Ed fries, who once built a game lineup for the first generation of Xbox, has his own view on the game industry. He believes that the current popular game subscription system will eventually destroy the game software industry, Just as spotify and others have changed the recording industry: "I'm very anxious about the game pass they made. The reason why it's terrible is that it will be reminiscent of spotify (membership music subscription service). The popularity of the latter has led to the contraction of the music industry by half, and we don't buy songs anymore."
Ed fries is a veteran of the game industry who experienced the yadali earthquake and witnessed the self destruction of the game industry in the 1980s. He claims to like spotify and the feeling that "all songs are gathered here", which is good for users and not necessarily for the industry.
It's understandable to worry that game pass won't last. The game subscription system is still in the stage of making money at a loss. Unless the big financiers continue to subsidize, this business model cannot be maintained. Sony claims that to feed so many studios, it is difficult to recover the cost unless there are hundreds of millions of subscribers.
The relevant data is that game pass has only 25 million users (as of January this year), while spotify has 182 million (as of March this year) and Netflix has 220 million.
Even if spotify has nearly 200 million subscribers, and even if spotify's quarterly revenue is close to $3 billion, it still loses $6.5 million - seven percent of its revenue goes to record companies such as Sony Music and Warner Music.
Game pass may never be profitable, but ed Fries' concern about game pass is unnecessary - spotify and apple music have indeed changed the consumption habits of music lovers, but the recording industry in North America has not shrunk, but increased by 9.2% in 2020 and 23% last year. Goldman Sachs predicts that the number of people paying for music subscription services will be close to 700 million by 2023 and more than 1 billion by 2030.
For the game industry, the number of subscribers to streaming media film and television has more reference significance. If the game industry can solve the problem of low development efficiency and split large-scale 3A games into multiple episodes and publish them monthly or even weekly, perhaps one day in the future, game subscription can become a profitable and serious business model, rather than the current role of stirring excrement for competition.