Ubisoft may be planning to introduce tiers to their Ubisoft Plus subscription service.
Strangely enough, of all places, we received this potential leak from a GOG survey. In the survey, they have this question and answers:
“Which of the following services/plans, if any, do you subscribe to? Choose as many as apply.
- Amazon Prime
- EA Play
- Nintendo Switch Online
- Ubisoft Plus Gold
- Ubisoft Plus Ultimate
- Ubisoft Plus Deluxe”
Ubisoft Plus currently only exists as a single $ 14.99 subscription. It offers over 100 Ubisoft games, including Assassins Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs Legion, and Immortals Fenyx Rising. The service was initially available only from Ubisoft’s own PC client, but was expanded to cloud platforms Amazon Luna and Google Stadia. Ubisoft Plus was added to PlayStation Plus as Ubisoft Plus Classics, available on the PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium tiers. Ubisoft has also announced plans to bring Ubisoft Plus to Xbox, but that it won’t be a part of Game Pass.
Ubisoft has not yet announced plans for tiers for Ubisoft Plus. They also haven’t commented on the story.
Ubisoft also hasn’t disclosed if Ubisoft Plus has been successful or acceptable so far. They are following the trend among video game companies to offer video game subscriptions. Similar to streaming video subscriptions like Netflix and Disney Plus, they offer a library of games available to handpick games from for a rental fee instead of buying full price.
What we do know about PlayStation Plus isn’t favorable to the idea of tiered subscriptions. In fact, since the company started offering different tiers for their subscription service, they had lost 2 million users.
Sony still has over 100 million monthly active users (MAUs). In the bigger picture, this isn’t so big a loss that it fundamentally makes the subscription model unfeasible. It does raise questions if creating tiers is really what consumers want at the moment.
Consumers do seem to have decided they didn’t like what Sony is offering in particular with their tiers. If Ubisoft can offer better value that includes the things gamers want in their tiers, their subscription program may be viewed more favorably.
On the Microsoft side, they have reported missing growth targets for Game Pass, but this story may be misleading. Given Microsoft’s policy to no longer disclose full figures, they may have reached as close to saturation on Game Pass subscriptions for existing and new Xbox console owners.
The most interesting thing about this story is that GOG is positing that this is even a possibility at all. It may be entirely possible that they are looking into offering subscriptions for their own games, adding themselves to that growing list of competitors.
Source: Comic Book
