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Comment by Jensson | Hacker News Reader

Gaming is ahead here, they thought subscriptions was the future 15 years ago and everyone tried to make subscription games. Then free to play with microtransactions came around and completely turned that on its head, microtransactions generates way more revenue than subscriptions!

It might not apply to every field, but it is wrong to say that everything will turn into subscriptions.

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Some in the gaming industry tried/are trying hard to make Netflix of gaming subscription work.

Micro transactions work right now but maybe tomorrow it is subscription based gaming again.

GeForce Now has me hooked. $10/month not to own a gaming PC any more is pretty good.

I never paid close attention to it, but you can play Steam games? Like, you're renting a gaming PC?

That's... a very enticing option. How's the quality?

I am reminded of the Sega Channel that sold a collection of games via an add on through your cable service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel

The difference between movies and games is that popular games become entire entertainment platforms on their own. Fortnites revenue is about 20% of Netflix entire revenue, it would be really hard to convince them to join some subscription service.

And the second point, for games using a subscription service isn't cheaper. Fortnite is free to play, most people doesn't pay much so spending all your time in Fortnite and not using those subscriptions is the cheapest option for entertainment.

Microsoft Gamepass is a subscription for gaming that is very popular. Netflix are building something similar right now. No doubt Sony have their own version in the works too.

Microsoft Gamepass is tiny, Fortnite alone makes way more money than Gamepass. And you have a lot of popular free to play microtransaction games with scale similar to Gamepass. So at the moment subscription model for games is basically dead, some do it but most of the industry is going where the money is at: microtransactions.

There is still demand for non microtransaction games, yes, but that part of the market is still tiny. Microsoft gamepass is them trying to capture a chunk of that part, but likely it will never compete with the microtransaction games.

Maybe instead everything will turn into microtransactions! The car is free, but it's 10p to unlock your door, 50p to start the engine, 5p every gear change, etc...

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