Is Game Pass Ultimate going to survive?

Is Game Pass Ultimate going to survive?

  • Total voters
    295
As everyone knew, despite Microsoft lovers denying it, Gamepass is a very difficult service to make profitable, whether you're Microsoft, Google, or God.

Everything points to hardware and subscriptions plummeting. It's only a matter of time before they end up shutting down the service. I'm glad, because this service model (Gamepass, PSX Premium, etc.) is a cancer on the industry.
 
bitbydeath said:
Seems like a stretch.
If that's to the moon, then this would be to a whole new galaxy.
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Sony's hikes are actually higher for sale/bargain hunters cause MS still allows retailers to sell a variety monthly, quarterly, and annual codes/cards that can be prorated into Ultimate at steep discounts. Plus has to be bought through Sony directly, and their rare sales are only like 25% and only apply to new subs/upgrades.
 
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There are still the Xbox/GP super fans who'll pay any price they're told.

I used to be one of them. Not so long ago, I thought GP would be the number one way people played games. I was convinced that every publisher on Earth would be begging Microsoft to release their games day 1 on GP. I thought MS could increase GP to £100 per month and people would be happy to pay it.

How wrong I was 😕
 
Sadly, it will survive. Regretfully so.

They just want to squeeze the pennies from users who can keep paying through price increases just like any other sub. It'll eventually degrade but not in the immediate future.
 
Haint said:
Sony's hikes are actually higher for sale/bargain hunters cause MS still allows retailers to sell a variety monthly, quarterly, and annual codes/cards that can be prorated into Ultimate at steep discounts. Plus has to be bought through Sony directly, and their rare sales are only like 25% and only apply to new subs/upgrades.
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This price increase of $120 per year almost matches the entire yearly cost of PS+ extra, let that sink in.
 
vaibhavpisal said:
All the people unsubscribing prematurely will be scrambling to re subscribe again when NG4, Keeper, OW2, COD will drop in just a month.
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You're tripping. At $30 I could pay for half of one of those games to flat out own it.

I'd rather just buy at discounts now. Hell GameFly is now a more viable path to games than ever lmao.

I always planned to buy NG4 for ps5, but outer worlds 2 I wanted to try on gamepass first and if I liked it I may buy it on ps5.

I primarily kept the service going for my son to play Forza horizon on my pc and Roblox.

Now I can just wait for Black Friday deal to scoop up horizon and idgaf if he has access to Roblox lol.
 
For 30 per month its cheaper to buy games and you can just buy the games you actually want, but something tells me Microsoft and all the other companies that offer subscriptions rely on customers forgetting theyre subscribed to keep on paying them. Theyll make bank from apathy.
 
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How much was it before? $20/mo?
 
It better survive, cause I have Game Pass Ultimate paid for through 2029.
 
I voted no because I assumed we are really talking about day 1 games. I can't see why they wouldn't keep renting out their back catalogues even when they finish the 3rd party transformation.

I won't be shocked if next October they change the deal again in time for COD 2026. Maybe something like no day 1, but ultimate gets 50% off day 1 games.
 
Any signs pointing that it wouldn't?

Again, if I have to repeat...it seems like this is a projection of what consumers want to happen outside of what is actually happening.
 
I have no idea. They have to have crunched the numbers and understood exactly what the fallout of this would be. I wonder what kind of drop is acceptable to them.
 
I don't think I've seen this much backlash since Xbox originally spoke about porting games to PS5.

I had ultimate in the beginning, switched to PC gamepass exclusively about 4-5 years ago. Not totally sure on the date honestly. But Xbox has been jsut hitting their users with blow after blow for the past 6 months. 2 increases in pricing, layoffs, studio closures, $1000 dollar handhelds and now this?

I think Satya is trying to kill off Xbox for good. It's the only thing that makes sense. It's not tariffs. If it were tariffs then is Sony just eating the cost? That seems uncharacteristic of them. I do think they are happy to see Xbox get dragged out onto the street and stoned to death though.
 
Dead platform»less ppl to buy gamepass»insane price hikes»even less ppl gonna buy it»pess money means less games coming to gamepass.

Microsoft is cutting their losses
 
Artistic said:
Any signs pointing that it wouldn't?

Again, if I have to repeat...it seems like this is a projection of what consumers want to happen outside of what is actually happening.
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What are you repeating? That people can project what they "want to happen" and that is not necessarily what will happen? Sure, but that can be the case whether someone wants subscription services to survive or fail. In any case, no one knows what is actually going to happen. Folks can guess though. Thus, this thread.
 
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The Ultimate tier probably won't survive at that price.

But maybe MS will allow it to bumble along with a low uptake as they should be making lots of money from sales of their first party games again?
 
analog_future said:
I think it's dead.

Mod Edit: Changed poll question to avoid confusion
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They really fucked up, I won't support this increase of price for basically nothing but years old Ubisoft's games, this is really bad, for me personally I play 2,3 games online and 90% of the rest of my library is solo games that I bought ultra cheap, like 10-15 bucks max per game, I don't care to have to wait for a big sale for solo experiences I already have a huge backlog, fuck 'em.
 
I think it will survive. They have modeled a general reaction to the news and know there will be an initial projection of cancellations. If their models were correct they will adjust and move forward. If it continues to slow down then it will come to an end.

But wither way it was a great run.
 
BigLee74 said:
But maybe MS will allow it to bumble along with a low uptake as they should be making lots of money from sales of their first party games again?
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I think it's a healthier (albeit far less ambitious) model like that, ie. just as an option which might make sense for some users rather than being the assumed default which they are trying to push everyone (and the industry) toward.

I don't care about the tiers without day one games either way, those are no real threat.

Games must remain 'developed for sale' rather than 'developed for subscription'. So long as that remains the case, idc if a subscription option exists.
 
Day 1 series x owner and only have an Xbox.
Xbox higher ups are the most stupid people on the planet
Gamepass will not survive this price hike Max 1 year and they wrap this up.
U live in lala land if u think it otherwise.
 
calico said:
I think it's a healthier (albeit far less ambitious) model like that, ie. just as an option which might make sense for some users rather than being the assumed default which they are trying to push everyone (and the industry) toward.

I don't care about the tiers without day one games either way, those are no real threat.

Games must remain 'developed for sale' rather than 'developed for subscription'. So long as that remains the case, idc if a subscription option exists.
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Agree.

To be honest, the premium tier seems fairly decent value in comparison to GPU. Most first party games I could easily wait a year for, and would still be happy to buy those that I would want immediately.

Apart from COD. Im disappointed that I will have to buy COD again, because the only comfort I took from Black Ops 6 was that I played it on GPU bought with reward points.
 
Gambit2483 said:
Respectable, and I hope you are getting at least $350 a year worth of indies a year (@$30/month)
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It's tough to say. I have about 10-15 GP titles installed at any given time, most of them indies or stuff like Persona. I'll play all of them off and on depending how I feel any given day. Probably could do the same with Premium at no additional cost once the pricing structure changes.

As for xCloud, not sure how they expect to compete with GeForce Now. Even at "best quality" it is still 1080p running on consoles in the backend. Why bother with that when you can stream the entire GP catalog on GFN with a stronger backend.
 
BigLee74 said:
Agree.

To be honest, the premium tier seems fairly decent value in comparison to GPU. Most first party games I could easily wait a year for, and would still be happy to buy those that I would want immediately.

Apart from COD. Im disappointed that I will have to buy COD again, because the only comfort I took from Black Ops 6 was that I played it on GPU bought with reward points.
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I read an article not that long ago, why are ad tiers on streaming so cheap relative to ad-free? Because they want you on the ad tier. They get more money from it by selling ads than they do by you paying to not have ads. Same thing here. They want you on the premium tier. They don't want to give out games they spent $250 million on anymore. That's why it is so cheap relative.
 
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As most* titles migrate to "non-exclusivity" Microsoft will actually make more money on selling games. They increase the cost of gamepass because their analytics tell them their focused customer group will bear the increase and they pick up all that "other console" revenue.

It is a great proposition for them since their "new" titles will sell on platforms with larger install bases and they can continue to capture sub revenue form an existing pool of older content.
 
diffusionx said:
I read an article not that long ago, why are ad tiers on streaming so cheap relative to ad-free? Because they want you on the ad tier. They get more money from it by selling ads than they do by you paying to not have ads. Same thing here. They want you on the premium tier. They don't want to give out games they spent $250 million on anymore. That's why it is so cheap relative.
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Yep.

They are definitely trying to dig themselves out of the 'day one' hole they found themselves in after the subscription numbers failed to grow.

I'm not sure these tiers were always their long term plan (are they capable of long term plans?), but they have certainly been forced into it.

I enjoyed the ride whilst it was cheap!
 
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Nah, I think it's dead. It was never sustainable anyway. They are just going to keep milking their dwindling customer base until they completely price all of them out and force them to actually buy games. The dream of subscription service model taking over gaming is dead and MS knows this. Gaming is just too expensive for MS now especially as the biggest third party publisher int he world, and GamePass just doesn't have the subscription numbers to justify the cost.
 
SEGAvangelist said:
My guess is that Phil was told to make Xbox profitable in every area or it's gone. Two console price increases in a short time followed by two Game Pass sub price increases along with the attempted $80 Outer Worlds 2 say this to me.
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The pressure to recoup that Activision purchase must be out of this world.
 
People will keep wasting money on it, but the number of people willing to do so will drop precipitously. But they won't back off, because Microsoft isn't the sort of company that admits to their own mistakes.
 
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