Games console industry tries to adapt to rise of free-to-play titles
Virtual goods such as Fortnite weapons and subscription services such as Microsoft’s Game Pass have become as important to the console industry as its traditional money spinner of high-priced standalone games, marking a turning point for the $60bn business.
Console players are set to splash out $21bn on in-game items and subscription services this year — about the same as they will spend on game downloads and discs, according to research group Ampere Analysis.
Such expenditure has risen sharply since the popular free title Fortnite debuted in 2017. Gamers that year spent three times more on console software than on subscriptions and virtual items.
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"If players continue to gravitate to free games, such as Fortnite, that do not require the latest hardware, Sony will find it more difficult to sell its PS5 to all but the most dedicated of players, some analysts have argued."
Archived version of the article: https://archive.vn/032BW#selection-2369.103-2373.159
The big problem is that a company will look at something like World of Warcraft/Destiny at the height of their popularity and think "We want that!"
Then they'll put out a (we're being optimistic here) serviceable, good game with a respectable amount of content... but it won't be able to hold a candle to something that: already has that much content + more AND players who are already 'stuck' with the game (sunk cost, friends/family/community, etc).
So you put out a game, get a brief spurt of attention from people who are a bit bored of the same ol' same ol', but then once they breakneck through all the content you have in less than a month they turn around and head back to their comfort food game and never look back. Congratulations, you can now put out a master class on how to waste millions of dollars.
In order to make a game as a service now you need either an extremely good hook, or you need to not only be comparable to an existing game but also EXCEED what that game offers and continue to provide content at a staggering speed until you've coerced people to have invested enough in the game to then be their comfort food/sunk cost game of choice.