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.
Thats the point.Valve aren't publicly listed, try again.
Thats the point.
Releasing information publicly has nothing to do with how well a company is ran and everything to do with what information you want or need to supply.
You have to allocate the expense in some logical manner. For example if your total game revenue is X and your revenue from GamePass is Y, then you allocate the total dev costs to game pass for each game as Y/(X+Y). So that way you can see how much revenue your game generates and how it compares to the cost.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.
Answer: So they can fudge the numbers and use them in marketing stuff and for "evangalizers".
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.
It sounds like the shareholders are figuring it out now…But wouldn't the shareholders figure this out someday? What's the plan after that?
There's a reason he's still my Avatar, even though I had to do it by losing a GAF bet LOL!
They don't throw it out, but its buried in other rollups. That's why its reported under a whole segment.This isn't even creative accounting, it's borderline-fraudulent accounting.. Just fucking throwing out basic costs from the calculations wtf? Should the Azure team start excluding cost of electricity next?
Just fucking lmao at the ineptitude of the Xbox team, how the fuck do you exclude first party sales cannibalization from this calculation then decide "well actually we need more first party asap"?
yeah their dream was "a race to the bottom" with sony and nintendo with this unsustainable shit, where they can outspend themThey'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.
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 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.
Oh damn... as a consumer, I must deeply analyze every subscription I enter to think about how it will affect the mega-corp's profits. I don't want to hurt them so maybe I'll unsub to save them.
Look man, the medium will look one way or another depending on how you spend your money.Oh damn... as a consumer, I must deeply analyze every subscription I enter to think about how it will affect the mega-corp's profits. I don't want to hurt them so maybe I'll unsub to save them.
This isn't even creative accounting, it's borderline-fraudulent accounting.. Just fucking throwing out basic costs from the calculations wtf? Should the Azure team start excluding cost of electricity next?
Just fucking lmao at the ineptitude of the Xbox team, how the fuck do you exclude first party sales cannibalization from this calculation then decide "well actually we need more first party asap"?
And once again we say, Gamepass was never about being profitable. It was always about getting people hooked on Microsoft ecosystem, but people will tell otherwise.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.
I will clarify.
It is not, never was and never will be profitable.
it's also shit, it stinks and it ruins the whole industry.
And sony are idiots for following this
It's impossible to calculate how many lost retail sales they would have because gamepass, not every download would be a legitimate sale. But as a division you should calculate the cost of labor in profitability.
Unless you hide it
I will clarify.
It is not, never was and never will be profitable.
it's also shit, it stinks and it ruins the whole industry.
And sony are idiots for following this
How can they NOT include First Party game cost when factoring in if GamePass is profitable or not?
Bobby Kotick did an interview after the acquisition where he literally said subscription services destroy value.I think Sony, Take Two, and Activision all said they have run the calculations and deemed it not worth it. They said so in the FTC or EU Court Trials.
But Sony didn't follow GamePass.
No
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Sony Reaffirms That PlayStation Plus Is Not Going the Game Pass Route
A PlayStation executive has confirmed that first-party PS5 games will not be joining PS Plus on day one anytime soon.beebom.com
potato poteytoI think Sony, Take Two, and Activision all said they have run the calculations and deemed it not worth it. They said so in the FTC or EU Court Trials.
But Sony didn't follow GamePass.
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"
I think Sony, Take Two, and Activision all said they have run the calculations and deemed it not worth it. They said so in the FTC or EU Court Trials.
I know. And it was on purpose.If you supported gamepass, you contributed to XBOX's downfall. Whether intentional or not, that is the harsh truth.
Bobby Kotick did an interview after the acquisition where he literally said subscription services destroy value.
Of course he is right. It's true in movies and tv it's true in music it's true in vidya. He knows that MS will never make ABK more valuable than what he sold it for and that's why he did it.
While speaking at the hearing, Kotick said that Activision currently isn't interested in "multi-game subscription services" like Xbox Game Pass. "I have a general aversion to the idea of multi-game subscription services," said Kotick. "Maybe part of it is being in Los Angeles and having large, big media companies move their content to these subscription streaming services and the business results have suffered
He went on to say that he has no plans to put Call of Duty — Activision's largest and most lucrative franchise and one of the biggest games in the world — on these services. Kotick also noted that while his company has "experimented with a few streaming services," he doesn't plan to make other titles available on them moving forward.
"I don't agree with the idea of a multi-game subscription service as a business proposition going forwards, but we [Activision and Microsoft] can agree to disagree," said Kotick in response to a question from Judge Corley about why he agreed to the merger if he didn't believe services like Game Pass made "commercial sense."
I know. And it was on purpose.
Right now, my last 3 years GPU top up cost me 75€ instead of the 649€ I would have to fork if I pay full price. The previous 3 years top up was even cheaper.
Also, my Series X bought NEW from factory directly from MS Store January 2021 with cheap MS Store cards cost me 390€ instead of the 500€ it would have cost me then, so if the number thrown around is true, I fooked them out of a 310€ subsidy instead of the usual 200€.
And while I love very much my Series X and GPU years, yep, I took the best deal in gaming ever being fully aware I was kicking them out of a serious amount of money, which made it the sweeter.
Any corporation desperate enough to bribe me to like them deserves that I take the bribe and then fuck them and never love them haha. Poetic justice and all that![]()
I don't think it's "hidden" per say. First party development costs are probably allocated either studio wise or under some other segmentation in their internal management accounts. They maybe not under counted under gamepass segment, but rest assured the costs are counted somewhere when totting up total gaming profit & loss, or total Xbox profit & loss.It's impossible to calculate how many lost retail sales they would have because gamepass, not every download would be a legitimate sale. But as a division you should calculate the cost of labor in profitability.
Unless you hide it
Because Phil Spencer is a used car salesman who somehow bilked +100bn out of Satya Nadella.lol I hate Microsoft so much. How the fuck do you not include first party costs here.
No rational company would establish and continually bankroll a service without actually factoring in all the costs and figuring out if it has a chance at profitability. So the conclusion here has to be that MS are aiming for something other than profitability here: Driving competitors out of the marketplace.They don't include the cost of first party when considering gamepass numbers?
They don't throw it out, but its buried in other rollups. That's why its reported under a whole segment.