'Netflix of games' isn't likely, says analyst

pcgamer.com:

With Microsoft amassing studios for its Game Pass kingdom and many of the industry's big players chasing cloud streaming, will a «Netflix of games» ultimately come along and squash a la carte game purchasing, tying us all to subscriptions forever? Industry analyst Piers Harding-Rolls is skeptical.

At a GDC 2022 talk on Wednesday, Harding-Rolls advised game developers to keep the rise of subscription services in perspective by considering that it's currently a much bigger topic of conversation than actual industry sector: According to data firm Ampere Analysis, where Harding-Rolls runs game research, 4% of the total games market revenue comes from subscriptions. He forecasts it'll be 8.4% by 2027—a significant amount of money, but still a small slice of gaming as a whole.

Harding-Rolls also points out that the total number of Game Pass games is fairly small and hasn't been growing much recently. After EA Play games were added in March of last year, the service has hovered at just under or above 500 games. The success of Game Pass is attributed primarily to the newness of the games available on it. (Especially compared to PlayStation Now, which offers more but older games.)

Netflix started small, too, and now has over 200 million subscribers, but Harding-Rolls points out that games and videos are different from each other in some important ways. The biggest is that, as a category, games today make most of their money after people are already playing them. According to Ampere's data, 79% of games spending in 2021 came from in-game transactions in free-to-play and paid games. That kind of behavior doesn't exist for Netflix or Spotify.

According to Harding-Rolls, people who use subscription services spend more on average on