been thinking about this a lot today and here is a stream of consciousness of my thoughts.
the perceived value of digital goods is pretty weird right?
out of the context of games, $20 for 90 days of potential fun seems like a great deal! now it's a video game, and there's a physical version of it for less than $20 that I could keep forever, now it feels like a rip off. if the physical version never existed would it feel better? if it was a completely original game would it feel better? It seems like you have to factor in the fact that you're actually streaming this game which lets you play on an incompatible piece of hardware. The physical version requires you have to a piece of hardware that you may not have. Should the price of that hardware be factored into the value proposition?
a subscription feels better right? $20 a month to play whatever you want? yes that sounds awesome. now, given the amount of free time I have and the amount of cool new PS4 games I'd rather play, how many games will I actually play on my subscription? One a month? One every 3 months? Practically I might end up paying for the $20 for the same amount of time with a game as the non subscription model. Overtime I'm actually receiving LESS value if you factor in the months that I pay but not play anything. People will actually end up paying MORE to play LESS. for some reason though, this feels better, it's a better value because the potential for stuff I could do is huge.
I digress, my main point is that the value of digital goods is weird, and a lot of these "they're on crack!!!" reactions are very kneejerk. If this streaming game rentals market takes off, then the market will dictate what prices work and what people will pay for, someone's gotta start somewhere though.
