Game Pass and PlayStation Plus Will Define The Ninth Generation of Gaming

In January 2022 Xbox Game Pass surpassed 25 million subscribers, while still someway off PlayStation Plus' 47.4 million subscribers (as of March 2022), this figure continues to rise and is a sign of Microsoft's consistently growing success in the video game streaming service market. Xbox and Sony have been compared since the launch of the original Xbox in 2001 and the two brands are now the leading lights in an industry worth over $50 billion.

ARK: Survival Evolved is a multiplayer survival game where the player characters wake up naked on a prehistoric beach with a high-tech crystal embedded in them. The sequel, ARK 2, starring Hollywood actor Vin Diesel is currently slated for a 2023 release and in October 2022 developer Snail Games USA (which bought original ARK developer Project Wildcard in 2015) provided insight into the ongoing war between PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass and demonstrated firsthand how much these streaming platforms mean to Sony and Microsoft respectively.
 

In December 2021, Snail Games registered 91% of its revenue through third-party platforms such as Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. These platform partners "retain between 12% - 30% of the gross revenue" generated by Snail Games' titles, with the rest divided between Snail Games and their contributing developers. So, while Snail Games competes with Sony and Microsoft in video game sales, the two platforms are also essential to keeping the developer afloat, with Snail Games making $13.6 million on Xbox and $9 million on PlayStation in the first half of 2022 alone. While Snail Games are not a small company, for the purposes of this article they are a good middle ground between the major first-party developers such as Microsoft and Sony and independent studios.

Independent studios are prevalent on Xbox Game Pass and with good reason. According to Xbox (via NME), indie developers average fifteen times more, monthly players, during their games' first 90 days on Game Pass. Likewise, they reportedly experience a 300% growth on Xbox platforms - two-thirds of which comes from Game Pass. PlayStation statistics are harder to come by as the company previously split its online platforms between PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now (with the much less popular PlayStation Now being the most like Game Pass). However, Ampere Analysis reported that by the end of 2021 PlayStation's services had 52 million subscribers and Game Pass had 25 million.
 

Beginning in November 2018, Snail Games agreed to make ARK: Survival Evolved available on Xbox's Game Pass for three years, renewing perpetually. The deal initially ended in December 2021 and Sony took the opportunity to make its own deal with Snail Games, paying them $3.5 million to put ARK on PlayStation Plus for five weeks. The deal was made in November 2021 (a month before the Xbox deal expired), and Sony added the game to their monthly subscription service in March 2022 alongside Team Sonic  Racing (SEGA), Ghostrunner (505 Games), and Ghost of Tsushima: Legends (Sucker Punch). Games claimed through a PlayStation Plus subscription are available to download for a limited time but can be kept forever, unlike Xbox's Game Pass in which the games are only available while they are still a part of the service.

DLC is an important part of Snail Games' business model and they have released five expansion packs for ARK: Survival Evolved between 2016 and 2022 at (usually) $20 per release. Microsoft claims that almost three times more people purchase DLC and IAP (In-App Purchases, for example, microtransactions) in a game's first 90 days on Game Pass. ARK 2 will be releasing day one on Game Pass so Snail Games can expect a hefty return on their upcoming sequel.

Clearly, a lot of planning goes into which games are added to streaming platforms, but even more so when these games become available to download. Sony paid Snail Games to use ARK in November 2021, only to make the game free to players four months later in March 2022. Similarly, Microsoft is expecting ARK 2 to be a big release for the platform, preemptively paying $2.3 million to put ARK 2 on Game Pass for three years when it releases in 2023; in comparison, in August 2022 Eurogamer reported that Microsoft paid indie developer/publisher Big Cheese Studio $600,000 to put their game Cooking Simulator on Game Pass.

 

Alex Johnson (@AlexJohnWriting)
News Editor, NoobFeed