Ubisoft's player recurring investment revenue (microtransactions/DLC) has been rising astronomically

Valdega · Oct 31, 2018

MillionIII said:
Funny how all of them except fc5 sucked at launch, I guess fixing your game years after is a good strategy.

It's pretty rare that multiplayer games are hugely successful at launch. Most games take a while to get to that point. Fortnite languished for about a year until they added Battle Royale. LoL didn't become a smash hit overnight either. Same goes for Warframe.

matimeo · Oct 31, 2018

Sulik2 said:
I think its more that most people like to have a hobby. They enjoy playing one game and mastering it and GAAS fulfill that need perfectly. Gamers who like to hop games all the time I think are actually the minority of the gaming world.

Nirolak said:
A lot also play like... a handful of service games, if that makes sense, but they don't go through titles in the same way that people who just play singleplayer do.

They'll often end up back on older titles depending on what's going on with them. Like Destiny 2 has swung from being #2 to being #30 to being #2 again on the Xbox Most Played Charts depending on what content is out.

entrydenied said:
I think the average gamer actually spends their time on just a handful of games per year. A lot of Era is different from the average consumer out there. Not everyone buys like 1 or 2 games (a lot even more) a month. It's always been like this, except now companies support their games with more content months and years after release, and have also found ways to make them pay more through DLC and MTs.

Agreed. Most people I know have 1 or 2 franchises they play and that's it. Know plenty who just play their chosen sports game each year. Even if those people throw an extra 50.00 toward mtx they still are spending less per year on gaming than most people on Era. Most justify it because they are spending lots of hours in these games.

Console is just following mobile.
Just like mobile some developers do it well , some clearly try to take advantage of users. Keep users engaged and they tend to spend additional money within your ecosystem. Acquiring users is the expensive part.

Majukun · Oct 31, 2018

We are doomed and we have only ourselves to blame for it.

Fiel · Oct 31, 2018

Ubisoft generally make fine game and very diversive line up with its own fanbase so they are not devour each other in GaaS. They make fun content that people like, people spend time and decide to shell out cash, that's fair IMO.

While their BM are far from perfect but it isn't as intrusive like BIG 3-4 company. at least most of them are direct buy except maybe R6.

I also think Starlink looks fun and not many publisher will allow AAA level of this kind of game happened. So kudos.

Patapuf · Oct 31, 2018

Majukun said:
We are doomed and we have only ourselves to blame for it.

Eh. One can argue the nitty gritty of monetisation and how to do it right but GAAS is not something consumers were tricked into. Most people clearly prefer being able to stick with a game to the old way retail games worked.

Which is also why they prefer spending on a game they play regularily rather than buy tons of new ones.

Batatina · Oct 31, 2018

I am happy to be play AC Odyssey without a single micro transaction. The xp boost was tempting, but I decided that if the progression was boring I would rage trade it in. It could be faster, but I m've been enjoying it so far.

MillionIII · Oct 31, 2018

Valdega said:
It's pretty rare that multiplayer games are hugely successful at launch. Most games take a while to get to that point. Fortnite languished for about a year until they added Battle Royale. LoL didn't become a smash hit overnight either. Same goes for Warframe.

Yeah but those games are free, Ubisoft games cost 60$ not including the season pass.

Joeyro · Oct 31, 2018

oni-link said:
I wonder what happens in a decade or so when they need to keep chasing even higher MXT profits to please investors

Will the sales of MXTs plateau or drop at some point? Then what, make them more expensive? Make them a larger part of the experience? Embed them deeper within the game design?

Increasing prices on MTX sounds risky. I would think that giving the game a quick drop in price and free weekends to increase exposure to the game is the most effective way. initial sales don't mean much this gen ( for non SP games), it's all about the long run, raking in the MTX money.

Overwatch and Siege are still popular because of constant exposure from free weekends,sales and seasonal events.

SprachBrooks · Oct 31, 2018

Which one of y'all purchased that damn XP boost? (Also, if you have - how has it changed the gameplay?)

Marukoban · Oct 31, 2018

matimeo said:
Agreed. Most people I know have 1 or 2 franchises they play and that's it. Know plenty who just play their chosen sports game each year. Even if those people throw an extra 50.00 toward mtx they still are spending less per year on gaming than most people on Era. Most justify it because they are spending lots of hours in these games.

Console is just following mobile.
Just like mobile some developers do it well , some clearly try to take advantage of users. Keep users engaged and they tend to spend additional money within your ecosystem. Acquiring users is the expensive part.

Yeah, finally AAA console catch up to PC MMO and mobile market.

FeD · Oct 31, 2018

Valdega said:
It's pretty rare that multiplayer games are hugely successful at launch. Most games take a while to get to that point. Fortnite languished for about a year until they added Battle Royale. LoL didn't become a smash hit overnight either. Same goes for Warframe.

What? Save the World came out in early access in June, BR was August iirc.

SkyMasterson · Oct 31, 2018

A. D. Skinner said:
Can't comment on the others really but Siege deserves it!

Absolutely!

It makes me so damn happy that Rainbow Six is popular and relevant again.

It was such a bummer when COD4 was such a massive hit that even Ubi tried to turn Rainbow Six Vegas 2 into a COD game.

oni-link · Oct 31, 2018

Joeyro said:
Increasing prices on MTX sounds risky. I would think that giving the game a quick drop in price and free weekends to increase exposure to the game is the most effective way. initial sales don't mean much this gen ( for non SP games), it's all about the long run, raking in the MTX money.

Overwatch and Siege are still popular because of constant exposure from free weekends,sales and seasonal events.

It is risky, but my point is business' and investors value growth, so if a game makes X from MXT sales, the target for the next game will be more than X, and if you keep everything the same there is a chance it won't make more money, so you need to plan how to meet your new targets

This can mean you make the MXT more expensive, it can mean you embed them into the design of the game to a greater extent, it could mean you add more types of MXT, there are a ton of ways you can do it

Now can you keep doing this without at some point impacting the quality of the design? That is something we'll find out in the future

Battlefront 2 and Shadow of War have already shown it's possible to overstep the mark and monitise to an extent where the quality of the product suffers. Ubisoft haven't made that mistake so far, however to keep investors happy they will have to turn bigger and bigger MXT profits each year, so it will be interesting to see how they deliver this and what their games look like in 5 years time

Valdega · Oct 31, 2018

FeD said:
What? Save the World came out in early access in June, BR was August iirc.

Fortnite (the original PvE version) entered closed beta testing in 2015. Epic then shifted their focus to Paragon because Fortnite wasn't really gaining much traction. Fortnite eventually entered early access in July 2017 to limited fanfare. Then PUBG came out and sold like hotcakes, so Epic jumped on the bandwagon and pumped out their own BR mode for Fortnite a couple of months later.

The point is that Fortnite had a rocky and protracted development cycle as they tried to figure out how to make it stick with players. They ultimately failed with the PvE mode and succeeded with the BR mode. Lots of iteration and testing is required for most multiplayer games to be successful.

Deleted member 3897 · Oct 31, 2018

Interficium said:
What is this fascist bullshit

Well, one of the governments job is to make decisions for the citizens because a large portion of a countrys citizens are stupid and can't handle it themselves. Don't put your arm in the microwave, don't lick the socket, don't eat tide pods, don't sniff a condom, having to push for obligatory vaccines because people are stupid enough to think they know better after having read a blog on vaccinescauseautism.blog.com and so on.

Deleted member 8593 · Oct 31, 2018

I saw that slide on Twitter and thought to myself that parts of ERA aren't going to like it. This is just the reality of the AAA space and more and more of the bigger players are going to go this way.

lucebuce · Oct 31, 2018

sixteen-bit said:
Isn't it essentially F2P on PC?

No, you still have to buy it to start playing. Its possible the F2P weekends they've had helped exaggerate the numbers a bit but you still have to pay for a version of the game to start playing.

.exe · Oct 31, 2018

oni-link said:
It is risky, but my point is business' and investors value growth, so if a game makes X from MXT sales, the target for the next game will be more than X, and if you keep everything the same there is a chance it won't make more money, so you need to plan how to meet your new targets

This can mean you make the MXT more expensive, it can mean you embed them into the design of the game to a greater extent, it could mean you add more types of MXT, there are a ton of ways you can do it

Now can you keep doing this without at some point impacting the quality of the design? That is something we'll find out in the future

Battlefront 2 and Shadow of War have already shown it's possible to overstep the mark and monitise to an extent where the quality of the product suffers. Ubisoft haven't made that mistake so far, however to keep investors happy they will have to turn bigger and bigger MXT profits each year, so it will be interesting to see how they deliver this and what their games look like in 5 years time

Or you grow your audience, add more games with an MTX model to your lineup, and convert more consumers to digital. People who buy games digitally are probably more likely to spend on MTX; and we see that as digital sales for Ubi went up, so did MTX revenue. They've been promoting this by adding cheap entry versions of games down the line as well as deals like the Ubi points currency that you can spend for 20% off their digital store. I'm confident the push for digital will grow only more in coming years.

oni-link · Oct 31, 2018

daxy said:
Or you grow your audience and convert more consumers to digital. People who buy games digitally are probably more likely to spend on MTX; and we see that as digital sales for Ubi went up, so did MTX revenue. They've been promoting this by adding cheap entry versions of games down the line as well as deals like the Ubi points currency that you can spend for 20% off their digital store. I'm confident the push for digital will grow only more in coming years.

Yeah I don't disagree with that, but it doesn't change that investors will always want to see as much growth as possible

Digital sales were always going up and always will, MXT are going up because more games have them and more games push them, or build their entire game around them

I'm not saying that as a negative by the way, as loads of games (including Ubisoft games) have really been able to thrive using this model, but games from 2018 have more monitisation than games in 2008, and the chances are games in 2028 will have more monitisation than games in 2018

Getting the balance right while maintaining growth is where the challenge is. You need to ensure the game is great without needing to keep pumping money into it and while also having enough options for those who do want to keep pumping money into it

When only a minority of your players generate your MXT money you can either make them more far reaching and encourage those who don't currently pay to start paying, which will work for some and alienate others, or you cater the game from a design perspective towards the minority who pay (which is what a lot of mobile games do)

We've already seen several (though not from Ubisoft) examples of GaaS fail to meet this balance and end up worse games for it, however they're in the minority. My concern is that chasing growth every year and the market becoming saturated with more 500 hour long GaaS like titles will cause some publishers to overreach and mess the balance up

Only time will tell of course, and I could well be wrong, but generally companies are not that thrilled when games don't make more money than before. Only this week Activison were disappointing with Black Ops 4 because it only made a similar amount of money to their previous game, even though it made $500m

Wolfapo · Oct 31, 2018

K Samedi said:
For example, you can have a game with a player base of 10 people. If you split them up into light users that spend 10 a year, medium users that spend 100 a year, and heavy users that spend 1000 a year and if you assume 1 heavy user, 3 medium users and 6 light users the bulk of the money you make will come from that 1 heavy user.

Actually, it's not as skewed as you think.
I remember a GDC talk (mobile revenue is mentioned at around 28:00 - 31:00 minutes) about this and it basically split up the players by non-payer, moderate payers ($0.01 - $99.99 and heavy payers ($100+).
Moderate payers are still generating 45% of the revenue in this example. It's mobile only and data from up to 2016, so it's not the latest data and not for console/pc games with microtransactions.

Now is the question how this translates to GaaS and how was the general trend in the last two years? I only found an article on gamasutra that mentions a change in trends to less whales, but I guess this should give some perspective on how mobile revenue is generated. The 1% whales create 80+% of the revenue is a myth in my opinion. The moderate payers are also important to cater to. And I guess the main goal would be to get more of the non-payers (~50%) to spend small amounts first instead of pushing already paying customers to become whales.

Overflow · Oct 31, 2018

Reaaall glad that people are voting with their wallet for Siege's new paid gambling boxes. If I could choose what to buy, I'd give you a good amount of money Ubi and wouldn't feel like scum enabling your gambling addiction at the same time.

As it is, I'm not spending a single cent. Thoroughly soured.

entrydenied · Oct 31, 2018

matimeo said:
Agreed. Most people I know have 1 or 2 franchises they play and that's it. Know plenty who just play their chosen sports game each year. Even if those people throw an extra 50.00 toward mtx they still are spending less per year on gaming than most people on Era. Most justify it because they are spending lots of hours in these games.

Console is just following mobile.
Just like mobile some developers do it well , some clearly try to take advantage of users. Keep users engaged and they tend to spend additional money within your ecosystem. Acquiring users is the expensive part.

Yup. Someone like my brother buys less than 5 games per year and plays some of them for years. No matter what he will still spend less than I who buy 2 full priced games per month, along with many discounted games throughout the year. It's really about how they can get money from customers who play their one single game for to months and years.

Zelas · Oct 31, 2018

K Samedi said:
No,

A small sample of rich kids are paying a ton of money and are funding the games for everybody else to play. Its the most stupid monetization scheme ever crafted.

Rich kids arent buying up these games and having them float at the top of the npd charts throughout their lives. People want GaaS.

Sheepinator · Oct 31, 2018

K Samedi said:
Yeah there's a reason those stats are not given. It would make the publisher look really bad. I dont see any other logical explenation for the absence of such data. Not a single publisher shares this kind of stuff.

The logical explanation for not giving that data is there's zero reason to do so, and it could give competitors an advantage.

headspawn · Oct 31, 2018

So, is For Honor is the biggest fighting game this gen?

spineduke · Oct 31, 2018

Has there been any study on how GaaS affects the overall health of the market? Can't imagine it can be good with people investing into just a few titles while ignoring the majority of releases.

Patapuf · Oct 31, 2018

spineduke said:
Has there been any study on how GaaS affects the overall health of the market? Can't imagine it can be good with people investing into just a few titles while ignoring the majority of releases.

gaming is doing better than ever by pretty much every metric.

The biggest effect this has had is that publisher put out fewer games. But that was happening anyway.

spineduke · Oct 31, 2018

Patapuf said:
gaming is doing better than ever by pretty much every metric.

The biggest effect this has had is that publisher put out fewer games. But that was happening anyway.

for AAA publishers, i agree - im more interested in seeing how smaller developers are faring compared to 3 years ago.

JigglesBunny · Oct 31, 2018

Hope you're enjoying your skins and upgrade packs. See ya'll in the next microtransaction/special edition/season pass thread.

Sheepinator · Oct 31, 2018

spineduke said:
Has there been any study on how GaaS affects the overall health of the market? Can't imagine it can be good with people investing into just a few titles while ignoring the majority of releases.

Fewer AAA games, but the ones which do come out have far greater investment and lifetime support, which means more quantity, more quality and more value for money for gamers. And if people want more variety in their gaming, that's where the indies and sub-$20 market is. Including those, we have more games than before.

Turbo Tu-Tone · Oct 31, 2018

Jim Sterling wept.

Sheepinator · Oct 31, 2018

Turbo Tu-Tone said:
Jim Sterling wept.

Really? That's his #1 go to since he gave up doing reviews which took more time to make than releasing yet another "greedy publishers" video.

Kin5290 · Oct 31, 2018

swift-darius said:
I mean, strategy games have been doing this for years. civilisation 5 was incredibly barebones at launch, but firaxis pushes more classic expansions for that series with lighter civ dlc thrown in. paradox's entire business model is predicated on recurring mid-size dlcs for a dedicated niche audience. the sims too, etc

Yeah, Paradox games are GaaS with support lifespans that are years long. Crusader Kings 2 is getting a new expansion/DLC soon and that game was released in 2012.

Falchion · Nov 1, 2018

Ubisoft certainly has kept their players engaged.

Ubisoft's player recurring investment revenue (microtransactions/DLC) has been rising astronomically

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