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[GI.biz] Black Ops 6 is make-or-break for the Game Pass strategy
They barely mention it because the economics of gamepass can only work if they went whole hog and collapsed Sony from the market while putting lots of developers out of business. It didn’t pan out, thank god. The idea was always that people would flock to Gamepass in droves faster than the reality of what was being offered, but even then their core brand output was so weak that they could only entice existing customers for the most part.
The very nature of that acquisition brought the financial contradiction to a head, so they can’t cost themselves hundreds of billions more to achieve their disruptive goals. And the legal fight was far harder than they ever anticipated, making other moves questionable.
So they’re stuck ‘figuring things out’. That means doing their best to meet financial targets from on high instead of leveraging the massive war chest to ‘spend Sony out of business’. What that does to them, and what directives come from that are out of their hands.
This was all Phil Spencer’s brain child, but he’s a short sighted idiot so, you know.
The very nature of that acquisition brought the financial contradiction to a head, so they can’t cost themselves hundreds of billions more to achieve their disruptive goals. And the legal fight was far harder than they ever anticipated, making other moves questionable.
So they’re stuck ‘figuring things out’. That means doing their best to meet financial targets from on high instead of leveraging the massive war chest to ‘spend Sony out of business’. What that does to them, and what directives come from that are out of their hands.
This was all Phil Spencer’s brain child, but he’s a short sighted idiot so, you know.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
They literally had commercials in football games.
Besides that, MS cut back their marketing teams and budgets, he even posted about that several months ago. Shills gonna shill.
One thing does not exclude the other.
You didn't do marketing, it doesn't mean you don't expect results.
By now everyone should know that COD comes out on gamepass day one without MS needing to advertise...
Bumblebeetuna
Member
Said everyone, for the last eight years.
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
sainraja
Member
The ability for people to sign up for a month to play and then cancel when it's no longer needed is just the nature of subscriptions. MS has to understand that and will likely factor that in. Things are dynamic as they are and from reading some people's comments here, COD will initially attract those with Game Pass subs who've been ignoring the series, who didn't find the game worth putting down $60-70 for but will jump in due to the sub they already have.
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I still go back and forth on this and there is probably no clear way to know. People whose main game is COD, who currently don't have Game Pass, will they pay more to play COD? Will other games on the service attract them? We will see.
BbMajor7th
Member
This forum rarely discusses it, but brand matters. PlayStation, Nintendo, Apple... all of them are just as corporate as the rest but they've all cultivated reputations and a level of brand affinity that keep their customers sticky year after year. Then you look at companies that have let their brands fall from grace, like XBOX, Disney and Ubisoft - products are the bricks and mortar of your business, but reputation is the foundation you are building on.
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HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
I guess sales don't really matter 
ChorizoPicozo
Member
I guess sales don't really matter
exactly what i was about to say.
also did Phil re-tweet?
HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
Yes he didexactly what i was about to say.
also did Phil re-tweet?
havoc00
Member
clarky
Gold Member
I guess sales don't really matter
"Did you know a new “Call of Duty” game is launching this week?
If not, Microsoft would probably pay to find out where you’ve been hiding, because the tech giant has shelled out a marketing budget comparable to any “major motion picture blockbuster that would be launching this year,” according to Tyler Bahl, the chief marketing officer at “Call of Duty” studio Activision, to get “Black Ops 6” on every consumer’s radar"
Bullshit. When Sony had marketing rights COD was everywhere. While its its not completely absent its noticeably lower. For example I'm watching Champions League football right now the night before release and not an advert to be seen at half time.
Edit: I take all that back one just came on lol. Still nothing about gamepass mind you.
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Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
When I was reading the quote, this is exactly what I was thinking.
This is the least amount of marketing I've EVER seen for COD in this last decade or so. It's always an event when COD launches every year. It's plastered everywhere - be it physical or digital media. Right now, I can't even remember the release date for BO6 off the top of my head.
Everything feels so muted this year.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
I guess sales don't really matter
Phil Spencer: "Sales don't matter."
Also, Phil Spencer when firing people and closing down studios: "I have to run a sustainable business inside the company and grow!"
clarky
Gold Member
Its out in around 5 hours. lol.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
By God, I genuinely thought it's sometime in November.
Mattyp
Gold Member
What some weird bullshit to spout, in that time frame gamepass has more than doubled to 34 million.
Do you know how many more it will reach in the next 4 years? 10s of millions of more subscribers isn’t moving the needle? What is? 100 million?
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clarky
Gold Member
Gamepass only "doubled" because they rolled gold subs into it.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
"Doubled" (34 is not double of 25 lol!) only because they merged 2 services (GP + XBLG). And did you miss the fact that:
- GP (on its own) actually lost 3.1 million subscribers in that period?
- GP also missed its internal growth goals for 3 consecutive years?
- And Satya Nadella, frustrated, decided to remove Game Pass growth from his executive bonus, because it wasn't growing?
We're almost at FY 25.
Tell me, has Game Pass hit its growth targets or missed the projections, even after merging the two services?
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Mr.Phoenix
Member
I will quote myself from when the acquisition went through lol.I will quote myself from a month or so ago
Back then, I said the true measure of this acquisition, and the ultimate fate of gamepass (pardon the pun), would be this game.
Gamepass needs constant growth to sustain the developments of their first party games. GP not growing is probably the biggest reason why they are now porting their games to playstation.
Mr.Phoenix
Member
It's the age-old chicken and the egg problem.
It would help if you had a stellar line-up of first-party "exclusive" titles to support the growth of gamepass. But you need growth in gamepass to support investment in a stellar lineup of first-party exclusive games.
If there was one thing in all of this gaming stuff that needed to be exclusive, its xbox games and gamepass. That way they can actually grow their platform and ecosystem. And if they want to push their platform agnostic agenda, then make Xbox games available on PC and even PS5, but exclusively through gamepass.
However, this approach is hard to justify after spending almost $80 Billion bolstering the platform. Hence why we have Xbox games seemingly trying to be on everything. So as it stands, they are not growing their console platform, and not growing gamepass. But even worse, because of their inability to commit to a specific strategy, they are not even becoming the big third-party publishing juggernaut their library of IPs means they could be and still doing staggered releases and PR denials to save face for God knows what reason.
Makes you wonder what the point was.
Kvally
Member
Phil has stated that Game Pass is sustainable and profitable as is. He mentioned that he doesn't ever anticipate it being greater than 10-15% of their content revenue.
XXL
Gold Member
Phil Spencer says alot of things.
If Game Pass was doing so well, they wouldn't have announced Indiana Jones coming to PS5 before even launching on the fucking service and they wouldn't have taken Day 1 games away from any of the tiers....and they did.
Maybe COD can help it grow, but if it doesn't....things are changing.
Read the room, it's pretty obvious.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
I guess sales don't really matter
A new narrative is born.
MisterXDTV
Member
Phil also said that Indiana Jones would be an Xbox exclusive and wasn't coming to PS5
He talks a lot, but nothing he says has a basis in reality
Astray
Member
Microsoft tends to focus a lot of their advertising on digital avenues (things like Twitter account activity, Youtube Ads etc), but imo, that's not nearly as effective as doing irl and live sports advertising.
I guess sales don't really matter
Sinking COD is an impossible task, but I think if anyone can, it's Microsoft.
Such a collection of strange in that management structure.
Kvally
Member
SeriousCrayon
Member
1 year of gamepass ultimate was $145 CAD for me and COD is $103 after tax if I buy it on PSN..With gamepass I have COD and all the extra games for an extra $42. Don't see the downside to gamepass at all.
DEAD ORIGINAL
Member
Cods been poor since MW 2019 the best mode is WARZONE which is free but even rebirth is stale now been playing WARHAMMER 4K breath of fresh air no hackers no chat bans it's like a game from the past.
Kvally
Member
It's a downside because it is not on PS Plus.
Kvally
Member
Warzone sucks. COD has been poor since anything after COD MW4.
ManaByte
Gold Member
But there was no mention of Game Pass on those.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
They are downplaying it because otherwise they are offering the campaign for the price of a month's subscription. And that's going to hurt, real bad. And not just because its the most expensive to make, and least replayable element, but because its pretty much the big ticket attraction in the CoD theme-park.
Devalue that, and people start looking at the rest of the components, and frankly given the aggressive upsell on overpriced season passes and cosmetics, at least some of them are going to come to the conclusion that F2P is a better deal for mostly the same experience.
Devalue that, and people start looking at the rest of the components, and frankly given the aggressive upsell on overpriced season passes and cosmetics, at least some of them are going to come to the conclusion that F2P is a better deal for mostly the same experience.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
It's almost as if sales matter even if they try and twist the narrative to select media outlets.
Kvally
Member
There were during the Packer games here in Wisconsin.
clarky
Gold Member
It doesn't?
Jigsaah
Gold Member
"Sales. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II became the fastest-selling Call of Duty game of all time. The game earned US$800 million in revenue in its first three days of release, and US$1 billion within 10 days, surpassing the series previous record-holders, 2011's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and 2012's Black Ops II." - from Wikipedia
If Black Ops 6 comes even close to this, there is no way what you're saying makes any sense. A billion dollars in 10 days? Microsoft gets 80% of sales on Playstation...wtf dude. The game costed between 250 and 300 mil to make.
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clarky
Gold Member
Yeah that makes zero sense. I get you now.
NickFire
Member
I don't think people are referring to sales revenues when talking about black ink. In my mind black ink refers to profit.
With respect to profit, my understanding is Sony's revenue will essentially be pure profit (minus any overhead related to PSN expenses associated with the game). MS blank ink will be determined based on revenue, dev costs, post-launch support costs, and acquisition of the IP cost. I know the acquisition costs leaves room for debate when discussing profit. But I do not subscribe to the belief that it is irrelevant.
ManaByte
Gold Member
I saw multiple BLOPS ads during games over the past two weekends and none of them showed any console logo or Game Pass.
Jigsaah
Gold Member
So if a game cost 300, let's say even 400 mil to make....that includes everything...marketing and development. however it makes a billion dollars within the first two weeks. That includes on xbox, playstation and pc...including gamepass subs, both current and new. You're saying that somehow, Sony makes more profit, just because they didn't have to market it or develop it....even though they only get 20% of all sales.
20% of a billion is 200 million....which would means xbox would get 800 million. And that's not even over the full course of the game's availability. The game will sell, for at least a year. Going by Modern Warfare 2's performance, we are talking about 10 days to get that billion dollars. Even then, that's 200 mil profit for Sony, 400 mil minimum for Xbox. As the game continues to sell...that trrend just continues and the gap grows larger minus post launch development and marketing costs to maintain the game.
Why are we discussing the acquisition cost when we are talking about the profitability of one game? The acquisition covers ALL THE GAMES ABK makes. That's COD, WOW, Overwatch, Candy Crush, Diablo, etc. That does not make sense.
Does frickin Candy Crush somehow supplement the profitability of COD in this discussion? I don't think it should, so why are we doing mental gymnastics to argue in the other direction?
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mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Phil himself said no one game will win them a generation. So I'm surprised they are thinking this one game will "move the needle" for GamePass.
Jigsaah
Gold Member
The way they are "marketing" BOPS6 for gamepass, I don't really think they want COD to move the needle. The game is too big for that. Devs like Larian knew best when they said no shot to gamepass because they knew what they had. This is another situation where Xbox is ok with mentioning it for those who are expecting COD to be on gamepass, but their true desire is to have as many people pay full price for the game out the gate. Xbox and PC gamepass users included.
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Kvally
Member
Must be by location.
ManaByte
Gold Member
clarky
Gold Member
Xbox channels are advertising the product most people on that channel probably already have lol. Retardation at play.
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