Games as a service is one way for us to continue our support for the games that we love and it gives the developers more than enough reason to create content for us to enjoy the games even more. However, if the video game industry is leaning towards it more in the future, like in a distant future wherein almost every video game is basically a service, then a part of the market will definitely be greatly affected.
In order to use the service then we would definitely need a constant internet connection which in many parts of the world and even in the US, that isn’t a luxury that we have. There are plenty of gamers in from different countries that have yet to establish a constant internet connection and their reasons can vary far and wide (though it could most likely just be an ISP thing or lack of one). Even in the US there are still areas that use dial-up internet just to connect.
Most likely Xbox owners don’t have to worry about this since that console really needs to be connected at times. But for us gamers who game offline and don’t have the luxury to always update our consoles, being unable to play our favourite games because they now all require an internet connection would pretty much be the death of our gaming lives. A huge part of us would die inside just because the industry has “evolved”.
At that point we’ll probably be missing the days when the most common Games as a Service model was microtransactions. While it may still be ugly, at least that form of service allows us to play our games offline, unless the game requires itself to be online most of the time like Warframe.
Although if enough people just buy the games than most likely we can avoid that scenario. Just look at the amazing amount of content we’re getting from No Man’s Sky and Final Fantasy XV (although it is more like they’re trying to complete the broken game rather than add more stuff).
So until most of the world can secure a constant internet connection, then having the industry use Games as a Service would definitely deal a huge amount of damage to a specific market of gamers.
