The data suggests some gamers are partially treating the service to trial or even rent a game they might be interested in, before unsubscribing.

This is me. I often subscribe when there’s a discount, go through some games I’m not interested in buying but want to play anyways. Xbox game pass specifically has a lot of great indies that can be finished relatively quickly.

I subscribed earlier this year for a month, might resubscribe for a month again later this year.

It’s still crazy to me that this somehow became normal. I’m not paying rent for a fucking video game. Hell I’m not even paying in general, least of all for Ubisoft or some other Activision-Blizzard-EA shlock.

I have gamepass and I’m happy with it. I tend to dabble in a lot of games instead of playing one game for a long time.

One new game costs $60 to purchase. For me personally there is little chance I will be playing it 4 months from now.

Alternatively I can pay for gamepass and play any of those games for $15 a month. The only situation where this ends up being a worse deal is if I only play one game for more than four months, which so far has not happened for me.

I realize that doesn’t make sense for everyone, though.

Churn is inevitable with any subscription service.

The trick is creating just enough value and exclusive content/services that you feel like you’re gonna miss out if you leave. But not too much.

I haven’t seen any incentive to stay with any specific game subscription service via exclusive content or services. But I do see plenty of attempts to lock people into services with shitty tactics. Like forcing save data to the cloud. Good luck moving that saved file to your own personal copy of the game. Or multiple tiered service options with features/games locked behind more expensive options.

It’s all manipulative and anti consumer.

It grinds my gears that sony software locked the ability to backup saves locally on the PS5 making a PS plus subscription the only way to have a backup of save games. I don’t play multiplayer and don’t play the monthly free games either so I have to pay a premium for the rest of my life to get a basic functionality that was present in ps4 but got nerfed for some dubious reasons in ps5. The recent ps plus price hike was the last straw so I ditched my PS and got into PC gaming and loving it so far.

I think enough people have been exposed to enough subscription services that customers have started taking inventory of what they’re paying per month that they didn’t used to do, which means often signing up for a month and then quitting. I’m simultaneously surprised and not surprised that the access to online multiplayer only accounts for about 30% of the reason people subscribe to these things, but then those same customers doing that same accounting of their personal finances have probably done the math to realize that, long term, it’s cheaper to just play games online on PC, which is leading to consoles performing the way they’re performing lately.

Me. I work in video games, and I have kids.

Looks like I’m in the minority, but I subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online. My wife and I enjoy the extra Mario kart courses and I personally enjoy the N64 virtual console.

I actually just cancelled my GamePass last night. I rarely use it, as I spend most of my time gaming on steam, and I own almost all the games I want to play.

I personally am a pirate but xbox gamepass is a very popular way to play games in my cpuntry because people csn’t afford games anymore

I subscribe to game pass ultimate.

It lets me game on my tv, instead of the Xbox, plus my ADD and a whole bunch of ever changing games is just glorious.

Plus they usually run a sale when they take it off gamepass so you can get it cheap if you like it.

It’s sega channel revamped

I have barely any subscriptions for anything anymore and once Gamepass expires (I did the £1 upgrade offer) I will not renew.

I just chop and change to whatever I want for the month but overall I don’t really use many paid services anymore.

I did the „convert 3 years of prepaid Xbox Gold into Game Pass Ultimate“ trick. That way I paid 100€ (3x33€ for Gold+ 1€ to convert to GP) flat for three years of Game Pass, which is an incredible deal.

I don’t know what I will do when the prepaid time runs out. I’m enjoying the content, but before I was quite happy with heavily discounted games. I don’t need to play on day one.

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I subscribed to Game pass when it was just $1 for a while because it was just $1.

I subscribed to PS+ Premium for a year when I got my PS5 because it was cheaper than buying games unseen to see if I liked them.

I had Nintendo Online specifically because I got Rocket League on my Switch when my previous PC died and I needed my fix. This was before RL was F2P and thus you needed NO to play online.

I stopped with GamePass when it went to a regular price and it stopped being worth it for me since most of what’s on it does not interest me, or I already own it elsewhere.

I didn’t renew PS+ because they jacked the price up and I couldn’t afford it, even though I still feel the year is worth what you get out of it since it’s still cheaper than buying every individual game I might want to play, and a whole year is plenty of time for me to complete several games.

Ditched NO as soon as I got a new PC and could play Rocket League on my regular account.