Mat Piscatella: Only 4% of US video game players buy a new game more often than once per month, with a third of players not buying any games at all

kruis said:
The issue is that normies and casual gamers who rarely buy games don't need and don't care for Gamepass. If all you want to do is to play GTA5, FIFA/FC and a bunch of F2P GAAS games, why would you subscribe to Gamepass?
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I am not talking about f2p (and they are not casuals/normies), I excluded that pillar

kruis said:
Gamepass is of most interest to the hardest of hardcore Xbox gamers who buy and play LOTS OF GAMES. GP was hemorrhaging money because it was too much of a good deal for the people who spent the most on games and now could save money.
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Actually, no
Gamepass had a value for ~36% of consumers pre-rise, and it's actually quite good number, given that 33% are fully f2p - more than half of paying customers are in target range.
And now GP is a value for 14% of consumers (21% of paying), a big drop in coverage.
 
LectureMaster said:


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Surely a sign of a healthy, thriving industry
 
Doesn't make sense to me to buy a game at release these days. They're never finished, and so waiting a few months means you get all the bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and sometimes even a few extras, all at a lower price.
 
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  • Economy is kind of shit, except for the top 1%.
  • Game hardware prices just keep increasing (see number of people still on PS4 or Steam surveys).
  • Game prices are high compared to consumer purchasing power.
  • Various sub options exist in addition to game renting.
  • F2P gaming is bigger than ever.
A lot of folks play F2P MP stuff. And I am not surprised that majority of the public barely purchases new titles. Wait a year and cost drops at least by half and not much is lost.
 
buying 1 game a month?!?! who has the time for that? I am more around the range of 2-3 games per year MAX. Just got KCD2 2 weeks ago and I think i'm good for the rest of 2025.
 
R3TRO said:
Maybe I have a problem...

I buy min 4 a month.
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Good for you. But for most people the barrier isn't cash but time. There are a lot of very cheap games out there that are good, not to mention those that are free. But when ever I have some free time I tend to choose napping above all other options.
 
Tiago Rodrigues said:
I mean it's true...and i keep repeating that.

And the sad part is even the most enthusiastic side of gaming keeps wishing for games to flop because there's a woman as the main character, or an actor said something they don't agree with, or the game released on the wrong platform so let's trash it, etc lol

Single players ARE doing worse overall and it will keep getting worse.
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Games have gotten worse and more expensive, so people buy less. Drop the gaslighting. There's no sadness in turds like Veilguard flopping. It's well deserved and well celebrated. Good games will sell, they don't need any shilling.
 
I never buy games new as it just seems kind of stupid to me. You get an inferior product riddled with bugs and performance issues, and you get the dubious honor of paying more for it.....just doesn't add up.

Wait around three months, get the patched experience at half price, I mean it's a win win.

And yes, I'm aware that this isn't good for the industry in general, but that's not my problem. I'm the consumer, so I'm going to make the smartest decisions I can for me and mine, the impedus for changing that lies with the one publishers and developers, not me.

Maybe most gamers have finally woken up to that realization :/.
 
I dont buy day one games since companies decided early adopters should be the new beta testers for the first months/year of their games.

Once they comeback to offering the whole package 100% optimized for day 1 .. then we can discuss.
 
This guy was always a Xbox fanboy boy. It is so weird us videogame media and analyst with so many being Xbox fanboys and trying to induce consumers.
 
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methane47 said:
buying 1 game a month?!?! who has the time for that? I am more around the range of 2-3 games per year MAX. Just got KCD2 2 weeks ago and I think i'm good for the rest of 2025.
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Yep. Also, KCD2 is awesome and will take a good 100 hours if you enjoy and take in the scenery plus the new DLC is pretty good.
 
Even as someone who sees gaming as their main hobby I buy less than 1 game a month.
Between a full time job, other hobbies, spending time with family/friends, some multiplayer gaming, etc a lot of these modern 30+ hours games take me more than a month to beat anyway. Then you add the ocasional good Ps+ and/or Epic giveaway (likes Lies of P and Alan Wake 2 recently) and there's even less of a reason to constantly buy new games.

And when I do buy a new game it's rarely day 1. I'm usually so behind on new releases that I want to play that there's basically always something on sale on my wishlist. The only day 1 games I've gotten this year were Expedition 33 and Silksong (neither of them being $70 also helped).
 
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I never buy games on release nowadays. I do buy about 15 new physical games a month though.

Over 10 years ago I was buying new games on release and by the time I got round to playing them the prices were reduced to nearly half what I originally paid. This practice was brought in by companies like Ubisoft in order to suppress the second hand market (CEX etc.).

All they have achieved is lower, slower sales, yielding less profit. I for one have greatly reduced the amount of money I'm spending. They did it all to themselves, no wonder they want us all to be digital consumers now.
 
Tiago Rodrigues said:
I mean it's true...and i keep repeating that.

And the sad part is even the most enthusiastic side of gaming keeps wishing for games to flop because there's a woman as the main character, or an actor said something they don't agree with, or the game released on the wrong platform so let's trash it, etc lol

Single players ARE doing worse overall and it will keep getting worse.
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Irs pretty simple fam ... if you want to ignore years of a well established gamer demographic in pursuit of some mythical "modern audience" and when you fail you double/tripple down in the name of your "ideals" and your "art" then its not our fault gaming is failing. You want to buy any dogshit they throw at you, go for it, dont ask any of us to have the same low standards
 
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I only buy 1 maybe 2 games per quarter in one of the four seasonal steam sales, or cheap steamkey's on thirdparty sites for 5-10€.
 
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With so many games out now, the chances for bad games would also be higher so people choose their next game more wisely. Last game I bought this year was Warcraft Reforged and World of Warcraft Midnight as nothing else interest me until Resident Evil 9, Tides of Annihilation, and GTA VI next year and maybe Routine later this year.

Most kids are probably on Roblox and Fortnite. And older folks just choose what to buy carefully instead of having our parents buy it for us monthly like how it was during the SNES to PS2 days.
 
I buy exactly one game per month, it's a self-imposed rule. It's practically a game in itself for me anymore. I will research Steam, Playstation and Switch sales, and narrow it down to just one. I will take in account genre, developer and even nationality in the purchase. At this rate, I can die with 500 games in the backlog rather than 1,000.
 
I have had the feeling that the heavy lifting of full price games or launch bought games is done by a low margin of people and those people like me also like their games in physical form. If these stop to exist why would i buy a fucking console? Then i can buy pc and play xbox and ps games. I would probably by also 90 percent less games based on my backlog 🤣
 
Kacho said:
When it comes to buying games, yep. If you grow the market with f2p games and mobile slop it's going to skew the stats.
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But even that is the same thing - it's the whales propping up those games, not the masses that help the publishers sell in-game ads.
 
ByWatterson said:
But even that is the same thing - it's the whales propping up those games, not the masses that help the publishers sell in-game ads.
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Sure, but it's hard to take any of this seriously when my mom is considered a "US gamer" just because she plays Words with Friends daily.
 
Kacho said:
Sure, but it's hard to take any of this seriously when my mom is considered a "US gamer" just because she plays Words with Friends daily.
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Ah, I see. Yeah, definitely.

Asking if someone is a gamer is a bit like asking if they're a student. If you frame it a certain way, it includes anyone and everyone.
 
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