Author: Gamewower, title figure from: Vision China.
Subscription is becoming a trend.
After leaving Steam for 8 years, EA finally announced its return. Recently, EA officially announced a cooperation with V, EA’s games will land on the Steam platform, the first game will be “Star Wars Jedi: the fallen warrior group.”
After that, EA will continue to offer a variety of multiplayer games such as “Apex Hero”, “FIFA20”, “Battlefield 5” on Steam, and EA’s Origin platform will also open an account system with Steam.
In this series of collaborations, the most striking thing is that EA brings its Access subscription service to Steam, the first game subscription service on Steam, which costs $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year. You can experience a variety of EA games. In this way, Steam has opened up the subscription system.
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In the current gaming industry, subscriptions are becoming the choice of more and more vendors or platforms.
Vendors, during this year’s E3, Ubisoft announced the launch of the subscription service Uplay+, which pays $14.99 per month, allowing users to play more than 100 games, including the latest version of the developer. The latest “Watchdog: Legion” and “Ghost Recon: Breakpoint” have been confirmed to join the service, players can play through Uplay+.
And EA is the forerunner in this area. As early as around 2014, EA launched EA Access, a membership system based on the Xbox platform, and has been upgrading this service for several years. In 2016, Origin Access was launched in 2018. Launched Origin Access Premier, online subscription service on PS in 2019.
To the current landing on Steam, EA’s Access system has landed on four platforms, and you can see that it is deeply recognized for the subscription EA.
Speaking of Activision Blizzard, in early October this year, at Microsoft for 20 years, Mike ybarra, former xbox vice president responsible for xboxlive and subscription services, joined Activision Blizzard as executive vice president, and Activision Blizzard’s subscription system may not be far away. It is.
On the platform side, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass players can play more than 100 Xbox One games and Xbox 360 games on the compatible list on the Xbox One for only $9.99/month. In 2018, Microsoft announced that “all first-party exclusive games that will be released in the future will join XGP on the first day of launch.”
Sony has always had its own subscription system with Microsoft. The data shows that the highest-paid subscription service in Europe and America in 2018 is PlayStation Now on the Sony PS console platform, which costs $20 a month.
In addition, Apple announced the launch of Apple Arcade, a game subscription service, at this spring’s conference. After purchasing the service, users can play all the games under the Arcade category. Finally, Google’s upcoming cloud game, the Stadia platform, will also be available to players in the form of a subscription system for $9.99 a month.
From the platform to the manufacturer, the farther and farther away from the subscription system, this is clearly a trend.
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As for why it becomes a trend? The author can ask most people a question. How many people have purchased the members of iQiyi, and they have purchased Tencent Video and Youku members. Many people will only buy members of a platform. In the process, game makers will get what they want.The user’s stickiness, the previous game industry, no matter how excellent Ubisoft, Blizzard, EA, every time they produce a product, it means a re-start, all the work is back again, the endorsement of the brand exists, but the influence is not great.
Under the subscription system, the users you receive mean a big chance to be your loyal fan, not a loyalty to a product, but a brand loyalty.
In addition, Mike Blank, senior vice president of EA, said during the E19 exhibition in 2019 that “through the subscription model, we found that all types of players will play games more frequently. We can also observe the player’s playing habits and listen to feedback. Try to create a more engaging game experience.”
Under the subscription system, users spend more time playing games and will be exposed to games that were previously impossible to purchase, which inadvertently gives manufacturers more opportunities to expose their products. Obviously it is what manufacturers are dreaming of, because it means more room to create income.
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In contrast to this trend, Steam has no news in this regard.
In fact, the reason why Steam doesn’t work is because Steam has a lot of complicated problems if it is to be subscribed.
The platforms such as Microsoft, Sony, and Apple have irreplaceable uniqueness, so these platforms can be used as a subscription system, which can easily coordinate the distribution of benefits between vendors and subscription fees. But Steam is different. There is no irreplaceable uniqueness in Steam’s platform. Epic’s impact on Steam this year has already seen the stakes.
In this context, Steam needs to coordinate a large number of vendors if you want to do such a service, and you need to re-engineer the distribution of benefits. This involves a lot of complicated and cumbersome work. . And it should be noted that Steam is indeed a comprehensive platform, but the traffic in the head is still 3A masterpieces. These are the 3A masterpieces of major manufacturers, how to package them, how to make profits between these big factories. Distribution is a big problem.
Because of this, if Steam wants to make a subscription system, it is not impossible, but it will be more complicated, and the time cost and labor cost are amazing. But nowThe situation is that if more and more big manufacturers start to introduce the subscription system, it will inevitably reduce the competitiveness of the Steam platform. This reduction in competitiveness is not the competition between platforms like Epic, but another A blow to the dimensions.
Therefore, in order to ensure competitiveness, Steam also needs to have corresponding measures. This measure is to gradually build subscription services for major game manufacturers in the platform.
At present, the EA Access fee for the Steam platform is $29.99/year, which is the same price as EA’s own PC platform member service Origin Access.
For game makers, it’s naturally a pleasure for Steam, which is much larger than its own platform, to be willing to go online. It means that this service will be more purchased and not reduced. Your own brand attributes. After EA, Ubisoft will not be on the line Uplay+ is worth looking forward to, maybe Ubisoft will choose Epic, after all, Ubisoft and Epic are now closer.
When you go one step further, in addition to the subscription services for these big manufacturers, Steam may also package and integrate small vendors to launch a subscription service that truly belongs to their own platform .
After all, in the negotiations with these small manufacturers, and the distribution of benefits, after those big factories are lost, it will be much smoother.
Summary to see, starting with EA Access, Steam is gradually opening the door to the subscription system.