Adding a bit more to the discussion on whether game subscription can be "the future", it looks like despite the heavy push made in the past decade, subscriptions only make up 10% of total video game spending in the US.
Link: https://nitter.net/MatPiscatella/status/1747660051269988522
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All I want is a way to rent PC games before I buy them. Gamepass kinda works for that, but I REALLY don’t want yet another subscription service. I suppose I could buy them from Steam and request a refund if I don’t like it, but I hate paying that kind of money up front and downloading a 100 GB game just to turn around and refund it.
We used to have a similar solution years ago: demos.
Aren't demos kind of making a comeback? I've played lots of demos on Steam.
On pc yeah. There are a couple for console but they’re far rarer
I know, right?! I remember downloading a demo (or popping in a demo disc) that let you play like one mission or a set amount of time in a game. In the era of 120 GB downloads why can’t I download like 5 GB of the game and try it first?! The only answer I can come up with is that, much like the charlatans of old, they know a lot of it is shit so they have to grab your money and run.
The games that end up that large are probably all the AAAs with big deadlines that end up released half-finished anyway, I doubt the companies in charge want to justify the extra cost of releasing an optimised demo if they don't think it's going to be worth the effort.
I mIss shareware games.
Demos were bad for business.
A good demo for a good game was minor advertising that was dwarfed by good press. If every player wont shut up about how good the game is, their friends would skip the demo and buy anyway.
A good demo for a bad game was good advertising that bit you later. You got more up front sales, but got harder drop offs once word gets around that the demo was all you had.
A bad demo for a good game stuttered sales. Some people would turn away and maybe never come back, and it took time for word of mouth to tell everyone to skip the demo and just buy the game anyway.
A bad demo for a bad game was shit all around.
In the end, this punnett square made it pretty clear that the best option was to make a really good demo if youre game was shit, or you thought you needed the help finding an audience. but if you knew (or """knew""") your game was good? The demo was wasted time and effort. Either it was a smaller ad bump you werent upset to cut costs for, or you were slowing sales by accident.
Demos are good for us, but suck for the company making them. So they largely stopped making them.
PS+ set forward a theme of letting people have game trials - you can download and play for a few hours before needing to buy. I think they want that tied to some kind of invested subscription setup just so that people wouldn't abuse the system.
It's easier to avoid abuse if every game has demos coded to end after level 1, but as many old analyses have shown, that takes a huge amount of developer resources.
The issue of downloading 100 GB is something that some publishers have tried to solve with cloud gaming. If you're only mildly interested in a Game Pass game, you can play it on cloud, and then if you enjoyed your first session, download it locally for the next one.
Worth noting that game trials on PS+ are kept behind the highest tier of PS+. Outside of that, there isn't too much of interest encouraging you to pick up that subscription in my books since the classics Sony's been putting publishing there aren't really that good. Streaming PS5 games sounds nice but is highly dependent on your internet connection. Not sure if I'm missing anything.