According to new data shared by Piers Harding-Rolls, an industry researcher at Ampere Analysis, subscription services haven't shaken up the game industry as much as the movie and music industries. It is calculated that game subscription services account for only 4% of the revenue of the North American and European game markets. XGP, on the other hand, accounts for about 60% of the game subscription market.
Axios reported that subscription services generated a total of about $3.7 billion in north America and Europe, while other game spending generated nearly $81 billion in revenue, including disc sales, downloads and game DLC. But that's in stark contrast to the music industry, where streaming services like Spotify account for 83 percent of U.S. music industry revenue.
The implication is that even though the market for subscription services in the game industry is getting bigger and bigger, it is relatively small compared to other industries.
Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass, launched in 2017, now has 25 million users, and it accounts for about 60 percent of the game subscription market. While XGP now offers more than 500 rotating games in the library, it's not too much to look at from another perspective, as Netflix offers users more than 3,000 movies.
However, another obstacle for the gaming industry to take the subscription route is that many of the top games have not yet entered the subscription service. For example, Nintendo's Nintendo Switch Online does not include Nintendo's current hits, but DLC and some classic games that mainly provide existing games.
In addition, games are not as conveniently bundled into subscription services as music and movies, because the time required for games, the size of the download, and the experience of cloud games are poor.
All eyes are on Sony, which has announced plans for its Playstation subscription service, but the specific game lineup has yet to be announced.