Video game subscription services are not trumping traditional premium game sales, and data shows their growth has stalled in the United States.
The panorama of the video game industry It has been experiencing its biggest revolution for a few years since the appearance of the digital format, due to subscription services, with or without streaming.
Just as Netflix, Prime Video or Disney+ have changed our movie and series consumption habits, services such as Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus and those dedicated to the cloud (Stadia, GeForce Now, Amazon Luna) anticipate a new way of consuming video game: instead of buying them, we access them by subscription.
Although the success and adoption of these services cannot be denied, the data shows that they are far from becoming the hegemonic model of video game consumption, and their growth has come to a standstill.
Is there room for growth for video game subscription services?
An analysis of Circana’s market dynamics shows that growth has come to a standstill, at least in the United States.
In April 2023, user consumption of video game subscription services it was only 2% higher than April 2022.
On the other hand, the great “premium” video game releases of 2023, which have not come out, at least for the moment, on subscription services, have performed extremely well when sold in digital and even physical format, in the case of Nintendo games. .
He refers, above all, to The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and Hogwarts Legacy, without underestimating Resident Evil 4 or Star Wars Jedi Survivor: AAA games for which consumers they do not hesitate to pay their 60-80 dollars for your digital game or even your disc/cartridge.
According to Mat Piscatella, an analyst at Circana, subscription services are having a hard time attracting new subscribers beyond those who already own a console.
This is especially interesting in the case of Game Pass: Microsoft’s service offers streaming gameplay on PC and mobile, but it doesn’t seem to be growing and most of its subscribers are those who already own a console or gaming PC.
It was precisely Microsoft’s presence in the streaming game segment that gave it problems with the CMA by blocking its purchase of Activision Blizzard, despite the fact that Microsoft considers that the CMA underestimates the importance of “Cloud Gaming” in the market. ..
The next few years we will see if video game subscription services grow in subscribers (and in supply) to definitively displace the purchase of video games as a hegemonic way of consuming video games, but at the moment it does not seem to be the case.
