Chapter 992 [Foreign media IGN’s thinking sparks heated discussion]

The time comes on May 3rd.

As the Game Box platform has created more than 33 million subscribers on the first day of its launch, it has stirred up the industry. This news is still spreading. At present, domestic and foreign gaming circle media, industry insiders, and many capital institutions are focusing on Game Box. .

The focus of people from all walks of life is the subscription model of the game box, which has become the biggest topic.

IGN, the world's largest gaming and entertainment media, published an article on May 3 discussing the subscription service model, which aroused huge attention and discussion in the community.

In the article, IGN dug deep into the game subscription service model and conducted a systematic report on it.

After reading this article from IGN, many players realized that the original subscription service model was not the first game box. If we trace the origins of this model, it can be traced back to 1981.

The IGN article mentioned that the first game downloads and subscription payments appeared in 1981. The North American company Mattel launched a network peripheral for its Intellevision game console. This peripheral could be used through local cables. TV companies transmit signals and you can download about 20 games for $12 a month. This can basically be seen as the prototype of a game subscription system, more than thirty years before the game box appeared.

However, the memory of this peripheral was only 4K, making it difficult to store 8K and 16K capacity games that subsequently appeared. Coupled with the difficult network environment at the time, the appeal of this service was greatly reduced, and it was eventually terminated after only two years of operation.

IGN went on to point out in the article that a second game manufacturer later tried a subscription service. Sega from Japan launched it in 1990. Sega launched network peripherals for the MegaDrive at that time, and also launched the "Game Library" game. With the subscription service, you can continue to enjoy the small games that Sega continues to provide for 800 yen per month.

The launch of this service attracted the attention of many players at the beginning. However, due to the generally poor quality of its games, there were few interesting masterpieces, and most of them were mini games. As a result, there were fewer and fewer users, and it lasted for about two years. It ended its service in 1992.

Entering the next generation of games, another top game manufacturer is trying, and that is North American EA.

This company is well-known in the gaming industry. From the "Sims" series, "Need for Speed" series, to the "FIFA" series, EA can be called a super player in the 100 million copy sales club of game products.

His many influential works have given him a pivotal position in the European, American and even global game markets.

The company's business covers all aspects of gaming platforms, hardware, software, sales, and services.

Various advantageous conditions have prompted EA to move towards strategic choices of full-platform, multi-channel and multi-category game coverage. Such a strong EA also has the confidence to explore new business models in the game industry.

So just last year in 2014, the EA-Access game subscription service was born.

Players only need to pay $4.9 per month to play EA's popular products. Whether it is old products that have been on the market for many years or AAA masterpieces that have not been released in 2014, they are all included. With an annual fee of $30, players can unlock all games that support this service.

You must know that the price of a product often ranges from US$40 to US$60, but now, players can experience multiple heavyweight products for only half the price.

IGN Media sorted out the history of game subscriptions, and then the focus came. IGN raised a series of question marks.

That is, EA clearly launched a subscription service one year earlier than the game box, but it did not cause such a big disruptive effect. Moreover, the monthly fee for the game box is US$9.99, and the monthly fee for EA-Access is US$4.9. It's twice as expensive.

Why was the game box such a hit once it was launched? Why does this happen? Why didn’t EA’s subscription-based service ignite the market? What did EA do wrong? What unique features does the game box have?

The IGN media report threw these issues to the outside world.

Now everyone is discussing this topic, and people from all walks of life are analyzing and explaining this result.

The analysis of one of the senior investors in the game industry attracted everyone's attention and discussion.

He pointed out that EA failed to detonate game subscription services. The biggest problem is the lack of content. EA does have many game works, but it is still not enough. One of the core elements of the platform subscription system is to have a large enough game library content. The more the better.

The industry veteran investor further pointed out that the biggest problem with EA-Access is that the game content it provides is limited to games owned by EA and does not include games from other game manufacturers. He also emphasized that this is beyond EA's capabilities, although EA is a top developer and publisher in the gaming industry, but it still cannot allow games from other top developers to land on its subscription platform.

EA does not have the ability to order other major companies in the game industry, and other manufacturers simply do not like EA, so EA does not have the ability to integrate resources in the game industry on a large scale.

A straightforward translation of what this senior investor means is that EA is limited by its own inability to play a large platform model.

Can EA acquire top game developers such as Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft at the same time? Obviously EA can't do it. Only real giant groups can do it. Furthermore, only real super giants have the ability to integrate resources for the entire industry and can afford the large platform model.

So the conclusion is that the subscription service launched by EA can only enclose the territory but cannot achieve the effect of breaking the circle.

The reason why Game Box became a big hit when it was launched is that the parent company behind it has unparalleled resource integration capabilities and can easily spend more than 100 billion U.S. dollars to buy it all over the world. Even EA can easily buy it if it is willing. .

When the platform was launched, it already had seven to eight thousand games, while EA only had more than four hundred games. In terms of the diversity of game library content, there was an order of magnitude gap between the two.

As a loose example, suppose that one game on the EA platform can attract 4,000 players on average, and more than 400 games means 1.6 million players. And the game box has more than 8,000 games, and each game can also attract 4,000 players. , the total number of players on the platform is more than 30 million.

There are less than 2 million players on the platform, and the monthly fee is so cheap, the platform cannot survive.

Only when the game content of the platform is sufficient enough to attract players with various preferences, and the total number of players on the platform can form an extremely large user scale within the platform, can this model have the possibility to operate.

Therefore, this veteran came to another conclusion: EA-Access is no match for game boxes. EA's size determines that its upper limit will never reach that level, and it cannot command other major game manufacturers in the industry.

Only giant groups like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google follow up and spend huge sums of money to acquire a large number of game companies and integrate them like Stellar Capital, in order to compete with Game Box, which is backed by Stellar Capital.

As for EA, it can only be regarded as a top third-party game company with distribution channels at best. If its market value is less than 20 billion US dollars, it is not even as good as Activision Blizzard, which has entered the privatization and delisting stage. It is not even qualified to be a rival of game boxes. None.

...(End of chapter)