Despite the hype and the worries, only 6% of gamers worldwide had a subscribed cloud gaming service in 2023. A fact which indicates that while the medium has potential and promise, no cloud gaming service has achieved mainstream success as yet.
This comes from data and analytics company GlobalData‘s latest thematic Cloud Gaming report which also predicts that the cloud gaming market will be worth more than $22 billion in 2030, a significant rise from its $3 billion worth in 2023.
And that’s not all. The report also finds that cloud gaming subscribers will grow from 184 million in 2023 to a staggering 687 million in 2030.
Unscalable game subscription services
Game subscriptions like Game Pass offer great value but aren’t as scalable as TV and film subscriptions due to differences in production, higher earnings potential outside of subscriptions, competition from premium and free-to-play models, and diverse player habits.
Also, cloud gaming services face challenges in balancing profitability for publishers with delivering value for players, requiring a high-quality experience to justify costs.
In order to secure its Activision Blizzard acquisition, Microsoft had to divest its UK cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft, addressing the UK regulator’s monopoly concerns and ensuring a competitive market. So while the promise is there, it seems the take-up is yet to happen.
The best is yet to come
There’s much speculation about cloud gaming’s potential for mainstream success but GlobalData’s principal analyst Rupantar Guha believes “it will ultimately disrupt the video games industry, just as video and audio streaming changed the music, film, and TV industries.”
Despite behemoth cloud gaming providers such as Microsoft, Sony, and Nvidia banking on subscription models, we’ve detailed how “games subscription services have never truly worked, and it’s hard to see how they ever will.”
