Don’t worry, we don’t miss the irony that we’re talking about the pros and cons of gaming subscriptions at GameStar Plus. Because we are deeply self-deprecating people, we even have to grin a bit about it – but we can also explain all the more well-founded why there are subscription offers. We make some ourselves.
And the subscription issue isn’t going away either. More and more single game subscriptions are being added to the wide range of subscriptions such as Xbox Game Pass, the new PlayStation Plus, EA Play (Pro) or Ubisoft Plus. GTA + would be the latest addition, there are also Fallout First (for Fallout 76) and ESO Plus, and there are also increasing indications Call-of-Duty-Abo
The »subscription« of gaming is progressing. Two questions naturally arise: What is the re ason for this? And is that good?
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In his column on GTA+, Dimi had already warned of the downsides of the subscription boom, which can have a negative impact on the development of (online) games. What will happen if developers gear their new projects to a two-class society from the start?
At the same time, subscriptions à la Xbox Game Pass or Apple Arcade can promote diversity, because their operators need as varied an offer as possible. This gives (indie) studios the chance to try out creative ideas that would have had less of a chance if sold individually. Lonely Mountains Downhill, for example, was able to bring in real money in the Game Pass, as the indie publisher Thunderful told us in the podcast.
Micha has his own thesis about where the subscriptions come from: He sees a power struggle between platform operators such as Microsoft or Sony and providers of large games such as GTA or Fortnite. Everyone wants to keep customers connected to their own ecosystem – and a subscription can help a lot!
And then there’s Amazon, the great unknown.
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