Live service, subscriptions and F2P: A new reality for console gaming
Over the last five years there's been tremendous change across console gaming driven by the growth in live service games, the increase in free-to-play titles, and the burgeoning influence of multi-game subscription services.
This has dramatically altered the competitive landscape on consoles and impacted how game developers and publishers successfully launch new games, get their games noticed, pull in new players and drive engagement.
My talk at GDC this year laid out the challenges of today’s market as the industry gets to grips with escalating costs and an era of lower growth, while competing against entrenched games-as-platforms and hundreds of new releases.
The console gaming software and services market is arguably the most dynamic part of the games sector in terms of business models. No one business model dominates console gaming in 2024, and over the next few years Ampere’s outlook for the monetisation dynamics across console remain largely similar, with in-game, subscription and premium monetisation all playing a significant role.
Spend on in-game and DLC content has grown to become a central part of the market opportunity. Yet, like the PC gaming space, premium games are still important to the scale of the market.
Where console gaming differs significantly from all other gaming device categories is in the importance of multi-game subscription services.
The recent news that Microsoft’s Game Pass only reached 34 million paid subscribers even with the conversion of Live Gold subs to Game Pass Core, and the year-on-year fall in Sony’s PS Plus subscribers, underlines our view that subscriptions are not going to dominate monetisation in games as they have done in other media sectors.
Even so, spending on console subscription services is expected to grow to a 27% share of the total console games and services market by 2026 (note: includes Game Pass Ultimate and PS Plus Premium). The expanded role of subscription services as distribution and discovery channels has added a
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