GameDynamo - "With the success of Guild Wars 2, it would seem that the final nail has been hammered in on the coffin of paid subscription models. This is because the game doesn't rely on such things, instead focusing on a one-time purchase of the game itself, and it's backed by microtransactions."
HG writes: "Blizzard is usually pretty bad at keeping secrets, but the company somehow managed to keep this one under wraps until now. Plunderstorm is a special limited-time event that’s basically World of Warcraft’s take on the Battle Royale genre."
Hanzala from eXputer writes "History is witness to their downfall, yet they keep coming."
It's not so much Devs as it is Invested and shareholders, issue is barely anyone has the backbone to stand up to them anymore and say no for the sake of the project.
This is a fairly interesting article that does summarize a bit of the history of this revenue type. But to answer the main question is a much simpler affair: While people will say in the internet that they hate GaaS games. The top revenue generating games are GaaS, so companies will try to have their own. Take Genshin Impact for example, that game alone generated more than 1.5 Billion USD in revenue during 2022. That is almost as much as the 1.9 Billion USD that Ubisoft as a whole generated that year.
It's definitely a risky move because the majority of GaaS games don't reach the level of success Genshin Impact achieved. However, companies can't seem to take their eyes off that tempting prize at the end.
Do you ever think that over the past year or so every studio who makes this shit has started to think
"GaaS is dying out partially because there's so many of them in the market now, I think other developers are moving away from the model now BUT lets stick to our GaaS game and then when it releases we'll be one of the few on the market still which allows us to get more of the market share since every one else has left"
Yet because every developer has that same thought process they've now all got GaaS games on a still over saturated market.
Premiere gaming is dying. With Spider-Man's 300 million dollar budget and Ratchet & Clank's ridiculously low return on investment (8 million Dollar loss) AAA gaming is going to be only filled with even more High profile IPs trying to make the biggest bang for buck. Expect to see more of this stuff.
"AA" level games are now making a big comeback and are usually even more beloved by playerbase now. So hopefully that's the silver lining. Smaller, better games.
Wccftech talked to Guild Wars 2 Game Director Josh Davis about the learnings from the Secrets of the Obscure expansion and what's coming to the MMORPG.
Only if you can find people who are actively leaving WOW for Guild 2.
I just did and ive played wow for 6 years. Im tired of it. The more i raid the more gear i get. 2 months later people can get the same gear in dungeons.
Tbh it had a great launch but that was a week ago and alot of my friends and I are bored of the game and have gone back to DOTA2 And LOL. It's a good game but doesn't have much long term sustainability especially since I'm bored of an mmo a week after launch. First time for everything I guess
So fed up of all these subscription model is dead BS. Can't wait for MoP to come out and sell 10m+ copies in it's first week and put these doomsayers to shame.
WoW aside, you don't have to look any further than xbox live to see that people are prepared to pay a premium for a service they deem worthwhile even if you can get almost identical service if not better in PC's case elsewhere for free.
While f2p has a lot to offer and gives people reasons to play something that they usually wouldn't, the subscription model is far from dead and more than a few things prove the people are there with their money waiting when something is worth paying for. Unfortunately, trying and utterly failing to recreate WoW in space with a popular IP isn't worth paying as EA have found out.
It's funny how people think one game has to dominate another one. People are going to play what they want and GW2 is a nice alternative if you don't feel like paying $15 a month for a game. The ONLY people who should give a shit if one game is doing better than another is the developers.