Chris Dring - I asked[Xbox] for clarification on the "Game Pass is profitable" claim, and was told no first party costs are included.

James Franco GIF
 
So basically what some of us have been saying since 2022: Game Pass isn't profitable.

Never mind they admitted this in court to the FTC when they said it cannibalized game sales.

But, let the denialists and shills find a way to spin this. They always manage to.
 
these grifters, am i right?

it's pretty damn obvious the Xbox is following this "Viral Marketing". and I bet they are tying figure out how they message the price increase (including it's timing)

a) are they going to announced it in the next 3 weeks, or b) are they going to wait until this negatively PR dies down?

With a, this negative momentum will exacerbate the "cancell game pass" movements and with b the endless cycle of negativity around this brand will contiene anyway.

In both cases, Game Pass will see "negative growth."... Bro, Phil, the futuristic economist and statistician ar Xbox must be panicking at this prospect
 
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Correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't Netflix only profitable after more than 10 freaking years? And this is because Netflix was a hit.
Why would this crap would be?
 
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mckmas8808 said:
If this is so obvious, why do many in the gaming media (not Chris Dring of course) refuse to acknowledge this obvious truth?
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Because that's the quality of games media we have these days. Colin over at LSM was one of the few who has been saying there's no way it's profitable and correctly predicted they were doing some fancy accounting (like Chris just revealed) in order to make statements like the ones Phil says true.
 
Considering the games release on PS5 and PC outside of gamepass it wouldn't make sense to include it all.

Activision as a whole were bringing in $7.5 billion and $1.5 billion in profit. So $6 billion in costs - so they would be in the red just from that.

How much they include of that budget - they could make gamepass profitable or making a huge loss just on that.
 
I guess subscriptions are too juicy for shareholders these days because giving games day 1 on the service never sounded like a good idea financially (for MS).

It's a great service but so far it has shown to be only a complementary thing, the day 1 approach is something I've always thought as unsustainable but still play some games day 1 because it's not my fault to take advantage of MS when they're the one offering lol, I mean, they're the ones offering and the only ones that have the right to say if it's convenient for them to stay this way, they think of long term users retention rather than per game profitability (which is why it's so dumb to judge MS games based on steam charts)
 
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Saber said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't Netflix only profitable after more than 10 freaking years? And this is because Netflix was a hit.
Why would this crap would be?
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Yep, it took Netflix until 2022 to go cash flow positive:

www.cnbc.com

Netflix will consider buybacks as it returns to positive cash flow after 2021

Netflix said it will end a decade-long cash-burning narrative that worried skeptics but didn't faze Wall Street.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com

Which coincided with them hitting over 200 million subscribers at an ARPU of just shy of $12:

Screenshot-20250707-204834.jpg


But Netflix are actually transparent and always have been, they are a well run business so have never had a reason to hide anything.
 
mayham2199 said:
Because that's the quality of games media we have these days. Colin over at LSM was one of the few who has been saying there's no way it's profitable and correctly predicted they were doing some fancy accounting (like Chris just revealed) in order to make statements like the ones Phil says true.
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How would you account for it though? No-one thinks that gamepass is covering the entire cost of all the games they make, especially with CoD in the mix where each release has to cost at least a billion probably more to develop and keep supported.

Plus do they count add-on content bought for games on gamepass as revenue for gamepass or separate.

The whole thing is way too complicated to have a definitive answer unless they are losing billions of dollars.
 
Does that mean sony approach to gaming smarter. As they have sony film studios , anime and gaming they can add to one package? And this rumored WB buyout with its rights and ips which could be considered a smart move
 
I hate it so much how extremely super right we were about this and all of those suits and manager people that were wrong at Xbox actually got paid very well to be stupid and wrong.
 
Jeez if this is true, with the Perfect Dark fake gameplay, and all the shenanigans to trick ppl into using Edge over chrome, and all the shenanigans to trick ppl into using Bing, etc, etc... I feel like MS mission statement is "Mislead, Profit"
 
GHG said:
But Netflix are actually transparent and always have been, they are a well run business so have never had a reason to hide anything.
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A well run business only releases as much information as they need to to keep shareholders happy. Netflix can't withhold subscriber information etc, because that is all they have. MS can just release whatever is as positive as possible for xbox because shareholders dont really give a shit about it.
Is Valve a poorly run business? They seem to be doing pretty good, but we dont know their financial state because they dont have shareholders to keep happy.
 
poppabk said:
A well run business only releases as much information as they need to to keep shareholders happy. Netflix can't withhold subscriber information etc, because that is all they have. MS can just release whatever is as positive as possible for xbox because shareholders dont really give a shit about it.
Is Valve a poorly run business? They seem to be doing pretty good, but we dont know their financial state because they dont have shareholders to keep happy.
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Valve aren't publicly listed, try again.
 
They've tried to outspend their competitors and poison the market using their infinite money, which is the same strategy Amazon routinely did to destroy competition in serveral markets.

Something didn't work out really well.
 
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