The news that PlayStation merging its subscription services was long overdue and is expected to result in a significant improvement in revenue, leading industry analysts say. Experts from Ampere Analysis, Creative Strategies, Strategy Analytics and IDC have expressed their views on the new subscription service proposed by Sony and on how the alternative will hold up Xbox Game Pass Of Microsoft.
“Sony is long overdue to combine these two products (Plus and Now ed), because that’s where the market is today.“says Michael Goodman of Strategy Analytics.
But one of the big questions about the offer concerns Sony’s decision not to put the new releases on day one on the service. Analysts believe this will make PS Plus Extra and Premium less attractive than Xbox Game Pass, but are undecided as to how important it is to PlayStation players.
“It will not have the benefit of Microsoft’s service“says Ampere Analysis’s Piers Harding-Rolls.”Where I think Sony will try to be more aggressive is with the window between launching its new games and adding them to the service, and when adding new releases from third-party developers and publishers.“.
Goodman adds: “This is a question that the market will answer. We’ll have to see how important it will be for PlayStation fans“.
“However, Microsoft’s big growth happened on day one launches. It is worth noting that they are not competing head to head on this one. They are mainly talking to their existing installation base“.
Goodman says there is a huge growth opportunity for PlayStation. The current PS Now audience is about 5% of Sony’s console install base, he says, while Game Pass has attracted over 40% of the Xbox fan base.
All analysts agree that there are more revenue opportunities for Sony. But they’re not so convinced that it will result in more subscribers overall.
“This is an opportunity to increase ARPU subscriptions [ricavi medi per utente] and build on the success of the current PS Plus service“, Harding-Rolls believes.”It won’t necessarily translate into a lot more PS Plus subscribers overall“.
“Ampere Analysis data shows that Microsoft held a 60% share of the subscription market in the West [Nord America ed Europa] in the fourth quarter of 2021. By comparison, Sony held a 7% stake in PS Now. The Western market was worth $ 3.7 billion in 2021, which was 4% of total gaming spending in these regions“.
Finally, Harding-Rolls believes, at least in the short term, that the service will not “cannibalize” the rest of the PS5 offering.
“Most of the games included in PS Now are catalog titles, so cannibalization is not an issue and I don’t expect it to change significantly with the new service“, he claims.
“It’s worth noting that a growing share of game revenue comes from in-game sales, which will continue to be available for subscription games, so there’s more of a revenue stream to consider.“.
Source: Gamesindustry.biz.
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