The CEO and president of publishing giant Take-Two Interactive Strauss Zelnick has expressed scepticism about the all-you-can-eat subscription-based model in video games.
Speaking at the Bernstein 35th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference – as reported by GamesIndustry.biz – the publishing boss and former film exec said that on average, a home will watch around five hours of TV or film each day, far more than it will spend playing games.
“If you’re consuming that much, a subscription model makes a whole lot of sense,” he said.
“Even a few of them make a whole lot of sense… But for video games, the daily consumption is under an hour and a half. It’s 45 hours a month or less. And how do people consume video games? They’re playing one, two, or three titles a month, and they may play those titles for six months.
“So now if you’re paying a $15 or $20 monthly subscription but you’re only consuming one to three games a month, it’s a pretty terrible deal versus just buying the titles up front. And consumers intuitively stay away from terrible deals. They really do those economics intuitively, very effectively.”
This isn’t a perfect comparison, of course. People will likely be watching more film and TV because this content is readily available with a super low barrier to entry. Right now, games are a very expensive form of entertainment, with one of the incentives for publishers to get involved in this market being the opening up of the market to a far greater audience than ever before.
In an interview with PCGamesInsider.biz recently. [email protected] US chief Chris Charla and EU head Agostino Simonetta pointed to Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service as offering consumers a wider array of content that they might not have played before, showing the potential to change behaviours with such a service.
