Pocket Gamer Connects London kicks off today, and Louise Shorthouse, Ampere Analysis, presentation examined a wide berth of the games content subscription services landscape, including across multiple platforms: mobile, console, PC, and cloud.

Although Microsoft has typically expressed that it considers it primary rival to be Netflix, Shorthouse emphasised that subscription services themselves are not analogous: “They’re not really the Netflix of games. They are a commercial framework that differs to other services.” Among benefits to gaming subscription services are a greater flexibility to content deals.

Paid subscribers pay more across all categories of gaming are spending more time gaming. Players from the US typically have the most subscriptions (2.1 paid subscriptions), followed by the UK (1.5), and Mexico (1.1). This suggests there an opportunity for growth.

Streaming is currently a value-add, and download is still the primary draw of subscription services. Subscription services can provide several benefits including direct revenue, re-establishing older titles ahead of new releases within that IP.

Shorthouse also highlighted Take-Two as an entity that has typically been reticent about subscription services but has a sophisticated strategy, profiling how flexible its approach to relocating Read Dead Redemption 2 across Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Now. How this will be influenced by Zynga’s expertise remains to be seen.

The biggest challenge is games production, and while Netflix Games has several advantages with an established and widely recognised suite of IP. However, “ongoing games is a departure from video production. With limited experience, Netflix has a lot to prove.”