Gamepass was a mistake

Gonzito

Gold Member
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With all the recent bad news studio closures, layoffs, and underwhelming releases it's becoming clear to me that gamepass might be Xbox's death sentence. Subscription models work for movies and TV because content is cheaper and quicker to produce. Games are a different beast though, they take years and hundreds of millions to develop.

Microsoft's gamepass strategy doesn't seem sustainable long term. We're seeing a constant declining in quality of their releases and unless a miracle happens, this could be the beginning of the end for Xbox as we know it

Lets have a healthy debate papitos
 
Most everything these days is rich today, break the company tomorrow when you're gone. And these companies keep doing this. We live in a world where dumping money into a company and pulling it when that value goes up a week later is considered an "investment".
 
Subscription models work for movies and TV because content is cheaper and quicker to produce. Games are a different beast though, they take years and hundreds of millions to develop.

Also you can throw a big movie from 20 years ago on a streaming service and people will watch it. Nobody except an insignificant amount of nerds is gonna play a game from 20 years ago unless they are remade.
 
Modern gaming is a mistake.
Xbox has no idea what they are doing, Playstation saw players as wallets with legs to extort monthly with GAAS games and Nintendo sees gamers as wallets with legs that will buy underpowered overpriced hardware (and shoddy LCD screens) and 80-90$ games.
 
The mistake wasn't gamepass, it was:
  • No quality control for the studios they got, "just build whatever comes to mind" doesn't work for everybody
  • Going full 3rd party
  • Completely forgetting about all the "secret sauce" the series consoles had and no push for studios to use it like Sony does
  • Absolutely no vision for the future.
Microsoft had it all, but they can't pay for a working brain.
 
This isn't just becoming clear; it's been clear for years. The more titles GP gets the more expensive it is to maintain especially higher profile games. Combine that with numbers that are mostly stagnant and it's not a good recipe.

Paying less for games bad.
That's not the argument and you know it.
 
i mean duh, games not only take infinitely longer to produce, but also infinitely longer to consume too.
your avg gamer maybe plays 3 games in a year at best, why would they subscribe.
the medium is completely different than film/tv.
kinda incredible the morons was able to sell "netflix of gaming" to higher up morons in ms honestly.
 
Lets have a healthy debate papitos
ugh...fine........

On a serious note though, you're right in your assessment of gamepass. Microsoft has yet to make a compelling pitch for it. If they had one, there'd be ads for it all over the place.

Activision was clearly not the play.
 
I think it's probably the single greatest part of this whole generation.

It addresses almost every single thing wrong with current gaming trends. Consumers can jump in for less, and we're seeing price become a major barrier to young people. Consumers can help support more niche and experimental curated titles that would be overlooked at retail. Consumers get more for less. Devs get large player bases for exposure for new IP, upsell opportunities for multiplayer games like FBC and Rematch, both of which are fun and stand zero chance of survival at retail and provide a shared library for friends to actually play multiplayer games. It's entirely optional and games are not exclusive to the subs. It encourages ownership with discounts. Gamepass is the only thing that kept Xbox in the game at all from 2021 - 2023. Now their software pipeline is really flexing and it'll just fill out GP even more. It's literally outliving the hardware. It's a giant lifeline for indies, AA, and experimental games - all the best things in gaming. Devaluing games and providing price competition is just the icing on top for consumers who see nothing but constant price increases with the retail model, and soon the full death of Gamefly and physical rentals.

Only flaw I can see is that it's not on PlayStation so people will shit on it.
 
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Not only that but Tv\movies has a much larger audience same with music. Gaming has a smaller audience and even then a large part of our audience is people who play brain dead games like candy crush on their iphone they don't give a shit about some gaming sub service.

It also doesn't help that some of the biggest most played games are completely free.
 
Great service for the consumer but obviously terrible for business it should've stayed a supplementary service and not the main focus. When a service overshadow the games that's a problem.
 
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With all the recent bad news studio closures, layoffs, and underwhelming releases it's becoming clear to me that gamepass might be Xbox's death sentence. Subscription models work for movies and TV because content is cheaper and quicker to produce. Games are a different beast though, they take years and hundreds of millions to develop.

Microsoft's gamepass strategy doesn't seem sustainable long term. We're seeing a constant declining in quality of their releases and unless a miracle happens, this could be the beginning of the end for Xbox as we know it

Lets have a healthy debate papitos
So what was Sony downfall …..psn or chasing money with multi player games
 
All they had to do was just be Xbox 360 2.
I understand your point. But doing a new 360 requires huge financial commitment. And frankly, I think they're sick and tired of losing money.

They're not in a deadly race with Sony anymore. They entered the gaming industry because they were afraid Playstation would disrupt PC. That's why they were so willing to lose money.

Many things have happened since then. The situation is different now..
 
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For sustainability probably not the best, but for the consumer it has been great. I have played more games than ever with GP. It has been worth it for me.
 
Hush! 🤫 Just let me leech on it a little longer. Only have a couple more months left on the sub. Then I need a new cheap deal trick or I'll walk away.

Some suit with a calculator should've taken more math courses. I failed at all university math courses but I still know the math don't add up simply because I save several 100s of dollars each year using it.
 
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