PS Now is the largest game subscription service on the planet (tops XB Game Pass and EA Origin Access combined)

Just saw this posted a few minutes ago on a reputable website and thought it might be worth sharing on here. Please keep the discussion calm and civil.

https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/68066/superdata-top-games-subscription-services-generated-273m-in-q3-2018/

The Top Five video games subscription services made $273m in revenue between July and September 2018.

That's according to new research from SuperData which says that the top three services generated six per cent of total premium PC and console revenue for that period.

The company claims that subscribers pay 45 per cent more for games 'upfront' than non-subscribers. Meanwhile, this audience spends twice the amount than non-subscribers.

PlayStation Now is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the dominant service by some margin, generate 52 per cent of venue. This is likely due to the sheer install base of the PlayStation 4, which stands at over 86m units sold since its November 2013 launch. Second place - by some way - is EA Access on Xbox One with a 16 per cent slice of the pie, while Xbox Game Pass claims 15 per cent of the sector's cash.

Meanwhile, EA's newly-launched Origin Access Premier has a nine per cent stake, ahead of regular Origin Access which claims eight per cent.

That does mean that EA is behind 32 per cent of total subscription service revenue, almost a third of the sector.

The firm will no doubt be happy seeing its new Premier service - which sees games launching on the platform day-and-date with their retail release - has picked up traction before any major releases have come to it. Battlefield V and Anthem are arguably the first major excuses to pick up a subscription. EA's offering in this area is only set to grow with the firm revealing new cloud platform Project Atlas.

Xbox Game Pass will no doubt grow its market share as the scheme rolls out fully to Windows 10 users. The PC games market is currently lacking a dominant subscription model and if anyone is going to dominate this sector it's likely going to be Microsoft - especially with its rapidly-growing line-up of studios that'll give consumers a great many reasons to subscribe.

Much like EA, Microsoft is also investing in cloud tech which will no doubt play into the subscription model at some point. The Big M's scheme is called Project xCloud.

Though the subscription model clearly works for the video games space, it certainly raises questions over how we judge the success of individual games. For example, Microsoft has announced positive launches for Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2 and Forza Horizon 4 with some impressive early player figures, but these titles are part of its Xbox Game Pass and Play Anywhere schemes, making it less obvious how many people have actually splashed the cash on these titles. In addition, player figures don't mean a huge amount when someone could have logged in to Rare's pirate romp once and never gone back.

“The game subscription market heated up immensely in 2018 as game makers sought sources of consistent, recurring revenue,” principal analyst Carter Rogers said.

“To increase the appeal of their own subscription offerings, publishers are now offering brand-new titles to paying members.”

According to this article, total revenue generated was $273M and out of that pie Sony owns 52% of it with PS Now. This is quite surprising considering the negative reception PS Now usually gets on hardcore gaming forums and the internet in general. I thought for sure EA would be ahead of them considering they are on multiple platforms and I also thought MS would be higher for the same reason. This just goes to show why having a large install base is important and a strong library of old games can be important to a subscription service as well. Despite the fact that PS Now is less than ideal, they control a large majority of the hotly contested subscription market. I'm sure Microsoft is taking notes and with them rolling out Game Pass for all their games soon on PC opportunities to grow their market share will arrive. With Amazon and Google trying to get into this subscription gaming business things are about to get very crowded soon but this proves just how successful the PS4 really is for Sony. People have been criticizing Sony for not allowing EA Origin Access on their platform but seeing the money Sony is pulling in why would they want a competing service on their platform? The strength of their platform comes from the fact that their install base is huge and they are the only gaming subscription service on their own platform.

More people use Steam and it’s subscription fee is $0/lifetime........just sayin.

On another note thanks for the chart. It makes me happy to see that nearly nobody is paying EA for their monthly crap service. I would support Sony way sooner and I still refuse to pay to play online. That’s what my pc is for. ; )

I feel you bro. I don't pay for any of these crappy services either I just thought this info was interesting and decided to share. If you go according to people here and other forums Sony should abandon PS Now and follow MS' lead but the reality is quite the opposite. I myself was of the impression that PS Now was a flop simply because I hated the time I used it only to find out that it actually dominates the market by a huge amount.

Its impressive, just shows the movement away from hardware. Always people in hoopla going on about hardware sales. You see a massive userbase for the streaming service. Sony doubles down on PSN/PSnow and makes 1st party day/date release like xbox gamepass along with pc support, Sony is making even bigger gains and most likely funding more 1st party content and acquiring/building studios to build up psnow.

People are stupid.

While what you say is definitely true, I'd argue that a big part of the reason Sony is able to pull it off is because they have a large hardware install base. I don't think PS Now would be generating this kind of revenue if they had less consoles in the wild. It's going to be interesting to see how they grow their business next gen. I'm curious to see how they handle PS5's rumored BC with older PS consoles. I think they will limit PS5's BC to just PS4 games and have the rest of the older console games only playable through PS Now.

I agree but I wouldn't insult people for using a subscription service just because I don't like it. I would never pay for a service like PS Now but just because I dislike it doesn't mean I can't see why others would find it convenient.

To be fair MS just started on this and they seem to be more vested in it. Well they make the most noise about it. Sony has quietly been there collecting money not interested on improving the structure till recently. They are winning big on the status quo so they are not running around screaming this is the future. That is the funny thing abut how sony have position themselves this gen. They are quite about it but actually they are the ones tip toeing on everything.

@vaidream45 You can still buy game without requiring subscription just like you do on Steam. These are offered as choices right now. I wont be surprised if valve starts doing the same. Offer a subscription service as a choice for certain none current year games perhaps.

@kenshiro3948: Nah, they're stupid.

@kenshiro3948: Yes, agree that ps4 console/software played a huge part. Moving forward Sony will be in a better position to build up PSN and increase the value of PSNow. Going along from previous threads hardware will be a nice chunk but if Sony can build up the services, just going to make the Sony Pocket even fatter.

Which hopefully gives us Socom and Twisted Metal.

This is very surprising to me. Gotta look into it. What are people playing in this Now?

H*** F*** it's got offline downloading?

**** me. I hope this goes stronger.

I am willing to pay Sony or MS 200/year if it includes all games next gen for offline rentals.

Thanks. I actually like this, well if it offers more titles and at timely manners, I don't mind paying Sony that $ 45 for 3 months.

Playstation Domination Continuation?

I don't know how they can stand it. PSNow gives you the most garbage servers to stream games from, and they don't even have 24/7 tech support. Although, perhaps most people that pay for this are downloading games on their PS4 instead of streaming them somewhere else.

I did the 7 day free trial thing with PSNow to try streaming Bloodborne, but their servers were shite, and they limited me to what seemed to be 25 fps. It was kind of awful to play. At least they let me use an XBox One controller.

That's a pretty small amount overall. Doesn't look like these services will be taking over anytime soon.

How many times more will lemmings be wrong?

They claimed exclusives don't matter and games like GOW and Spiderman go to sell a bunch of PS4s.

They claimed sales and installed base don't matter and you get a bunch more support for the PS4 than for the Xbox and now PSNow obliterating the competition thanks to having a big install base.

Right now everytime lemmings claim something doesnt matter i will invest in stocks of whatever that is because it is a clear sign it is going to be a success. Lol most clueless fanboys in gaming history.

That's not really true. I've used the service a few times and everything feels fine. If people have a problem with streaming services, I understand. It's a step closer from relinquishing game ownership, sure. But it doesn't seem to be any threat in taking over as being a prime model anytime soon. However, the network seems to work fine in itself when I try it. I mean, I played a little Bloodborne on it, and nothing really felt off. Hell, I was able to complete Until Dawn on it, and that has some of the nastiest QTEs ever put in a game.

No, they're getting coerced in using these bs services since you can't play online otherwise.

Fck Sony for doing this and FCK MS especially for starting this BS.

But this is PSNow not PSN

They have offline downloads for ps4 owners though.

Lol, my bad.

Anyway, crazy then. Good job Sony

273M? and sony owns 50%? so that's 136M?

Thats equal to selling 2.5M copies of a 60$ game.

so they are making peanuts. congrats sony lol

edit: oh this is for 1 quarter? so there are 4 quarters in 1 year. i guess thats 10M copies of a 60$ game in 1 year?

i guess thats pretty decent. nothing too amazing. you can say PSNOW is a sony exclusive yearly franchise that sells 10M each year. lol to make it like a game.

@KBFloYd: and what is Nintendo making from streaming?

what streaming?

So this is confirmation that the only way cows will get PS4 BC with the PS5 is through PS NOW v2 LMFAO.

Breaking news. Cows don't like BC anymore.

TCHBO.

Steam do game subscription? streaming services? whats its called? how many games included?

You don't? There's so many games on the service there's no way people own them all. It's mainly for people that want to try older games who never owned a PS3, or for non-PS4 owners who also might want to play a couple of PS4 games, since that selection is only a small handful of titles.

Their marketingsays over 650 games on psnow. Easily dwarf all other streaming service combined. Pretty good list for those wanting to sub for a few month and play the catalogue. Try it out its free trail for 7 days. Can get a better impression from it.

TCHBO. :P

Yeah the amount of games on PSNow puts other similar services to shame. It is like 3-4 times more games than Gamepass. In price-value terms it is the best service.

It's interesting that they mention PC for the other services, but PSNow is on PC now as well. If anything, I'd expect PSNow to outdo the other services on PC. Why? Because you can't get many of those games on PC. The other services are a different way to pay for games you can already get on the platform. PSNow is a way to pay for games that you otherwise cannot.

It's more to do with it also being a regular and fairly predictable income stream. It gives better guarantees on returns for investors than hoping a new game sells well.

Most large companies will take a hit on bonanza payouts for a regular income stream.

I see. You said "PS Now" which involves both streaming and offline downloads (to my surprise). That's how I got it confused.

It'd be interesting in the long run if the offline download portion gets more used (requires a physical console) than streaming showing how consoles are a more relevant market for it but this isn't to say that streaming to other platforms and devices can't be a big source of profit.

I guess this means PS4 owners love crap service. ??

If a "crap" service is by far leading the pack it doesn't speak well for the other services trailing either. It shows that Microsoft and EA need to work harder if they plan to make streaming and game subscription a leading part of their businesses. Sony seem to be barely trying since they rarely ever mention PS Now and they are dominating the market.

@Pedro: you dont need to own a PS4 to use PSNow. I bet these are lemmings who are desperate to play real games so they use PSNow on their 5 yo laptops.

This is amazing. People thought Sony were behind the curb in online gaming service, but they might just be setting up themselves to dominate the space next gen.

I truly thought PSNow wasn't doing so hot. Damn, good to be owned.

LMAO, there goes Daniel something guy's dream of MS, Google and Amazon dominating the industry with services and going on a publisher shopping spree.

Wow, did someone actually think services was going to dominate this AAA driven industry lol? The amount of money generated by these services isn't close to the revenue generated by a big AAA game like RDR2. The video game industry cannot survive on subscriptions so whoever thought these subscriptions were gonna take over the industry is an idiot.

Fwiw, PS NOW is not just on the PS4. It's on the PS3, and PC as well.

I'd be interested in seeing how it's usage breaks down per device.

You can play any steam game for $0?! Sign me up!

not really the same thing bud... I think you're mistaking a subscription service with a digital store

@Vatusus: that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Free online play with all games and i dont lose my library of games when the next Steam version rolls out like you do when you buy a new console. Steam also has the most active users out of all online gaming platforms. This is how things should be. You pay for the game once and that’s it. Enjoy it forever and play online as much as you like as long as you pay your internet company lol. Sad to see Nintendo start to charge for online services now too but I don’t blame them.

wut? Do you even know what PS Now is? PS Now =/= PSN or PS Plus. Its a service where you can play any game from a list for a fee a month ala Netflix

again, you're definitely confused

You still have to pay your games on steam in order to play them. Steam is a digital store, PS Now is a subscription service. They catter to different audiences

Hopefully Xbox Game Pass surpasses it. It's the better service.

That's subjective. If I was to pick one I'd pick PS Now since it has way more games and now supports downloading of PS2 and PS4 games to your hard drive if you own a PS4.

I'd argue the better service is one that has the most and better selection of games.

I think you're confused man. PS Now isn't meant to cater to the same type of audience as the Steam Store both have different functions.

PS Now is a subscription service that allows you to rent games just like Netflix allows you to rent movies, totally different market. Sony still has their traditional store with the PS Store where you buy and own games for life like the Steam Store. PS+ is their online service that allows you to play games online that aren't free to play in addition to getting "free" games every month that you get to keep as long as your subscription is still running.