sure. I can't see the future to say for certain that will never happen. With that said, the current gaming industry is already an obnoxious capitalist hellscape, but outside of Xbox no one seems to be even considering a game pass like service and are instead sticking strong to the traditional model of mtx, f2p shit, and forced updates to new inferior paid versions of titles and all the other crap.
IMO, all of the above stuff is just as unacceptable as the scenario that you predict will happen, but they are part of the current awful status quo of the industry.
It seems more analogous to streaming services, and if it grows to be as big as the streaming industry is now, you are probably right and there will be a service that offers a tier that inserts banner ads or something. Regardless of the number of new streaming services that pop up though, I have not come close to missing the days of cable tv, nor have I gone back to purchasing physical media.
I approach this as someone who buys like 4 games a year max, always at discounts, and I also keep returning to the same titles for years and years. I look at the hundreds or even thousands of hours I've logged in some games and imagine many publishers would rather prefer that I would have paid for every single minute I spent in them.
I foresee a depressing future where many games will only be available as part of subscription services and subject to the usual rights and publisher related legal bullshit that gets games delisted all the time, which will be even worse if there's a big jump to things becoming more cloud-based.
When something becomes unlisted on Steam, those who bought it can still download the game, and if that fails, in most cases there's still piracy. I can still get cracked and pirated versions of AVP2 or No One Lives Forever despite legal fuckery having kept them off every digital storefront ever
I guess I'm someone who would have played way more games if I had the money. 4 new games a year was about where I was and is how I justified the initial purchase.
Unless one of the games that you are playing is one that benefitted from paying it's bills with game pass instead of mtx, there probably isn't much that you are benefiting from or will benefit from a game pass service.
Selling licenses directly is a huge source of revenue for both game publishers and video content publishers and I don't see why they would ever say no to being sent money in exchange for an executable. Do some TV shows not release blu rays? I honestly don't know because I only really see the big name ones because I don't really look at physical media anymore. I assume there are probably some shows that didn't get a physical media release right?
Anyway, I feel like we would have already seen that in video content already. Hell, game pass itself sells individual licenses directly to users from within the app itself, and I don't know what would compel someone to ever switch that off.
