Gamespot Goes to Subscription Model

-PS-Sangloth writes "Gamespot, arguably the best video gaming website will expand in July to a pay service(Gamespot Complete). It seems that while review scores will be free, the actual reviews for new PC games will cease to be available to non-payers 7 days after the review was written. This is a real pity, I suspect many PC Gamers, like me, don't have credit cards(or cash), and Gamespot has good, hard, objective reviews. Read what they said at Gamespot Complete."

Comments

What a shame

[skrew]

Gamespot has been one of the best gaming sites for a long time. It seems to an inevitable switch, since the (deserved) decline of advertising based websites. Isn't there any non ad based revenue that can work without subscription fees? I for one don't have money to waste just to read a website.

Re:What a shame

[The Cat]

The Internet is not free. There has always been a cost to get access to the Internet, and there has always been a cost to run a server on the Internet. These costs can only be donated up to a point (and usually are, and then some).

If people won't click and then buy from ads, then the sites go subscription. That's the way it is. It *cannot* work any other way, because the site operators and ISPs can't afford it.

It's amazing. All of these free sites have been giving away millions of dollars worth of bandwidth and information for years, and nobody ever said "hey, thanks." Now that they want to pay their own bills, it's "WE'LL NEVER PAY!! NYAAAAHHH!!!!"

sigh...

Re:What a shame

[Surak]

The way I see it, there are only 3 viable Internet business models. They are:

1. Advertising. Advertising works only if there are enough advertisers paying you to advertise on your site vs. what your costs are in bandwidth, colocs, etc. With a decline in advertising spending across the board for ALL media, Internet advertising has taken a hit, especially with the dot.com bust.

2. Subscriptions. Obviously, charge your users for the use of the bandwidth and server storage. You have to charge enough to cover your costs plus profit, but not too much that the market won't bear it. A year or two ago, the answer to what the market would bear would have been close to zero. It's starting to change now... people are realizing that yes, you have to pay for certain kinds of content, or it simply won't be available at all...

3. Sell stuff on your site. You basically use the info on your site as a means to entice your users to buy your products. For a site like Gamespot or Slashdot, it would be very hard to maintain objectivity and credibility in their journalism, since they'd basically be representing a product.

And really...that's it... in the end, I'd rather PAY for a service rather than have the site sell a product and hurt the integrity of their information.

Re:What a shame

[edp]

I think there is a fourth viable business model. I click on a page with content, and a dialog box comes up: "The charge for this page is $.10. Choose an option: Pay via PayPal. Pay via Amazon. Add a new payment service. Do not view this page."

The third option connects to some (possible user selectable) directory of payment services, where the user can communicate with various services and register, thus adding the service to the dialog box in the future. That's how the first two options would have gotten there, or they would have been installed by the PC or system seller.

Clicking on the dialog box is all that is necessary to authorize payment. All other details have been dealt with previously in registration with the payment service, so web surfing is still fast.

Small payments would be economical once the infrastructure is there. Software should give the user additional control and convenience. For example, the user could authorize payment of the next 100 charges of $.10 or less at GameSpot, so their software wouldn't bother them with a dialog box for a while, but spending wouldn't get out of control without them being reminded.

Content providers would need to give the user some indication of what they would be receiving, to entice users to pay. E.g., GameSpot could show the first few paragraphs of a review, with a for-fee link to the whole review.

Broadband?

[Mark4ST]

It seems that everything on the internet is becoming a pay service. I miss the days when a simple banner ads could cover the bills.

If this progresses, I can see broadband sales suffer. The only reason I got broadband in the first place was because of bandwidth intesive sites (like Gamespot's streaming video, massive MP3 downloads). If all the big-bandwidth things go "pay" then there'll be little reason to pay thru the nose for a breadband connection.

I'm already paying enough for broadband service; I can't justify the expense of paying for content.

Atleast we know....

[galaga79]

The fact that they are losing money atleast means one good thing and is they aren't accepting money from publishers for good reviews.

The pricing and what you get for it looks pretty decent in my opinion. Lets face it $4.95 a month is how much a computer magazine would cost at a newstands, except this magazine is online and updated daily instead of montly. Sure you don't get something you can hold in your hands and read while comuting, but you do get something ad-free and that's something printed magazines can't boast. Plus let's not forget ads often bias publications to write good things about their products to keep that advertiser. So in all I can see Gamespots model as a good thing, now I just hope it works in a medium where people expect things for free.

Re:Seriously, who will buy?

[Tranvisor]

I don't mind waiting for an hour to get stuff from fileplanet. Hey if it saves money for them and lets them stay mostly banner-oriented, I say go for it. I just wish more web-companies would try to cut down on their costs more and try to up there profits less. I don't have the money to pay 5 bucks a month to every website I like. Cut a few workers if you have to, but in times like these thats what you have to do. A company must remain flexible in tough times so that its still there when times get better and they can then rehire the people they want. Too many execs just look at the bottom line and ask "How can we increase revenues?" when they should be asking themselves "How can we cut bloat?".

Re:Seriously, who will buy?

[xigxag]

I make 6$ an hour, there is no way I would even spend 2$ a month on this subscription service. And I am sure that 99.99% of others agree with me on that.

The thing you have to realize is that, for people like you, Gamespot wants you to go away. Right now every time you log onto their site, you are costing them money. So they will be happy to see the back of you. However, they are willing to let you stick around and look at their crippled site, provided you will submit to those ultra-intrusive popups which will actually make money for them. Because despite what people may want to believe, content might be free -- sometimes -- but bandwidth sure as hell ain't.

Re:Almost there

[balloonpup]

You mean, like this?

Open Cola

It may not be GNU, but it *is* open...