Hezekiah
Banned
Time for a nap grandad?
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Game Pass is not profitable yet - Tom Warren
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DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
So when gamepass ultimately fails within the next however many months or so at least I will be able to turn around and say...I bought my series x and my kick ass pc and I managed to play some damn flipping awesome games included in the subscription.
Sony fans will be able to cheer from the roof tops and game pass subscribers will cheer for all the games they got to play...
....then reality kicks in....and game pass doesn't go anywhere.
Sony fans will be able to cheer from the roof tops and game pass subscribers will cheer for all the games they got to play...
....then reality kicks in....and game pass doesn't go anywhere.
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Leyasu
Banned
How the fuck is thread still going?
Same back and forth, nobody is going to change anybody's mind, but above all, without solid numbers nobody knows who's right and who's wrong. It just becomes an echo chamber
How this thread has been allowed to fester for 19 pages is beyond belief
Same back and forth, nobody is going to change anybody's mind, but above all, without solid numbers nobody knows who's right and who's wrong. It just becomes an echo chamber
How this thread has been allowed to fester for 19 pages is beyond belief
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Hezekiah
Banned
The number of sensitive GamePass fans on here is staggering.
Like it's a thread primarily about profitability. And to an extent about sustainablility in its current form. Yet people get sooo triggered.
I'm subscribing for the first time next month. I just expect changes in the coming months and years.
Would close the thread until we get the next set of Microsoft/xbox numbers
THE DUCK
voted poster of the decade by bots
I dont know if this was said already, but its clearly not just about "is gamepass profitable or not". If they pull 10 or 15 million people away from ps5 this generation, it's already a win. But also critical, is I bet every gamepass subscriber spends X and on other games and controllers, adding, etc, this is the extra cash they are after too. So a net loss with gamepass could still reap huge benefits for xbox overall. (To say nothing of the locked in revenue stream from it already which is always favorable over highly variable regular sales)
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
But why are certain people, or should I say a certain fanbase so obsessed with profitability and sustainability?
Are there forums where people argue over the sustainability and profitability of apple TV, amazon prime etc?
If there is, what a sad state.
What does ps now cost per month? Sony have managed to sustain that service for 8 years and only just hit 3 million subs.
Why can't MS who are absolutely huge and have managed to make yearly subscriptions work for office and more so are pretty well rehearsed in how to work this business model under such a microscope. Why can't we just enjoy the service while it's here and we can contemplate cancelling our subs if the price does increase and reaches a point that doesn't make sense for us?
I'm not sure if game pass subscribers are triggered by any of this, they are probably just fed up with the constant questions on profit and sustainability. How much profit did last of us 2 make? Are there constant threads worrying about if Sony is making back enough profit for the money they spend on these huge blockbuster single player games?
I can't remember when Sony last announced sales numbers for their games like last of us 2 yet it shouldn't matter to us should it? We are still getting to enjoy the games.
I guess it is that game pass is obviously too good a service and people can't understand how it can exist at its current price?
Banjo64
cumsessed
I buy Nintendo and Sony games and still pay for subscription services like Game Pass - does that make you a peasant compared to me if he's a cheap ass?
Hezekiah
Banned
There's a lot of questions there. Maybe start another thread?
Riky
$MSFT
The only financial measurement that matters is how Gamepass is performing compared to Microsoft's internal projections. The answer to that only they know.
People pretending that they've found out a big unknown black hole of money because of an offer that Microsoft knowingly make to grow the subscriber base are sadly deluded.
Nobody at Microsoft is going to wake up tomorrow and suddenly realise that they have spent a lot of money on Gamepass and that they have offered it for Gold + £1 a month for three years.
Since they happily offer that three year deal it's a pretty safe bet that they don't expect to make any money in that time period and that runs well into 2023 from launch of the Series consoles and is still available now.
I presume Microsoft are expecting that a sizeable portion of the people who are signed up are not going to want to lose access to all the first party games ( of which there will be a magnitude more of come 2023/4) when their deal expires and will re sub at a higher price.
Once those first party games are permanently in the service they can be more selective about what third party games they need to supplement the offering.
People pretending that they've found out a big unknown black hole of money because of an offer that Microsoft knowingly make to grow the subscriber base are sadly deluded.
Nobody at Microsoft is going to wake up tomorrow and suddenly realise that they have spent a lot of money on Gamepass and that they have offered it for Gold + £1 a month for three years.
Since they happily offer that three year deal it's a pretty safe bet that they don't expect to make any money in that time period and that runs well into 2023 from launch of the Series consoles and is still available now.
I presume Microsoft are expecting that a sizeable portion of the people who are signed up are not going to want to lose access to all the first party games ( of which there will be a magnitude more of come 2023/4) when their deal expires and will re sub at a higher price.
Once those first party games are permanently in the service they can be more selective about what third party games they need to supplement the offering.
Captain Toad
Banned
Which will likely lead some publishers either getting a great GamePass deal or not bothering putting their game on Xbox at all, as it just won't sell
THE DUCK
voted poster of the decade by bots
Two things here: In response to Danjin44, as far as it goes for me, the idea of a bad habit being if it's not on gamepass is actually the opposite. I'm not only trying some fantastic games I would have never touched, it's also leaving me with more funds to try games that aren't on gamepass. So I wouldn't be so quick to say this.
In response to Toad: There hasn't been any indication of this, I haven't heard of any developers saying they are scared to put a game on xbox due to gamepass. MS's own findings have seen that generally, the more gamepass users there are, the active game player/buyers there are on the store. So this is more likely to help them then hurt them.
Umbasaborne
Banned
Oh thank god, more ammo for me to use in the console wars
Captain Toad
Banned
Nor would they likely ever come out and say that - true or not.
THE DUCK
voted poster of the decade by bots
I think they have already spoken with their actions.....they are still making xbox games. And yes of course some would say so, it's not like there's an NDA on abandoning console development for one platform. Even if they didn't want to "officially complain" there would be conspicuous missing games and all kinds of leaks.
You sound like your just trying to make up reasons to disparage gamepass at this point for reasons that don't even exist.
Great Hair
Banned
kind of relevant ...
DarkMage619
$MSFT
Developers also had no problems talking about some of the challenges they had with the XSS when they weren't using all of the consoles features and how much they loved early development on the PS5. If developers thought Game pass was hurting their business they would speak out. The one thing the many detractors can't say about Game pass is that it is bad for gamers. They have to make a 'Game pass is bad for MS's bottom line' argument which again is weird if you aren't a stock holder.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
That attempt was a big mistake but we can't definitively draw a link between that and GamePass without, y'know, evidence?
People have always been worried about the "shape of tomorrow's gaming industry", though. They were worried about it when Sony came in with the PS1. They worried about it when the 3DO came out. They worried about it when Atari exited the hardware business. They worried about it again when Sega bowed out from making consoles, and Xbox came into the picture. Some even worried about it when the Wii became a runaway success. They worried about it when DLC became a mainstay, and then microtransactions. And they worried about it again with lootboxes.
People are never going to not worry about where gaming goes into the future, but 9/10 times it's always managed to land on its feet, usually for the better. So what makes an (alternative, supplemental) subscription service suddenly so scary for folks to think it'll be the damning end of gaming if the model works out?
Well Sony just pulled a bait-and-switch raising game prices to $70 and they're still selling as well as ever. We've also seen multiple subscription services increase in price over the years and still retain users (or even grow their active user base).
The problem with the XBL Gold price hike (which is what I think is the basis for this argument here) is that it was a blatant MASSIVE price hike all at once, and made Microsoft look both incredibly greedy and insensitive towards the financials of many people at the time. I've not seen any sub service do a 100% price increase in the blink of an eye, or try to, and it was an obvious mistake they (Microsoft) should've seen well before making the announcement public.
If you're going to do price increases and still want to retain users, make them very small and gradual over a period of time, and always make sure you're adding features to your offerings to justify the increases (or add things you can market as such). One of the reasons the $10 price increase hasn't completely wrecked Sony a new asshole is because they've kind of framed the increase with some perceived increase in quality, accounting for labor in providing that increase, and hiding behind the generally-accepted idea that game budgets keep increasing every new gen.
That, combined with the general goodwill they have from their fanbase (and gamer as a whole) thanks to their 1P output, is why they've managed to mostly get away with what some would argue is a "meager" $10 increase. Nintendo is similar; they haven't raised their price but if they wanted to they'd pretty much get away with it because the goodwill from their fanbase & gamers WRT 1P output is even stronger than Sony's and they have a ton of nostalgia on their side as well. Microsoft doesn't enjoy either those levels of goodwill with their 1P output among gamers as a whole (maybe moreso with their fanbase but that is a smaller fanbase to begin with), though they've been making some great moves to start turning that around as a whole, and they definitely don't have the nostalgia factor of Nintendo or even Sony (even if Sony does nothing with most of their legacy IP).
That's why Microsoft would need to tread more carefully with price increases to GamePass, and I think they will happen, but they need to time them around when the big 1P content starts coming and does well (critically, at least) on a consistent basis. If the quality is consistently there and the budget is clearly on display for the bigger releases, the vast majority of gamers would be okay with a GamePass price increase (IMO it should probably be done as adding a new tier or two and restructuring some of the available features and/or games among the tiers).
No, you weren't clear at all there, you mentioned it like it was all Sony's doing for those 1.6 billion game unit sales. If that wasn't the case tho I apologize.
We still don't have enough evidence that proves GamePass "hurts" game sales so I don't know why that is your automatic assumption. That said, nothing is stopping Sony from using a GamePass-like service for AA mid-tier or indie titles that may not work for retail or sell a ton digitally, but could work very well in a service adding easily-accessible and well-priced variety.
David Jaffe even talked about it before, why can't Sony have a GamePass-like service for the Midevals, Jumping Flashes, Parappas, Tomba etc. style games? And even in those cases, if they applied a small discount for purchases of those games similar to how MS does it, that would potentially help increase game sales, not lower them.
However, that would work best with a rotating platter of content, I suppose.
While no dev's outright said it, there's been words suggesting as such from the Outriders devs, and Take-Two reps. Although their statements weren't even specifically towards GamePass or specifying GamePass as a reason for not wanting to put certain titles on Xbox platform, they're aware of a narrative war going on among different sides WRT GamePass and don't mind having their statements feed right into it. They know better.
But that does have me wondering if there is some actual truth in cases where Microsoft aren't getting certain big 3P timed exclusives on Xbox because they want to have them tied to Day 1 GamePass and publishers by and large are still weary about that because they're used to a different business model. I do keep asking myself, why hasn't there been a major Day 1 3P GamePass title since Outriders and MLB The Show '21, both of those being 4-5 months ago? I thought those would be the start of a trend there, but semes not really.
Yeah they are getting Back 4 Blood which might count (tho in terms of calibur seems closer to an Outriders deal) and a ("mobile") version of Football Manager which is a massive franchise on PC, just not a big name to most console gamers I would imagine. I kind of blame the insiders for forcing this realization onto me, as well. Some of those guys were running rampant "Oh, Battlefield 2042 Day 1 in GamePass!", or suggesting Diablo 2 would be there Day 1, same with Scarlet Nexus, etc. But that's just highlighting how many big 3P AAA games have come out this year that won't be there Day 1, and some which I feel should've most likely been timed exclusives to Xbox, but perhaps Microsoft insisted too strongly about GamePass and that may've made some publishers to not go with a deal.
It's purely all speculation, and no one can prove this (for now), but I don't think it's something to completely shut down the possibility of being the case, either. Because if it turns out that's been happening, and it gets Microsoft to start negotiating more timed 3P exclusivity deals that don't stipulate Day 1 in GamePass, then that actually ends up benefiting both Xbox AND GamePass, even. Because while that game itself may not be in GamePass, the service is still there, and a person new to the ecosystem thanks to that game may be inclined to sub to GamePass anyway to play the games that are there, in addition to the one that got them to the platform but is not in GamePass.
That's my only big worry with Microsoft, still: that they're pushing GamePass almost to the potential detriment of Xbox as a brand, because IMO they are still two different brands and GamePass is the dependent brand. It's still being mainly driven by Xbox and Xbox users chiefly, so don't go trying to make deals that force GamePass where third parties arent' comfortable or that could end up hurting Xbox which also hurts GamePass. I think them leveraging GamePass for the smaller indie titles is great and that generally works, but for the bigger AAA 3P content, if they want to have a chance against Sony in that area WRT timed exclusives (and yes, they need to do that still to be competitive), they might have to leave GamePass out of those negotiations (if it's a part of them currently) and just have their own 1P AAA games fill that role.
Then over time, when 3P devs/pubs see how Microsoft's own 1P AAA perform both in the service and in sales, if they like what they see they will want to have their games Day 1 in the service as well. But I don't think most 3P publishers are going to seriously start wanting that until probably 2023 or early 2024, and there's always still the factor that Sony could seriously revamp their services around that point and start pushing them in a major way, using a similar type of leverage. But that's all going to depend on where they see GamePass performance-wise over the next couple or so years.
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Sorcerer
Member
With Sony its a little different because Sony fans invested heavily into the system at that point. It's not easy to walk away from that. But MS set themselves for users to walk away from Gamepass. I mean gamers must realize it's subscription service, the games can leave the service anytime. You own nothing if you cancel. With that in mind, by Microsoft practically giving it all away no one should really feel obligated to stay if Microsoft turns around with some draconian pricing system in the future. Yes, I agree price increase must be dealt out slowly and with each price increase some value needs to be added. But they practically gave you the whole shebang for such an insane low price (okay, no one should pay for multiplayer, that's a given, they should knock five bucks off ultimate for that alone, but that is console logic). So it will be interesting to see how MS approaches this in the future. If through acquiring more great 3rd party developers and strong first party making MS the place to be. But that's at lest a console gen away or two if that happens at all.
Well Sony just pulled a bait-and-switch raising game prices to $70 and they're still selling as well as ever. We've also seen multiple subscription services increase in price over the years and still retain users (or even grow their active user base).
Outrunner
Member
That would require Microsoft to be transparent with their numbers, something they aren't. So we can only speculate.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
I agree with perhaps Microsoft being too brazen out of the gate with thier GamePass model. IMO they should've gone with tiers; the regular version for legacy content, the Ultimate version for legacy stuff & Gold bundled in, and keep new releases on a VOD-like rental model on a per-game bases, possibly as a contract subscription where you could pay off the MSRP cost of game on a monthly basis, but the per-game subscription would also get you access to any extra content (DLC, etc.) released during that subscription period.
I think that type of additional subscription model would be very beneficial for AAA games and give users flexibility, and since it would contract-based it would essentially count as a full sale, just broken up over months instead of all on Day 1. Sadly I don't think Microsoft can retroactively make this type of adjustment to their GamePass model without doing some serious revamping of the other tiers, or possibly alienating current users.
HOWEVER, I do think it's a solution Sony could take to do Day-and-Date releases in a GamePass-like service of their own, that still works for the type of games they make. Contract-based, VOD-style model with native digital downloadable versions, on a per-game basis for new releases. Meanwhile they can have a more GamePass-like model for a rotating selection of legacy content (probably with 1-year staggers for certain titles like sports games, and a 2-year stagger for other types of AAA games).
True; I hope they start providing numbers for at least some metrics in the near future again. I would like to think they at least provide numbers in confidence to third-party developers and publishers, or at least some of them.
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
I don't believe MS will ever be totally transparent with their numbers.
I do think even if Sony never does anything to match Gamepass both models can be successful
I have seen a lot of people saying Gamepass is some ticking timebomb going to cause a catastrophic crash of gaming which I find hilarious
I personally love the big budget single player experiences that Sony puts out and I will keep buying them.
I also love the Halo MP and MP aspect of Forza Horizon and getting that via Gamepass.
Its all win for me baby as I dont pledge my undying allegiance to one color of box
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
I generally agree with this; however I'm just wondering if the GamePass model as-is will be able to get them more major 3P Day-and-Date releases. Maybe over time Microsoft's goal is to de-emphasize that part of the strategy and have their 1P games assume that role, but it also means they'll have to diversify their 1P content even more.
Seems like Microsoft's main path to going differently from Sony is in focusing on 1st-person content, which is interesting and possible, but I still think they need more story-driven, character-driven narrative AAA games even within that space, which it seems like they'll be doing with titles like Perfect Dark, or inXile's Steampunk RPG (Project Cobalt).
One thing I do want to see from Microsoft more of though, is more marketing for marquee releases even if they're in GamePass Day 1. It feels like they advertise GamePass too much and the actual games, not enough. Psychonauts 2 is a perfect example; it should've done way better on the charts than it did, but there was literally NO advertising budget. It would've gone a long way; that's a game begging for a commercial directed by Tim Burton starring Johnny Depp or something.