The data suggests some gamers are partially treating the service to trial or even rent a game they might be interested in, before unsubscribing.
This is me. I often subscribe when there’s a discount, go through some games I’m not interested in buying but want to play anyways. Xbox game pass specifically has a lot of great indies that can be finished relatively quickly.
I subscribed earlier this year for a month, might resubscribe for a month again later this year.
Same here. Game pass is a pretty good deal even at full price for playing AAA single player games that you won’t touch after a single play through. Plus, there’s a lot of games that I wouldn’t have given a shot if I didn’t happen to have Game Pass at the time.
It’s still crazy to me that this somehow became normal. I’m not paying rent for a fucking video game. Hell I’m not even paying in general, least of all for Ubisoft or some other Activision-Blizzard-EA shlock.
Churn is inevitable with any subscription service.
The trick is creating just enough value and exclusive content/services that you feel like you’re gonna miss out if you leave. But not too much.
I haven’t seen any incentive to stay with any specific game subscription service via exclusive content or services. But I do see plenty of attempts to lock people into services with shitty tactics. Like forcing save data to the cloud. Good luck moving that saved file to your own personal copy of the game. Or multiple tiered service options with features/games locked behind more expensive options.
It’s all manipulative and anti consumer.
I have gamepass and I’m happy with it. I tend to dabble in a lot of games instead of playing one game for a long time.
One new game costs $60 to purchase. For me personally there is little chance I will be playing it 4 months from now.
Alternatively I can pay for gamepass and play any of those games for $15 a month. The only situation where this ends up being a worse deal is if I only play one game for more than four months, which so far has not happened for me.
I realize that doesn’t make sense for everyone, though.
It grinds my gears that sony software locked the ability to backup saves locally on the PS5 making a PS plus subscription the only way to have a backup of save games. I don’t play multiplayer and don’t play the monthly free games either so I have to pay a premium for the rest of my life to get a basic functionality that was present in ps4 but got nerfed for some dubious reasons in ps5. The recent ps plus price hike was the last straw so I ditched my PS and got into PC gaming and loving it so far.
