I remember eating downvotes for even questioning the validity of this business model on Reddit. Like even anecdotally most people I know buy 1 maybe 2 games they play a year. very few people need...
I remember eating downvotes for even questioning the validity of this business model on Reddit. Like even anecdotally most people I know buy 1 maybe 2 games they play a year.
very few people need or can even take advantage of a game subscription service.
The article is saying the opposite of what you posited. The issue isn’t that game pass isn’t a good enough product for most people, it’s that it’s too good of a deal.
The article is saying the opposite of what you posited. The issue isn’t that game pass isn’t a good enough product for most people, it’s that it’s too good of a deal.
According to an anonymous Xbox employee via Bloomberg, the company lost $300 million in console and PC sales as a direct result of placing its latest mega-shooter on the service. Why would anyone pay $70 for a game that they could pay $15 to access alongside 400 others?
I never had Game Pass. But I thought the point was you don’t put the new big games on it? It’s like movie streaming. If you want to see the movie right away you need to pay more and watch in...
I never had Game Pass. But I thought the point was you don’t put the new big games on it? It’s like movie streaming. If you want to see the movie right away you need to pay more and watch in theaters. But if you wait a few months it’ll be covered by a monthly subscription.
I could see them doing something like giving you a $15 discount in a $70 game at launch as they factor in your Game Pass fee.
That's true to an extent, but as it has gone on they've been adding more and more big titles as day one gamepass drops, and the way I play games means I'm rarely playing anything day 1 anyway, so...
That's true to an extent, but as it has gone on they've been adding more and more big titles as day one gamepass drops, and the way I play games means I'm rarely playing anything day 1 anyway, so it's really been mostly upside for me. If the price goes up much more or the start putting fewer games on it I'll probably dip, but for a while at least it's been quite nice.
Honestly, even that sort of delay does harm. A lot of people wait to buy games because of varying reasons ranging from being too busy to waiting for launch bugs to be ironed out (which feels...
Honestly, even that sort of delay does harm. A lot of people wait to buy games because of varying reasons ranging from being too busy to waiting for launch bugs to be ironed out (which feels increasingly common) to just waiting for sales. There's a whole subreddit r/patientgamers for people who wait for at least twelve months:
Whether it's price, waiting for bugs/issues to be patched, DLC to be released, don't meet the system requirements, or just haven't had the time to keep up with the latest releases.
And on that note: games are generally more expensive than movie tickets, and movie theaters are also a generally more "social" activity. There are multiple movies I've only seen because friends invited me, and wouldn't have watched on streaming. Even watching the social aspect, it's a lot easier to impulsively spend $15-$25 on a movie ticket than to drop $30-$60+ on a single-player game you won't have time to play right away.
On top of all that, there's a big difference in the experience of a movie theater versus streaming at home, but no such difference with Game Pass. So there's even LESS incentive to buy a game at full price on day one when you know you can play it in a few months.
I've honestly never understood how Game Pass was profitable and worked from an economic standpoint... And I guess that's because it really wasn't.
Those are 2 distinct issues, that quote is in reference to COD being day one on it, but they were losing money/not getting subscribers before they had even acquired Activision. I was referring...
Those are 2 distinct issues, that quote is in reference to COD being day one on it, but they were losing money/not getting subscribers before they had even acquired Activision.
I was referring more specifically to this part of the article.
Xbox projected that by 2026, Game Pass would have 77 million subscribers - it currently has 30 million. When you consider that just two years ago, Microsoft reported having 34 million Game Pass subscribers, the picture becomes even bleaker.
I’m not sure how many Xbox consoles have been sold in the last two generations, but it seems that they haven’t managed to attract more than a 30 million of their potential audience to subscribe across two generations.
Most people would opt for the one-time payment for a game over a subscription since they don’t play many games anyway.
I think the article is using some "piracy" math to count the losses. There are almost certainly real losses to specific developers, but I don't know if the game pass reduced the total customer...
I think the article is using some "piracy" math to count the losses. There are almost certainly real losses to specific developers, but I don't know if the game pass reduced the total customer spend - it's just spread out over more games.
If someone buys a game for $70, they're going to play that game, and maybe only that game. If they've paid for the game pass, they might try out many other games that would have normally also cost $70, but they'd have never purchased normally.
For example, if a user played 10 different games in a month, each of the developers might get ~$1.50. Their calculated loss here is $68.50 per player per game, but spending $700 to play all those games was never an option. If the player continues to play all of these games in the next month, the loss shrinks a little, but it's unlikely that any game is going to capture a player's attention for the 47 months it takes to hit that $70 per game benchmark.
On average, this is probably fine. People will play games they otherwise would have never looked for, and those developers will get a cut. But this model tends to pay the big hitters less than they otherwise would have earned, and prop up the smaller games. That's probably a good thing overall, but buying game studios so you can stream the games and funnel profit away from yourself to the smaller studios doesn't seem like the winning move.
This is the part that always bothered me. It always seemed too good to be true. I never partook, mostly because I was expecting to get rug pulled at any time, but I had friends who did. The games...
This is the part that always bothered me. It always seemed too good to be true. I never partook, mostly because I was expecting to get rug pulled at any time, but I had friends who did. The games I was surprised they were able to get just casually as part of the pass was crazy. They had to be heavily subsidized by greater Microsoft just to justify this. As soon as they put in the newer, higher priced games, I knew they were screwed. Getting a new title at a heavily discounted price is not economical at all for the selling company.
I honestly don't see any sensible math outside of some internal economic shell game that's happening to justify putting new releases on game pass. For Call of Duty, I would have waited and brought on a CoD game that was older onto game pass to tap on to nostalgia for those who love the series. Then you could have dangled the shiny new one over them as well, because that's where all the cool gamers are, right?
With this as the backdrop, it’s no wonder one man had an ambitious vision: what if you paid $9.99 a month for access to a whole cornucopia of games? After all, if it could work for film and television, why wouldn’t it work for video games? Back in 2017, former Xbox head Phil Spencer’s novel idea felt like it had arrived at just the right time. So how did Game Pass go from being Xbox’s innovative new spark to setting the company on fire?
The Activision-Blizzard acquisition began a series of cataclysmic financial consequences for Xbox. 2024’s Black Ops 6 is the highest-grossing game in Call of Duty’s 23-year history - but 82% of all sales came from PlayStation. While Xbox had the smaller share, Game Pass scuppered Microsoft’s chance to make a fortune in COD’s most financially successful year ever. According to an anonymous Xbox employee via Bloomberg, the company lost $300 million in console and PC sales as a direct result of placing its latest mega-shooter on the service. Why would anyone pay $70 for a game that they could pay $15 to access alongside 400 others?
I remember eating downvotes for even questioning the validity of this business model on Reddit. Like even anecdotally most people I know buy 1 maybe 2 games they play a year.
very few people need or can even take advantage of a game subscription service.
The article is saying the opposite of what you posited. The issue isn’t that game pass isn’t a good enough product for most people, it’s that it’s too good of a deal.
I never had Game Pass. But I thought the point was you don’t put the new big games on it? It’s like movie streaming. If you want to see the movie right away you need to pay more and watch in theaters. But if you wait a few months it’ll be covered by a monthly subscription.
I could see them doing something like giving you a $15 discount in a $70 game at launch as they factor in your Game Pass fee.
That's true to an extent, but as it has gone on they've been adding more and more big titles as day one gamepass drops, and the way I play games means I'm rarely playing anything day 1 anyway, so it's really been mostly upside for me. If the price goes up much more or the start putting fewer games on it I'll probably dip, but for a while at least it's been quite nice.
Honestly, even that sort of delay does harm. A lot of people wait to buy games because of varying reasons ranging from being too busy to waiting for launch bugs to be ironed out (which feels increasingly common) to just waiting for sales. There's a whole subreddit r/patientgamers for people who wait for at least twelve months:
And on that note: games are generally more expensive than movie tickets, and movie theaters are also a generally more "social" activity. There are multiple movies I've only seen because friends invited me, and wouldn't have watched on streaming. Even watching the social aspect, it's a lot easier to impulsively spend $15-$25 on a movie ticket than to drop $30-$60+ on a single-player game you won't have time to play right away.
On top of all that, there's a big difference in the experience of a movie theater versus streaming at home, but no such difference with Game Pass. So there's even LESS incentive to buy a game at full price on day one when you know you can play it in a few months.
I've honestly never understood how Game Pass was profitable and worked from an economic standpoint... And I guess that's because it really wasn't.
Those are 2 distinct issues, that quote is in reference to COD being day one on it, but they were losing money/not getting subscribers before they had even acquired Activision.
I was referring more specifically to this part of the article.
I’m not sure how many Xbox consoles have been sold in the last two generations, but it seems that they haven’t managed to attract more than a 30 million of their potential audience to subscribe across two generations.
Most people would opt for the one-time payment for a game over a subscription since they don’t play many games anyway.
I think the article is using some "piracy" math to count the losses. There are almost certainly real losses to specific developers, but I don't know if the game pass reduced the total customer spend - it's just spread out over more games.
If someone buys a game for $70, they're going to play that game, and maybe only that game. If they've paid for the game pass, they might try out many other games that would have normally also cost $70, but they'd have never purchased normally.
For example, if a user played 10 different games in a month, each of the developers might get ~$1.50. Their calculated loss here is $68.50 per player per game, but spending $700 to play all those games was never an option. If the player continues to play all of these games in the next month, the loss shrinks a little, but it's unlikely that any game is going to capture a player's attention for the 47 months it takes to hit that $70 per game benchmark.
On average, this is probably fine. People will play games they otherwise would have never looked for, and those developers will get a cut. But this model tends to pay the big hitters less than they otherwise would have earned, and prop up the smaller games. That's probably a good thing overall, but buying game studios so you can stream the games and funnel profit away from yourself to the smaller studios doesn't seem like the winning move.
This is the part that always bothered me. It always seemed too good to be true. I never partook, mostly because I was expecting to get rug pulled at any time, but I had friends who did. The games I was surprised they were able to get just casually as part of the pass was crazy. They had to be heavily subsidized by greater Microsoft just to justify this. As soon as they put in the newer, higher priced games, I knew they were screwed. Getting a new title at a heavily discounted price is not economical at all for the selling company.
I honestly don't see any sensible math outside of some internal economic shell game that's happening to justify putting new releases on game pass. For Call of Duty, I would have waited and brought on a CoD game that was older onto game pass to tap on to nostalgia for those who love the series. Then you could have dangled the shiny new one over them as well, because that's where all the cool gamers are, right?