According to Pears Harding-Rolls, an industry analyst at Ampere Analysis, XGP has a 60 percent share of mainstream markets in Europe and the U.S., but for game subscription services, it still has a long way to go to disrupt the industry like Netflix or Spotify.
In Harding-Rolls' calculations, the game subscription service gained a total market share of $3.7 billion in Europe and the United States, which is only 4% of the total game market share in Europe and the United States, which includes physical sales, digital downloads and game add-ons, with a total revenue of nearly $81 billion. In stark contrast, according to the Recording Association of America, streaming subscription services account for 83 percent of U.S. music industry revenue in 2021.
Harding-Rolls claims that XGP accounts for 60 percent of the game subscription service market, suggesting that even the largest game subscription services are still very niche for the overall game market. While those accustomed to paying nearly $60 per game, XGP is a killer-level deal where subscribers get their hands on the first Microsoft games, as well as a host of new or recent third-party games.
One of the obstacles to the development of game subscription services is that many popular games have not yet joined the subscription service, and games are not as easy to bundle into subscriptions as music or movies because they take time to download and play.