These people sell themselves as analysts, pundits, and experts on the theme.
One of the main issues with this drama is the lack of critical thinking coming from people like this. They just repeat marketing/narrative speech.
'Consoles Sales don't matter'
Narrative: It must be true. Consoles are obsolete, and MS's ambition goes beyond these irrelevant plastic boxes.
'Viral Marketing with Game Pass, increase in sales'
Narrative: People playing on Game Pass will tell their friends to play x, y game, and more people will end up buying games.
"MS buying ABK"
Narrative: Good for gaming. AB games coming out day one on Game Pass, back catalog, dormant IP will make a return. Microsoft will fix AB, etc.
Lets remember another clown:
After reading the tweet you were responding too, I believe you were disagreeing with the idea that
"Xbox bringing more games to other platforms will get more people on Xbox", and not "Tom claiming that he thought "
"the move was smart"" generally speaking." That was my mistake. I will clarify that I also don't agree with the initial tweet that said "
making underdog games available on other platforms will bring more players on xbox". I don't think this is going to necessarily hurt their hardware business, but it absolutely won't help it
. In saying that, I would not normally classify predictions or someone's opinions as "spin".
I do agree with Tom that MS bringing more games to traditionally rival platforms, is smart move for their business. MS bringing games to as many platforms as possible is their best bet at driving more revenue and more importantly, profit. The more games they sell, the healthier the division is, naturally. Hopefully this leads to continued investment into more core games and hardware for their Xbox and Gamepass customers, which I am.
You kind of just threw a bunch of random and out of context paraphrased things at me, that maybe Tom or other people have said, in response to my question. I see those phrases used often (mostly out of context or the "quote" is incomplete) in defense of or against Xbox, so I wanted to talk about them. I personally don't agree with the way that they were framed in your post.
The first "quote" is just mischaracterizing MS evolving strategy and the subsequent coverage it receives. MS exploring avenues to reduce their dependency on consoles to generate revenue and making those avenues "central pillars" of their business model, does not equal
"consoles obsolete". It makes sense for them to try to expand as well, there console business hasn't exactly been on fire for the past decade. Also quoted was "
MS's ambition goes beyond these irrelevant plastic boxes." Which (minus the hyperbole) is 100% plain as day obviously true. MS backs this idea up, by releasing EVERY 1st party developed game on PC, supporting Gamepass on PC, and bringing xcloud to an ever-increasing number of devices. Not to mention spending 68 billion to acquire a foothold within the mobile space, as well as shepherd and support some of the largest multiplatform games on the planet. Back in 2015, I would have agreed that MS shied away from releasing sales figures to shield themselves from criticism regarding the Xb1 lagging behind in sales, but it is a completely different story today, 9 years later.
The second quote is commonly used out of context or is incomplete. I remember the original article that kicked up this debate that many misused in defense of gamepass or against gamepass. The claim was never that
all games that come to Gamepass see an increase in sales (oddly I see this claim often being incorrectly used in attack against gamepass, where it is framed as some lie MS spreads). It did state that Gamepass could increase sales of
specific games that fit in a few different scenarios. The article stated that "games in gamepass, that had an upcoming sequel, saw a 25% increase in pre-orders on average" and that a game in Gamepass "increased franchise wide sales by 10% on average". Also, multiplatform indie games with small marketing budgets could see a large lift in sales due to increased exposure, similar to how "Rocket League" blew up so quick due to its release on PS Plus.
I'm already tired of typing so I'll just say that the 3rd quote is still to early to call. I think it's reasonable for some to predict that all or most of those things mentioned will happen, and some to predict that they won't. I would not classify dissenting opinions and predictions as "spin" or inherently negative . As far as the Patcher quote, I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. Patcher has said all kinds of things throughout the years, such as "Playstation is DOOMED" "PC players are the reason for Anthems bad reception", "WarCraft's growth will stall in 2005". Again, what he does is not "spin", it's manufactured click bait.
gamepass fodder
