It launched at $15/mo in 2019, raised to $20/mo in 2024, then tried to go all the way to $30/mo in 2025, which caused many people (including me) to decide it was a bridge too far. I guess this is...
It launched at $15/mo in 2019, raised to $20/mo in 2024, then tried to go all the way to $30/mo in 2025, which caused many people (including me) to decide it was a bridge too far. I guess this is an attempt to regain customers they lost with the 2025 price hike.
No, it works perfectly well with unlimited supply. It just means that the price - the point of maximum profitability - is almost entirely described by demand, since the unit cost of the product is...
No, it works perfectly well with unlimited supply. It just means that the price - the point of maximum profitability - is almost entirely described by demand, since the unit cost of the product is negligible.
All you have to do to is look at the price of crude oil over time to completely debunk any notions that supply and demand have any sort of predictive power of price, or vice-versa. A great read ...
All you have to do to is look at the price of crude oil over time to completely debunk any notions that supply and demand have any sort of predictive power of price, or vice-versa.
The hypothetical nature of the curves is important. When students see the curves in a black and red on the pages of a textbook, the visual impression is given that these are something real. If an acolyte spends long enough praying in front of an image of the Blessed Virgin, it is hard for them to escape the impression that that particular hypothetical figure represents something real. Similarly, an apprentice economist, staring at Samuelson’s drawings come to structure her or his thoughts around these images and starts to believe that these two, represent something real.
...
With the economists, the reverse is the case. They have nothing to compare with Hipparchus when it comes to prediction, and their value theory is designed, from the outset, to shield itself from any possible empirical observation. If you have more free variables than observables you have a theory that is in principle impossible to refute.
Oil isn’t necessarily a great example because the textbook economic cartel is OPEC:
Oil isn’t necessarily a great example because the textbook economic cartel is OPEC:
Cartels can be organized on an international basis; examples of international cartels include the OPEC cartel to collude on oil production and the International Rubber Regulation Agreement to collude on rubber production. They can also exist at a national level; examples of American cartels include the United States Gunpowder Trade Association (which was dissolved by U.S. courts in 1912) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association which restricts the kind of compensation that collegiate athletes can receive.
The price of crude oil is very correlative to supply and demand? It's probably one of the most liquid, and most reactive commodity markets. Like, that's why OPEC can do anything, is because they...
The price of crude oil is very correlative to supply and demand? It's probably one of the most liquid, and most reactive commodity markets. Like, that's why OPEC can do anything, is because they can cut the supply of oil and see an almost instantaneous change in the price of crude oil in futures markets.
If production of oil cuts by 1 million barrels, how much will the price increase? If production doubles, how much will it decrease? If the price doubled, why? These are questions that are...
If production of oil cuts by 1 million barrels, how much will the price increase?
If production doubles, how much will it decrease?
If the price doubled, why?
These are questions that are completely unanswerable from that traditional supply/demand teachings because supply and demand are essentially random variables. The theory of supply and demand as taught is thus more of a religion. As unfalsifyable as the existence of reincarnation.
If you chart the price of oil over time, you have 0 information about the supply or the demand.
That's what I meant about not being predictive.
Microsoft had genuinely 0 idea how much increasing cost would reduce their sales. The have 0 idea how much cutting will increase their sales. These decisions are being made by drawing arbitrary lines through arbitrary random data points.
You can literally see it be predictive right now. The price of crude oil before the Strait of Hormuz was closed was ~$66/barrel. The Strait of Hormuz controls 36% of the world's crude oil supply....
You can literally see it be predictive right now. The price of crude oil before the Strait of Hormuz was closed was ~$66/barrel. The Strait of Hormuz controls 36% of the world's crude oil supply.
So you'd expect the price, given the linear supply cut, to be 36% higher. Since 36% of the world's supply was cut off. 36% high of 66 is $89/barrel.
And guess what, crude oil is at $92.95/barrel right now.
I wonder is there is more stickiness/activation energy/gravity with consumer subscriptions. Like if their raise last year was from $20 to $23, I probably wouldn’t have cancelled (probably, there...
I wonder is there is more stickiness/activation energy/gravity with consumer subscriptions. Like if their raise last year was from $20 to $23, I probably wouldn’t have cancelled (probably, there was a little bit of “so soon” especially as all the streaming services were hiking prices around the same time). But conversely, now I have cancelled, dropping it back to $23 or even all the way back to $20 aren’t appealing enough to resub.
This might be the first time I've seen a subscription come down in price. Now all they need to do is remove fortnite and lower it more, and I'd consider it again!
This might be the first time I've seen a subscription come down in price. Now all they need to do is remove fortnite and lower it more, and I'd consider it again!
They certainly have, not to mention the console itself still costs $150 more than it did when it launched six years ago. With this whopping $7/mo "savings" on gamepass you just need to sub for 2...
They certainly have, not to mention the console itself still costs $150 more than it did when it launched six years ago. With this whopping $7/mo "savings" on gamepass you just need to sub for 2 years to make up the inflated cost of your now dated console.
I'm genuinely surprised it wasn't renamed to CopilotBox 360 Pass for Gaming. But in all seriousness, MS seems committed to bleed thier enthusiast customer base. Call of Duty has lost all cultural...
I'm genuinely surprised it wasn't renamed to CopilotBox 360 Pass for Gaming.
But in all seriousness, MS seems committed to bleed thier enthusiast customer base. Call of Duty has lost all cultural relevance. Halo Infinite launched with UX limitations that prevented essential features. Bethesda... is doing Bethesda things. Studios were mismanaged and then shut down. Paying the monthly subscription is a tacit approval of whatever MS is doing and just encourages them to not change for the better.
My Opinion A price drop is appreciated, but my preferred method of using Ultimate was getting years of Xbox Live Gold and converting when it was still one to one. I don't think that I'd be going...
Beginning this year, future Call of Duty titles won’t join Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch. New Call of Duty games will be added to Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass during the following holiday season (about a year later), while existing Call of Duty titles already in the library will continue to be available.
My Opinion
A price drop is appreciated, but my preferred method of using Ultimate was getting years of Xbox Live Gold and converting when it was still one to one. I don't think that I'd be going back anytime soon, but if there's something that I would want to try, it would be good to be able to test the water for a month without paying $30.
If they wanted to do the core plan for Xbox Live online multiplayer, plus add in cloud streaming, I’d be willing to pay $10 for that. Or if they brought back the one year plans that essentially...
If they wanted to do the core plan for Xbox Live online multiplayer, plus add in cloud streaming, I’d be willing to pay $10 for that. Or if they brought back the one year plans that essentially cut like 40% of the overall cost, I would be willing to consider that as well.
Thanks but no thanks, I will own my games. Drop the price today, lock people in, then hike prices.
If the game has DRM, I will pirate it out of spite.
It launched at $15/mo in 2019, raised to $20/mo in 2024, then tried to go all the way to $30/mo in 2025, which caused many people (including me) to decide it was a bridge too far. I guess this is an attempt to regain customers they lost with the 2025 price hike.
It’s just supply and demand and price discovery. Prices will go down if demand goes down.
That theory only works if there is limited supply. A digital download has no such restriction.
No, it works perfectly well with unlimited supply. It just means that the price - the point of maximum profitability - is almost entirely described by demand, since the unit cost of the product is negligible.
Then it's just demand not supply and demand.
All you have to do to is look at the price of crude oil over time to completely debunk any notions that supply and demand have any sort of predictive power of price, or vice-versa.
A great read
...
Oil isn’t necessarily a great example because the textbook economic cartel is OPEC:
The price of crude oil is very correlative to supply and demand? It's probably one of the most liquid, and most reactive commodity markets. Like, that's why OPEC can do anything, is because they can cut the supply of oil and see an almost instantaneous change in the price of crude oil in futures markets.
If production of oil cuts by 1 million barrels, how much will the price increase?
If production doubles, how much will it decrease?
If the price doubled, why?
These are questions that are completely unanswerable from that traditional supply/demand teachings because supply and demand are essentially random variables. The theory of supply and demand as taught is thus more of a religion. As unfalsifyable as the existence of reincarnation.
If you chart the price of oil over time, you have 0 information about the supply or the demand.
That's what I meant about not being predictive.
Microsoft had genuinely 0 idea how much increasing cost would reduce their sales. The have 0 idea how much cutting will increase their sales. These decisions are being made by drawing arbitrary lines through arbitrary random data points.
You can literally see it be predictive right now. The price of crude oil before the Strait of Hormuz was closed was ~$66/barrel. The Strait of Hormuz controls 36% of the world's crude oil supply.
So you'd expect the price, given the linear supply cut, to be 36% higher. Since 36% of the world's supply was cut off. 36% high of 66 is $89/barrel.
And guess what, crude oil is at $92.95/barrel right now.
I wonder is there is more stickiness/activation energy/gravity with consumer subscriptions. Like if their raise last year was from $20 to $23, I probably wouldn’t have cancelled (probably, there was a little bit of “so soon” especially as all the streaming services were hiking prices around the same time). But conversely, now I have cancelled, dropping it back to $23 or even all the way back to $20 aren’t appealing enough to resub.
This might be the first time I've seen a subscription come down in price. Now all they need to do is remove fortnite and lower it more, and I'd consider it again!
They've already done that lol
They certainly have, not to mention the console itself still costs $150 more than it did when it launched six years ago. With this whopping $7/mo "savings" on gamepass you just need to sub for 2 years to make up the inflated cost of your now dated console.
I'm genuinely surprised it wasn't renamed to CopilotBox 360 Pass for Gaming.
But in all seriousness, MS seems committed to bleed thier enthusiast customer base. Call of Duty has lost all cultural relevance. Halo Infinite launched with UX limitations that prevented essential features. Bethesda... is doing Bethesda things. Studios were mismanaged and then shut down. Paying the monthly subscription is a tacit approval of whatever MS is doing and just encourages them to not change for the better.
My Opinion
A price drop is appreciated, but my preferred method of using Ultimate was getting years of Xbox Live Gold and converting when it was still one to one. I don't think that I'd be going back anytime soon, but if there's something that I would want to try, it would be good to be able to test the water for a month without paying $30.
If they wanted to do the core plan for Xbox Live online multiplayer, plus add in cloud streaming, I’d be willing to pay $10 for that. Or if they brought back the one year plans that essentially cut like 40% of the overall cost, I would be willing to consider that as well.