Nigel Lowrie, co-founder of indie game publisher Devolver, believes in “selling games first” over launching in subscription services like Game Pass and PS Plus.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Lowrie provided his stance on the current state of the industry, describing large-scale game development as “crushing under its own weight a little bit”.
Further, he noted the growth of subscription services has tapered off and deals for indie developers to be included are getting worse.
“A lot of it seems a little obtuse on how many people are actually [using them],” Lowrie said. “Every once in a while you hear how many subscribers these services have, so you don’t really know. And you don’t know how active they are. Are they part of a larger service? Some of these companies have multiple things outside of games and their subscription service also encompasses music or movies and things like that.”
Subscription services may provide a great deal for consumers, but it’s then harder for developers to “convince people to put down money for your game rather than this service with 100 or 200 games to play.”
Instead, Devolver’s strategy is initially to sell games and then add them to subscription services later.
“We still really strongly believe in selling games first, because over the past 15 years, we know there’s an audience to buy these games,” Lowrie said. “And we’re looking at subscription more for the longer tail, the people on the edge of things who were never really going to jump in at $40 or $30 or $20. But they’re willing to try it, maybe buy something cosmetic or something like that? We’re looking at it more as a long tail thing now, and my hope is that’s where the industry is going.”