Kids Want Video Game Subscriptions More Than Fully Priced Games Now

gameranx.com:

The ESA has commissioned a new survey for what younger gamers want, and the results are once again, very surprising.

As reported by GameRant, the survey starts off with the result that 73 % of children interviewed wanted something related to video games. Video game subscriptions then topped the list of the kinds of products that children actually wanted, followed by dedicated game consoles. We’ll break down the numbers below:

So, I don’t think people will question the popularity of items like video game consoles, or in-game currency. So why are subscriptions overwhelmingly more popular with kids over everything else?

Looking at the range of subscription services available, Apple Arcade is a cheap, dedicated service for mobile games, Switch Online serves a niche for retro game fans, and there are a host of PC subscriptions that offer tons of games. These include Nvidia’s GeForce Now, Ubisoft’s Ubisoft Plus, and EA’s EA Play.

Towering above those options is clearly Game Pass, which can run natively on both PC and Xbox consoles, and can run on the cloud on both these platforms, and also on mobile. Sony’s PlayStation Plus has a lot of the same options, but it just doesn’t match Microsoft feature for feature.

But then, the question arises; why is there an interest for any of these game subscriptions. Let’s set aside the question of which company has the best or is the most successful in this regard, because this is the real question of the moment.

The value of subscription services is more than accessing online services for game consoles. Rather, it is the chance to access and try out multiple video games all at once. If the PlayStation 3 / Xbox 360 generation was awash with demos of games; now, subscriptions make way more