Will Buying Games Become a Thing of the Past?
Reading Time: 3 minutesIs the concept of game ownership changing?
It seems that almost everything is turning into a subscription service—from watching movies to buying groceries, you can now pay a monthly fee to get the things you regularly need.
Games are not spared from this either, especially with the rise of Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus. So, will owning and buying games outright become overshadowed by subscription services?
Let’s check out what subscription services bring to gamers and how they are the gaming industry’s future.
What Are Game Subscription Services?
Game subscription services allow you to pay an affordable monthly fee to download and play games on a platform like PCs, Xbox, or PlayStation. This service can also come through cloud-gaming services like NVIDIA’s GeForce Now or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
These subscriptions offer a wide selection of games, from legacy and classic titles to some of the latest AAA offerings. They also typically have a rotating number of indie titles, making it worth your monthly fee. But if you can’t decide which subscription you should go for, check out our list of the best game subscription services if you’re looking into playing more games without spending too much money.
Will Subscription Services Overtake Game Stores?
Before the internet took over many things, we used to buy or rent individual movies. Now we can watch various movies and shows on Netflix—buying physical movies is practically dead. And while it is still possible for you to purchase game cartridges and discs in physical stores, the PS5’s digital-only releases tell us that buying those physical games might soon end.
It’s pretty clear buying physical games is coming to an end. If you’re a Steam or PC gamer, you probably haven’t bought a physical copy of a PC game for the past decade. But with game subscription services on the rise, will the concept of owning games also end?
Probably not so soon.
There is little merit for large game publishers to release an expensively developed game into a subscription service where they only earn a percentage of the fee. Compare that to the amount of money they could make by making interested gamers buy the game at full price first to take advantage of the excitement in the market for the release.
After some time, the hype for the game will die down, and publishers can then make a stable income from earning a cut from the subscription fee of subscription platforms instead. This will create a second wave of excitement for the gamers that would’ve wanted to play the game but couldn’t afford it or didn’t have the capable hardware for it by playing it through a cloud gaming service.
Furthermore, some publishers make a few new releases available on subscription platforms. This is especially true for massive game companies that have their own subscription services, like Xbox and EA.
If you’re interested to see where the gaming industry is headed and want to read our predictions, you should check out what the future of gaming will look like.
Game Subscription Services Make Gaming Accessible to a Wider Audience
As mentioned earlier, when publishers do a second release of their flagship game on a subscription platform, it allows more gamers interested in the game to play it. After all, not everyone can justify buying a game at full price, which is why Steam sales are seen as heaven-sent by a huge number of players.
These subscription services lessen the burden on your wallet to play the games you want. We know that hardware is already a big financial commitment, but games? Unless you only play one, the amount you pay can really stack up.
However, for less than half the price of a modern flagship title, you can play a ton of games. Xbox Game Pass has plenty of old big expensive titles that you probably wanted to play but couldn’t justify buying upon its release and forgot about it.
And if you don’t want to splurge on high-end hardware, cloud gaming is making giant leaps in development. Amazon’s Luna cloud gaming service gives you a growing number of titles to choose from, and you can now enjoy PlayStation titles on your PC with PlayStation Plus Premium.
Owning Games Will Be a Thing of the Past
It won’t be soon, but it will be an eventual reality. While buying games from online stores like Steam won’t die completely, it won’t be mainstream, nor will it hold the majority of the market share anymore.
Making games more accessible to more people is incredible, but how will it affect those who make them? What about indie game developers? After all, if no one is buying games outside of subscription services, only giant corporations with large caches can create games.
There’s always a downside to a massive change, but we hope that the quality of the games and indie developers don’t suffer from it.
Reference: https://www.makeuseof.com/buying-games-a-thing-of-the-past/
Ref: makeuseof
MediaDownloader.net -> Free Online Video Downloader, Download Any Video From YouTube, VK, Vimeo, Twitter, Twitch, Tumblr, Tiktok, Telegram, TED, Streamable, Soundcloud, Snapchat, Share, Rumble, Reddit, PuhuTV, Pinterest, Periscope, Ok.ru, MxTakatak, Mixcloud, Mashable, LinkedIn, Likee, Kwai, Izlesene, Instagram, Imgur, IMDB, Ifunny, Gaana, Flickr, Febspot, Facebook, ESPN, Douyin, Dailymotion, Buzzfeed, BluTV, Blogger, Bitchute, Bilibili, Bandcamp, Akıllı, 9GAG