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Xbox Game Pass subscriptions miss Microsoft’s target

xrnzaaas

Member
In my opinion MS gave away 1$ subs (or other dirt cheap ones) too many times and some people will just get used to it and wait for similar deals before deciding to renew the membership. I'm not saying they shouldn't be promoting the service with cheap subs to let people test what it offers, but I think they went in too aggressive trying to gain subs at all cost and thinking they'll stay.

And fyi I'm not a hater, I actually think they've been delivering very strong games almost every month. For me personally they don't have to be big first party games to make it a great offering.
 

MikeM

Member
Been a sub to the ultimate service for about a year now on the $1 GP conversion. While its good, it hasn’t wowed me. I’ll see how the next year goes but i’m 50/50 on keeping it after.
Sometimes I feel that money would be better spent on games I actually want, and not a library i’m 98% not interested in.
 

octiny

Banned
Hit that manly report button! You'll feel good!

I mean, to be fair. If Jim Ryan was on here, you would've reported him about 5,000 times by now.

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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
In my opinion MS gave away 1$ subs (or other dirt cheap ones) too many times and some people will just get used to it and wait for similar deals before deciding to renew the membership. I'm not saying they shouldn't be promoting the service with cheap subs to let people test what it offers, but I think they went in too aggressive trying to gain subs at all cost and thinking they'll stay.

And fyi I'm not a hater, I actually think they've been delivering very strong games almost every month. For me personally they don't have to be big first party games to make it a great offering.
Possibly.

But if that's the case why has NF got tons of subbers paying money when people could had just spammed new emails to get free months of NF?

The free month thing disappeared a years or two ago I think. Subs are still going up at full price.

If people were that cheap, the active sub count drop drop like a rock as all the people spamming free accounts cant do it anymore.
 

reksveks

Member
Doing simple maths but that's still an 2.5482:1 increase in subs over the last two years.

I stupidly want to see what if they had hit their targets so 1.71*1.48 = 2.5308:1 over two years.

As a shareholder, I suspect that 2x per 2 years is what I am expecting based off Netflix growth.


 
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Exanthus

Banned
With Halo MP being Free to play, no subs required, will it really drive up the sub numbers of GamePass ? Isn't the Multiplayer the major part of that game ? We still haven't seen the state of the singleplayer component...

FH5 would, only those who really care for the story of Halo would drive that number.
 

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
With Halo MP being Free to play, no subs required, will it really drive up the sub numbers of GamePass ? Isn't the Multiplayer the major part of that game ? We still haven't seen the state of the singleplayer component...
The thirst for Halo is real people will buy a month of GP just to play the campaign as I know some who are just waiting for Halo and FH5 just to reup a month to try them
 

Duchess

Member
Why is their so much thirst on gaf for Gamepass to fail
One or more of the following:

* They're hardcore Sony / Nintendo fans, who are jealous a service like this doesn't exist on their preferred system.

* They don't like MS and want to see MS fail at basically anything.

* They don't want these types of services to become a thing, as it could lead to publishers creating their own sub services and/or filling these things with total shovelware.
 

kyoji

Member
They also expected Halo Infinite to be out last year when they set those projections.

That one delay probably cost them a bunch of subscribers they had anticipated with that launch.
Yea… but isnt it pretty dangerous to center forecasts for a sub service around one game? Sub services are centric around a constant flow of content ‘plural’
 
37% growth is phenomenal, particularly without any major 1st party releases (the cornerstone of the Gamepass strategy) and a complete lack of consoles on shelves. Ridiculous to consider that a failure.

Is 48% higher than 37%? Yes, undeniably. But if they’d hit 48% then 58% would have been higher…

Should anyone who wants Gamepass to fail feel good about 37% growth of an already big number? Of course not :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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GHG

Gold Member
Fantastic, the game pass model is bad for gamers, third party developers and the Xbox console. It’s only good for Microsoft and its investors.

let it fail.

until now growth was sustained with incredibly discounted subscriptions

It's questionable as to whether it's good for investors. This is not a cheap endeavour. At some point the big money will turn round and tell them "show me the money".

The benefit Microsoft has over the likes of Spotify and Netflix though is the fact that the rest of the company is a behemoth so they are well equipped to absorb this type of burden. There are not many other companies that can do that and get away with it. The likes of Apple, Amazon and Google can but there are not many others.

Eventually the chickens will come home to roost for the likes of Netflix and Spotify as far as their respective stocks are concerned.
 
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Dabaus

Banned
Halo 3 and reach are probably the best halos ever made and they’re already on the service and I doubt infinite is going to be better than them. And the multiplayer is free to play, they’re probably not going to see that big an influx from halo infinite.
 

reksveks

Member
business is business and the present always takes precedence.
Might have wanted to tell that to Bezos 10-15 years ago.

Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't.

PS the point was the purchase of Bethesda was to ensure that they had a pipeline that constantly produced games. Xbox is getting two exclusives next year from Bethesda going on gamepass.
 
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Kagey K

Banned
Yea… but isnt it pretty dangerous to center forecasts for a sub service around one game? Sub services are centric around a constant flow of content ‘plural’
Last year it makes sense to put big stock in it, because it would have been a cornerstone of next gen and Gamepass.

This year it weighs a little less because they’ve had some other substantial games come day 1 and stuff like FH5 to take some of the pressure off Halo carrying the whole load.
 

GHG

Gold Member
Yea… but isnt it pretty dangerous to center forecasts for a sub service around one game? Sub services are centric around a constant flow of content ‘plural’

It's not too uncommon. The idea is that you have one "flagship" piece of content a quarter that acts as a catalyst for subscriber growth.

However the difficulty is always retaining those new customers who have signed up for a single reason.
 
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