These companies are draining me. Star field on Game Pass. Sea of stars on PS Plus. Ahsoka on Disney Plus. The last of us on (HBO) Max. Subscription services made me feel like I was missing out. Cheaper and easier entertainment with just one click. No ads, less risk. Seamlessly. Now the spell wears off and prices go up. I think it might be time to call it quits.
There’s a problem at the heart of prepaid entertainment, and it’s that very few people actually have the time or money to really justify it. I can’t keep up with each new one Star Wars spin-offs and expanded Marvel Cinematic Universe shows, not to mention critically acclaimed hits debuting every other month on competing platforms. It’s even worse with video games. The Xbox Game Pass library grows every week, while PlayStation Plus and Switch Online regularly bring back classic games from decades ago. And while a single TV season lasts a maximum of 10 hours, games often exceed that time.
Meanwhile, each of these subscription services has decided to raise the price and get worse at the same time. Disney Plus he jumped from $11 per month to $14. Max increased for just a dollar while blasting tons of old shows as cult hits Westworld. Game Pass Ultimate rose $2 per month, followed by the most PS Plus base level from $60 a year to $80. After 12 years for just $10 a month even Spotify raised its price to $11.
Each increase is isolated as small. How can you complain about being charged an extra dollar for instant access to the most major music ever made? However, in aggregate it starts to break the bank. I am currently subscribed to Hulu, Max, Apple, Peacock, PS Plus, Game Pass Ultimate and Spotify. Over the course of a year, each of these small price increases adds up to an extra $144. Still small compared to the rest of my budget, but enough to wake me up to rethink why I’m spending nearly $1,000 on content™ that I don’t use and will never own.
PS Plus is just the latest price increase
Streaming platforms in particular have taken a familiar ebb and flow. The latest season of the hit show is coming –Witcher, Andorra, Severance pay, Sequence, Yellowstone— and I’ll jump on it to watch it, or to keep up to date as the episodes roll out one after the other. A few months pass and it’s on to the next application. Usually the bench is deep enough to prevent me from dropping the subscription altogether. My kids want to watch Bluey. Or maybe I’ll finally get around to catching up Foundation.
It’s more subtle with playing. Game Pass has been great for trying out things that I might never have gotten to buy outright. A beautiful puzzle platformer Planet Lana comes to mind. Exoprimal also the underrated dino shooter of the years. But inevitably, the next big blockbuster or indie sensation will drop by and steal me away.
I’m deep into it right now Star fielda sprawling sci-fi RPG from the studio Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It is impressive, overwhelming and all-consuming. So why am I renting it from Microsoft instead of spending half of my annual Game Pass subscription just to own it? We were terrified that video game subscriptions would cannibalize sales of new games, undermining studios in an industry notorious for fickle audiences and bloated budgets. Instead, great new games forever –Baldur’s Gate 3, Diablo IV, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom– they reverse the number. Maybe games that you can get lost in for months or even years aren’t the best test case for the price tag of an expensive annual subscription (Game Pass Ultimate costs $204 a year).
PlayStation Plus is an even stranger beast. Sony split the program into three levels last year. The cheapest tier, which is now $80 a year, is needed to play games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II online, although this feature is free on PC. To sweeten the deal, Sony offers a decent amount of PS Plus games for “free” each month and builds a lending library that you can access if you pay to mask this absurd requirement, but mileage varies.
Rocket League, one of the best games of the PS4 console generation, has been “given away” as PS Plus Game of the Month. Last month retro pixel art RPG Sea of stars it could have gotten the same treatment, but instead was added to the more expensive Extra tier, which now costs $135 a year. If you’re a die-hard Sony fan embedded deep in the PlayStation ecosystem, it might be worth paying to get access to a rich selection of games you’d otherwise have to spend thousands to own. But it’s more likely that you’ve already played a lot of them and spend most of your time talking to your friends in your live services hangout.
Maybe you’re lucky and spend your time being annoyed by neglected children Apex Legends, Overwatch 2or Fortnite, free games that don’t even require PS Plus to be online. It is for me Fate 2, a sublime sci-fi shooter that I love and keeps getting more expensive. It doesn’t technically require a subscription like most MMOs, but a year’s worth of content will set you back $100, even more if you tap into its ever-expanding in-game economy of space marine fashion.
The new costumes cost $15 each, and Bungie recently raised the price of the Season Battle Pass, which still requires you to unlock rewards (or pay to get them immediately), from $10 to $12. Playing Fate 2 is really the only reason I need PS Plus, which also indirectly benefits Bungie since Sony bought the studio last year. And”virtuous cycleIndeed. I hope Bungie charges as much as it needs to Fate 2 thrive. I just might not show up as often.
Of course, diving in and out of paid seasons and monthly subscriptions is easier said than done. It requires foresight, planning and diligence. How many times have I stumbled through the login screen to cancel something, searched for a forgotten password, tried to convince the robot that I wasn’t a robot too, only to give up or forget when one of my kids starts screaming for something, dinner starts burning on the stove, or me Is another app distracting on your phone?
For example, if you had asked me over the past year if I was a Google Stadia subscriber, I would have said no. If you were to ask Google Stadia, the answer would be yes. Despite my vivid memories of repeated cancellations, the membership fee was paid on time each month. $10.59 for Stadia Pro, like clockwork. I realized this when the service announced late last year that it was discontinuing and refunding customers for their purchases, and I went to check my account status. What started as a multi-month free trial in November 2019 has lasted nearly three years. $307.11 phew. Stadia was a joke. It seemed to me too.
Is Game Pass still worth it?
The subscription model accounts for this. Some people cancel after a free trial or when they get tired of the service; many, crushed, forgetful and exhausted, simply won’t. This friction is compounded by fuzzy math that makes it easy to simply wait another day, another week, another month before deciding not to renew. In any given place they are lots of shows to watch, games to play or music to listen to. The value is there if only I had the courage and focus to take it. An illusion, but convincing.
Then I actually look back at what services I actually used, how often and for what, and it comes scarily close to breaking even with what the cost of just buying the content might be. That number is harder to find for streaming, where digital downloads and Blu-ray releases are rarer. It’s much more straightforward in games. Here are the top games I played on Game Pass in 2023: Star field ($70), Planet Lana ($20), Ravenlock ($25), Hi-Fi Rush ($30), Wo-Long: Fallen Dynasty ($60), Redfall ($70), Fallout: New Vegas ($10). That’s $285 worth of games, compared to $137 for a nine-month subscription. I would probably just pay out of pocket Star field, Hi-Fi Rush, Planet Lanaand New Vegas, which is $130. And therein lies the rub.
My situation on PS5 and Switch isn’t much better. I used the PS Plus library to play the PS4 version The last of us ($20) and give it a try Humanity ($30) a Rogue Legacy 2 ($25). I would use it for gaming Sea of stars ($35) if I hadn’t already received a review copy code. I also downloaded the PlayStation classics Twisted Metal 2 ($10) a Wild weapons ($10) but never touched them. PS Plus annual premium was $120. Let’s call it laundry. I don’t play Switch games online and only played for about five hours The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap this year, but the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC ($24) came in handy. Not great for a year for a $50 expansion pack.
These services have been invaluable tools for discovery, encouraging me to try out games, movies, and music that I would never have otherwise found and subsequently fallen in love with. But it also creates pressure to always try to consume more, more, more. Money goes out every month, it would be a shame not to make the most of it, right? That’s perhaps what I hate more than anything about the way subscriptions have pushed their way into every corner of my media diet. More often than not, it just doesn’t feel like a healthy, fun, or sustainable way to engage in the things I love.
Not to mention it seems to be slowly disrupting the creative industries that are supposed to make the whole thing work. The jury is still out on whether gaming subscriptions will lead to worse games and more layoffs, but the damage has been done in music and Hollywood. I think I’m ready to stop giving Bob Iger and David Zaslav my unconditional money, no questions asked for now.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to ditch every subscription overnight, although I probably should. I might start by getting rid of one a month and then cycle them back in when it makes sense. Or maybe when I release the grip their sunk cost delusion has on me, I’ll realize I should have canceled them all a long time ago. Life is too short and I still have hundreds of hours Star field play.
