That's not even close to what they said.
They don't have to say it per se; we've seen actions and results from them over the past 20 years that more or less support it.
The moves they are making right now, IMO, are in an attempt to pivot their game branding and business model to fully realize a hardware-agnostic ecosystem they've been teasing since before 2020. And I think it's going to be very jarring for some of the super diehard fans out there, but ultimately will make the most sense for their goals of growth in the industry.
So you really dont understand mobile gaming then.
I suggest you do more research about how much revenue mobile makes.
Specific mobile games. Not every game is a Candy Crush, Geshin Impact, or COD mobile. And I do know that mobile devs make most of the cash through MTX, so what exactly are you getting at here?
15% of the platform is big. How can you downplay this? Especially when the said service hasnt hit its ceiling yet.
GamePass may not have hit its ceiling, but its growth has slowed on console. Phil Spencer himself has said this. It has bigger growth on PC, but GamePass on PC was never that popular anyway and doesn't generate the type of revenue it did on console. The only way it can grow on mobile is with xCloud and since they are launching an xClould-specific app for mobile you can't necessarily say that is GamePass in and of itself.
I'm not downplaying GamePass. I'm just noting that the ceiling probably isn't some 100 million subscriber dream that most hardcore fans want to think, or even the 75 million sub count some of us more reasonable types had been fair enough to speculate in the past. And none of that even addresses revenue, or what the ARPU ends up looking like, because that is at the end more important that total number of subscribers (Sony's revenue growth with PS+ even with the 1.9 million subscriber drop-off, thanks to PS+ Extra and Premium/Deluxe, is proof of this).
Xbox is the heart of those purchases. Instead of being console only, its now a unifying family, under 1 account. Xbox is at the center of that order. Without it, none of these would matter.
Maybe for now, and maybe for the optics of what that signals to their core fanbase. But I think in MS's pursuit of a truly hardware-agnostic, unified gaming business model, the legacy of Xbox will be leveraged more for the backend things, i.e gaming clients to Azure, while the frontend (to customers) it will transform into their version of a Steam Machine or Steam Deck, in how the platform is designed, hardware config options, general OS functionality support and more.
And I also feel that MS will sooner rather than later bring all 1P games to PlayStation and Nintendo devices natively (assuming the devices can run those games), as well as Xbox and PC (and some mobile, like say Pentiment type of games) Day 1. So Xbox will just be a consolized PC type of option to play those games on. I genuinely feel that is the direction they will end up taking the brand by the end of the generation, Satya Nadella's recent statements kind of show hints of this (not so much in him saying that specifically about Xbox, but focusing on Xbox as a means of connecting cloud-based development services to game developers, via Azure. Which IMO belies their main intentions with Xbox as a brand amongst the rest of the company's operations, longer-term).
Just because its too late, doesnt mean you cant invest in.
I agree, but different customers are going to feel differently about that. Ultimately, Microsoft needs enough customers who see it like you or I, versus customers who see it some other way where they just don't consider Microsoft as a purchase option when it comes to buying a games console.
So you have no idea then. Got it.
Lol
And that is a huge success. This is the growth of the service so far.
I'm aware of this, the source is correct, but I'll tell you why I mentioned GamePass sub growth. It's because I have a bone to pick with Microsoft not investing into literally any VR solution on Xbox, even going as far as to call it niche, yet devices like Oculus Quest sold 10 million units in a single year.
In other words, a "super niche" VR device like Oculus sold more units in one year, than a supposedly non-niche streaming service like GamePass gained in subscribers during the same one-year period. So it was a bit puzzling to see all this push and investment into GamePass for them, while simultaneously talking down VR, when the real reason they were doing that was because they had no VR device of their own (despite promising VR with the One X).
We've even gotten recent news of them opening up VR for...everything but Xbox consoles. When they could simply whitelist an existing VR headset, or co-develop a headset with another company usable on Xbox & PC, and resolve that problem. But they don't care, and that's the issue.
The service wont slow down, until the console reachs a certain number. PC exist too, which increases the userbase. It would hit a market cap. But that depends on how far is MS is pushing.
The service is already slowing down on console, did you miss Phil's own statement on this? And we know XBO consoles are at some 50 million units, Series consoles are (very likely) around 14.5 million (sold-through) right now, maybe 15 million sold-through by this point or nearing that. And yet it's seemingly already slowing down in growth on the console? Again this is Phil Spencer's own words, or would you say he is lying or not knowing of the operations within the division he himself oversees operations in?
Yes they have PC GamePass, but the split of that 25 million absolutely does not favor the PC platform, so even if they saw say a 100% increase YoY for the service on PC, if that's going from 4 million subs to 8 million, that isn't very much compared to the numbers on console (which are closing). And who's to say the ceiling for growth on PC is higher than that on console? Who's to say the ARPU for PC GamePass is similar to that on console?
I will say though, personally, PC GamePass is definitely the better value between it and the Xbox version. So if I were to sub to any version, it'd easily be the PC one.
2022 e3 showed the road map for 1 year gamepass release. That is console investment in action.
2022 was dry for 1st party games, and I wont pretend it doesnt exist though.
There wasn't an E3 this year; the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase is not a replacement for E3.
Beyond that, MS did the exact same in 2020,
and 2021, that you're saying they did this year. With a lot of the same games shown in the previous years, at that!
Same thing for xbox one. Suffered massively from lack of 1st party, and 3rd party exclusives like x360. Not to mention the infamous e3 TV.
All you need to look is their studios chart. You can make your mind after that.
I know what the studio chart looks like, but that's all it is: a chart. A list of names. People play games that actually release, not JPEG image list wars.