It's been all but confirmed that SEGA's upcoming reboots of Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi are going to be live service games with predatory monetization. Why would they do this? Why are live service games with predatory monetization still popular?
I mean this is the most naked example of capitalism.
Financially speaking, let's break down what a game means. If a company like Sega gets you to buy one game a year, that means you are giving them $50-$70 annually. If it's a game you really like, something that becomes your favorite game of all time, then it is the bar you compare all other games in the franchise to. Yakuza 5 is the best one? Well Yakuza 3, 4, 6, and 7 aren't as good as Yakuza 5, then. And maybe that means you eventually stop buying new Yakuza games, because you'd rather replay your favorite one.
In comes the live service game. You never buy it, it never ends. You can't say "Yakuza 5 was my favorite" because there is no Yakuza 5. There's just The Yakuza Game, and maybe season 5 was your favorite, but parts of season 5 are still in the game even though its season 28. Right? Season 5 never really goes away, not entirely.
An item in The Yakuza Game is $5. Maybe it's a shirt, maybe its shoes, whatever. And that's a lot cheaper than $60 for an entire game, right? So people are more willing to buy it. If you buy one $5 item a month, then Sega has made the same amount of money from you that they would have if you bought a full price game.
But the idea isn't just to make you spend $5 a month. Maybe you spend $10 some months. $15. Even $20. For $20, you get four virtual shirts, and that's cheaper than the price of one real-life shirt. Right? You feel like that has appropriate value.
But in Sega's eyes, all these small increments add up to you giving them more money over the long term. And on a game that lasts forever. $60-$240 a year, every year, in perpetuity.
They don't have to worry about a remaster in ten years, because if it catches on, then this forever-game will still be getting played in ten years. At worst, you can do what Fortnite, Overwatch and Apex Legends did, and have throwback seasons (and in those cases, you can charge people a second time for updated versions of items users might already have).
This is how Epic Games makes $20 billion a year. A live service game has the potential to vastly exceed the profits of a traditional one-and-done game by truly staggering degrees.
The catch being the same thing that happened in the mid 2000's. World of Warcraft exploded big time and everybody scrambled to make their own MMO to steal WoW's thunder. Turns out: people only have so much time in their day. Dozens of MMOs failed. Wild Star, Everquest Next, Tabula Rasa, Warhammer Online...
Remember when I said "Maybe Yakuza 5 is your favorite" and mentioned how many Yakuza games came both before and after it? Yeah. Now you aren't competing with other games in the series, you're competing with the pillars of the genre. For a live service game to succeed, you need to nail "the favorite" on your first shot. And there aren't very many games that do that, in any format.
And in a live service arena like this, where a lot of the profit is generated from entrenched, habitual spenders who burrow into one game and never leave? The odds of pulling them out of their comfort zone shrink, and shrink, and shrink. If you only play video games for an hour per day, why would you go somewhere new when all of your friends and items already exist in the current game?
But such is the siren call of profit. Why make $100 million on Jet Set Radio when it has the potential to be $1 billion, $5 billion, or even $10 billion? Even just a sprinkling of live service can sweeten long term earnings, after all. Users may not like it, but they'll tolerate being annoyed a little bit. And it's fine annoying them a little bit. And a little bit more. And a little bit more. And a little bit more.
Please, we only made $390 million on this game. We expected $1 billion. We can't make games that don't generate $1 billion in profit. $390 million is nothing. Nobody can do anything worthwhile with just $390 million. The investors are laughing at us. Throw yourself before the golden throne or you'll get the cattle prod again. Your favorite game franchises demand it.
