• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Former Xbox exec says he’s ‘scared’ of Game Pass’s potential impact (VGC)

fermcr

Member
Dude ... No. Just no. :messenger_tears_of_joy:

This is straight up just not true.

Are musicians forced to be on Spotify? If Spotify is so bad, why the hell they put their music on Spotify?

If musicians are better off without Spotify, then go for it...
 
Last edited:

Leyasu

Banned
Who says that gaming subscription services are the new business model that the gaming market needs?



Services like Spotify also caused record and music shops to go by the wayside though, which resulted in real job displacement. Another user ITT brought it up, can't remember who it was though.



It depends on the definition of "services", here. Steam is technically a "service"; it's a digital storefront providing digital content to the end user. The only major difference between it and GamePass is the money pipeline. With Steam, the platform holder isn't creating a lot of software of their own, and aren't paying devs & pubs to put their content on the platform. The customer pays for each game, rather than a flat subscription rate providing all available games to them in the duration of that subscription, and that money then goes to the publisher of that game minus a 30% cut from Valve.

GamePass is, essentially, a "storefront", except the only thing the customer buys is a subscription to access the storefront whatsoever. That purchased subscription goes 100% to the platform holder who owns that "storefront", who in turn at the very least pays publishers and developers to put their content on the service. The platform holder may also make content of their own for the service.

As long as a A/AA developer can find a publisher or secure funding, there's very little a service like GamePass can offer them that another service like Steam cannot offer them. The big difference is in terms of potential funding or funding reimbursement: with Steam, funding comes either the traditional means (bank loans, publisher funds) or through crowdfunding. Those costs have to be made up through direct sales to the customer. With something like GamePass, the funding either comes from those same means, or from a platform holder like Microsoft paying the cost of development directly. If the funding is still via traditional methods, then MS paying for the game on their service can cover some or all of those costs.

But here's the kicker: even if the money ends up right for either method, one still brings more dependency than the other. With Steam you have a much larger storefront and a much larger service, reaching a wider audience. With GamePass, your total audience reach is going to be a lot smaller (at least for the time being). And the main method for GP growth is going to be much more stressful on MS as a platform holder than Steam growth has been/will be for Valve, since in GP's case it's mainly 1P games that will drive that growth.

Which actually could present a hamper for 3P A/AA games and a few indie devs came out not too long ago voicing their concerns on this.



Well they did launch successfully, but in the case of Halo (and somewhat, tho not as much, FH5) since that's a live-service game, the question is how well does it maintain an active playerbase. And the answer is, it's really struggling to do that in a way comparable to the other big live-service shooters on the market. So launch success for Halo Infinite doesn't mean that much if outside of that, the game's been losing significant momentum.



This doesn't make sense; wouldn't that be $1.025 billion?



I understand. That being said, there ARE other sources out there which provide tracked, accurate numbers for other parts of the industry, and platform holders like Sony & Nintendo do in fact provide hard numbers for aspects of their businesses including game services revenues.

That's where the corroboration comes in: we can take those figures, line them up, see what the relationship between them are, and use that to try filling in missing pieces such as GamePass's own revenue totals. Which, yes, we can't 100% arrive at accurately, but I think we're in a good enough ballpark. If everything in even that article (let alone other industry-wide data tracking sites or even numbers from platform holders directly) were off by wide margins, a lot of people would be out of jobs, credibility, and likely facing criminal charges 🤷‍♂️
Lol no

25m x 40 = 900m
25m x 1$(Conversion) = 25m
25m +900m = 925m

I see what you are saying, but again the numbers don’t lie unless you can get it even cheaper than that? And that nearly everyone is using it.

Yeah Nintendo and Sony do, yet Microsoft doesn’t. So there straight away, it immediately throws into question any numbers that are reported by anyone else.

It would be almost impossible to come up with an accurate amount when an important number is not available.

I’m off to bed, we could go round and round with this and still not be any further forward lol
 

Nydius

Member
All I'm going to say on this topic is this:

If Xbox Game Pass is supposedly the "best value in gaming" as Xbox fans repeatedly drone on and on and on about, why do so many of them look for ways to game the system to avoid paying full retail price for the service? If $14.99 a month is such great value, why do so many of these fans exploit the Gold to Game Pass conversion loophole? Why are they not paying full retail to ensure the service they claim is not only a great value but the "future of gaming" becomes profitable?

That, more than anything else, is why the service will ultimately fail or never grow beyond niche status. Microsoft executives call the service "sustainable" for now, but sustainable is not the same as profitable. Zune, Windows Phone, NOKIA -- they were all "sustainable", but after a while of throwing money at them and not becoming profitable, they went the way of the dodo. Eventually Microsoft's execs, or their shareholders, will be fed up with the company throwing money at Game Pass unless they can demonstrate profitability.

Expect those loopholes to be closed soon, just like Sony did with the PSNow to Plus Premium loophole.
 
Last edited:

ACESHIGH

Banned
MS showed data stating that players that suscribe to gamepass spend more money in games that players that don't subscribe to it. But can't apply logic against fanboysm.

Besides, here's the way I see it: Gaming is iterative and cumulative. Even before these subscription services started to pop up I had more than 800 games across all my digital libraries on PC. That plus a PS2 with quite a lot of games. And a cellphone and PC with full fat Retroarch on it with its respective libraries per console at least until 4th gen plus portables.

Just games on my mid range/low end cellphone could last me until I am 60 years old. My point is, the more games we have available, the harder it is for new games to stand out and make money. WIth each new generation, we are seeing more and more diminishing returns, games released on the 6th or 7th gen still look great on PC and can be bought dirt cheap. There is no need to buy the latest and greatest day one any more. You are not missing anything compared to missing the greats of the past at its time.
 

kyussman

Member
I'm not sure about the Spotify analogy.......has anyone considered the idea people aren't buying music these days because it's all so shit......and I say that as a proud middle aged grumpy git.
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Yeah, it's strange. Most Game Pass threads devolve into the fear some have about what MAY happen. It's real bizarre that folks get so worked up about hypotheticals.
It's better to ask questions now and put a spotlight on potential issues with these things

You have former big wigs questioning the impact GP could have on the industry
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
It's better to ask questions now and put a spotlight on potential issues with these things

You have former big wigs questioning the impact GP could have on the industry

Yeah but we've been hearing about this for years now. And not a single project has been announced that's exclusive to game pass. Every single game that's on gamepass today, or announced for the coming years, will also sell at retail on either xbox and PC or even more platforms. So, the existence of game pass (or even PS+ for that matter) has had no quantifiable impact on any game development as of yet.

Big wigs can question, they've got the right to. But you can imagine MS has an army of CA's crunching the numbers into their operations as well. No one continues running a business unless they have a goal and target in mind.
 
Last edited:

kingfey

Banned
It's better to ask questions now and put a spotlight on potential issues with these things

You have former big wigs questioning the impact GP could have on the industry
At this point, it's not gamepass issue anymore.
With Sony getting in to action with their ps+, the industry would face alot of change now.
Similar to how mtx slowly changed the industry.

Everyone would want a piece of that pie now.
 

Dr Bass

Member
Are musicians forced to be on Spotify? If Spotify is so bad, why the hell they put their music on Spotify?

If musicians are better off without Spotify, then go for it...
This is literally the point with the Game Pass analogy. There is no other choice for the music industry, because people stopped buying. If you remember, the answer to piracy was the iPod, and buying your music in an easy fashion. It was the nature of easy digital access vs the dinosaur that was a CD at the time that caused traditional sales to start plummeting. Spotify didn't come into play until 2006, and even then didn't come to the US until 2011. The whole Napster/limeware thing happened in the late 90s.

So again, the solution to this for awhile, was easy purchasing through places like iTunes. Purchasing. Selling music. It Then when Spotify thought, hey we can make a deal with the music industry, and pay per listen to the artists ... it went increasingly downhill for musicians, because people really stopped buying.

So to that effect, I have some relatively famous musicians (in their fields, jazz, gospel etc.) as friends. I know what they think of these services. They aren't good. They don't pay unless you're actually a REALLY big name like Beyonce, Drake, whatever. Those are the people getting millions and millions of listens a day and pulling in cash. But historically those people would have sold millions of albums so it's a wash for those people. But now what about the smaller bands that would have sold 50k cds? That revenue stream is truly destroyed because people, even ones who are really into music like myself, aren't buying anymore. Yeah I have Apple Music AND Spotify and I can't remember the last thing I bought, whereas I used to buy multiple albums a month. So where the smaller artists were able to have a smaller but decent sized fanbase that would support them and buy their music ... that is just gone. People don't do it anymore so you need to be on a sub service for people to hear your music. That's the problem. They have been conditioned to no longer buy.

So if GP "succeeds" and has the same effect on the game industry, that's what's going to happen. Everything will need to go through the MS (or similar) gatekeeper. Innovation will likely die as games are designed to be successful for the service, i.e. keeping people subscribed on a monthly basis. Trying to generate big AAA hits that follow a classic mold just seems like such an obvious recipe for failure.

Ed Fries is not dumb. He knows what goes on behind closed doors. He stated exactly what I've been saying would be the case for years. But I am also in the software industry so this kind of thing is so plainly obvious to me, that nothing he says is surprising. He is just 100% right. It's simply a bad business model for the kinds of games that people on consoles typically want to experience.
 
How many titles does Netflix have?
How many titles does game pass have?

Apple's & oranges
As of July 2020, Netflix had 3,781 movies available on its streaming service. / 1,500 original titles

Game-pass around 1200 (Old information)

"Apple's & oranges" correct, but at the same time lot of people says Netflix has issues. I think game-pass is good (I do not have it), but it can have serious problem with day 1 releases, and this will affect developers. A Netflix series can take 1-2 years per season, but a AAA or AAAA (not sure if this exists now), can take 3+ years, and is not that developers are going to get the full $60-$70. release price (and yes I know all the logistic, sale for the store, and other things, but I am simplifying).

As before, I am an average Joe on this, but I can see problems developers can face due to day 1 release. Time will tell, hope it is for the best for developers, but may not be for day 1 release. This can be a 2 edge sword. For my first game, just made $19, maybe in game pass it could made $1000. It was kind of expensive to make for me as a solo developer, but I am happy that I made a game (never expected it to make money at all). On the other side a $250+ million game, on a base of 25m users may not be able to get back their money. Like the game Oddworld game which had sale issues on PSN plus as it was placed on day 1 (as per the developers).
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Yeah but we've been hearing about this for years now. And not a single project has been announced that's exclusive to game pass. Every single game that's on gamepass today, or announced for the coming years, will also sell at retail on either xbox and PC or even more platforms. So, the existence of game pass (or even PS+ for that matter) has had no quantifiable impact on any game development as of yet.

Big wigs can question, they've got the right to. But you can imagine MS has an army of CA's crunching the numbers into their operations as well. No one continues running a business unless they have a goal and target in mind.
I think you might be misunderstanding. No one is saying games will be Gamepass exclusive, I think people are worried about games being more tailored towards services eventually instead of the full AAA traditional games we get today
 
Last edited:

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I think you might be misunderstanding. No one is saying games will be Gamepass exclusive, I think people are worried about games being more tailored towards services instead of the full AAA traditional games we get today

Until and unless PS plus takes off faster than anyone expects, and those multiple GAAS games Sony has in development become massive hits, I'd realistically don't see this happening on either major platform for the foreseeable future.
 
Last edited:

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Gamepass is really good, free games is huge years from now it will play a role in gaming.
 

Swift_Star

Banned
Are musicians forced to be on Spotify? If Spotify is so bad, why the hell they put their music on Spotify?

If musicians are better off without Spotify, then go for it...
Because they have no other option than do it.
This is literally the point with the Game Pass analogy. There is no other choice for the music industry, because people stopped buying. If you remember, the answer to piracy was the iPod, and buying your music in an easy fashion. It was the nature of easy digital access vs the dinosaur that was a CD at the time that caused traditional sales to start plummeting. Spotify didn't come into play until 2006, and even then didn't come to the US until 2011. The whole Napster/limeware thing happened in the late 90s.

So again, the solution to this for awhile, was easy purchasing through places like iTunes. Purchasing. Selling music. It Then when Spotify thought, hey we can make a deal with the music industry, and pay per listen to the artists ... it went increasingly downhill for musicians, because people really stopped buying.

So to that effect, I have some relatively famous musicians (in their fields, jazz, gospel etc.) as friends. I know what they think of these services. They aren't good. They don't pay unless you're actually a REALLY big name like Beyonce, Drake, whatever. Those are the people getting millions and millions of listens a day and pulling in cash. But historically those people would have sold millions of albums so it's a wash for those people. But now what about the smaller bands that would have sold 50k cds? That revenue stream is truly destroyed because people, even ones who are really into music like myself, aren't buying anymore. Yeah I have Apple Music AND Spotify and I can't remember the last thing I bought, whereas I used to buy multiple albums a month. So where the smaller artists were able to have a smaller but decent sized fanbase that would support them and buy their music ... that is just gone. People don't do it anymore so you need to be on a sub service for people to hear your music. That's the problem. They have been conditioned to no longer buy.

So if GP "succeeds" and has the same effect on the game industry, that's what's going to happen. Everything will need to go through the MS (or similar) gatekeeper. Innovation will likely die as games are designed to be successful for the service, i.e. keeping people subscribed on a monthly basis. Trying to generate big AAA hits that follow a classic mold just seems like such an obvious recipe for failure.

Ed Fries is not dumb. He knows what goes on behind closed doors. He stated exactly what I've been saying would be the case for years. But I am also in the software industry so this kind of thing is so plainly obvious to me, that nothing he says is surprising. He is just 100% right. It's simply a bad business model for the kinds of games that people on consoles typically want to experience.
good thing MS is not good at managing anything gaming related. Now Sony might make this become a real problem. I really don’t want the gaming future to be subscription based regardless of who dominates it.
 
Last edited:

Dr Bass

Member
Because they have no other option than do it.

good thing MS is not good at managing anything gaming related. Now Sony might make this become a real problem. I really don’t want the gaming future to be subscription based regardless of who dominates it.
Exactly. This is not an MS thing. This is a "this is terrible for the software industry" thing. Just like Apple destroyed the value of mobile software with their race to the bottom on iOS. Just like Spotify/Apple Music has destroyed the value of music to consumers.

I don't want gaming subs to do the same to games. We are worse off for all of this, and all some people can see is "I am not paying much for my stuff!" Yeah exactly, which is why it sucks. It no longer can support the kind of craftsmanship required for excellence. These "worries" are not pulled out of anyone's rear, they are things that have happened and we are seeing the same thing potentially repeat here. The fact people can't make this connection because of "fandom" continues to astound me.
 

akimbo009

Gold Member
Exactly. This is not an MS thing. This is a "this is terrible for the software industry" thing. Just like Apple destroyed the value of mobile software with their race to the bottom on iOS. Just like Spotify/Apple Music has destroyed the value of music to consumers.

I don't want gaming subs to do the same to games. We are worse off for all of this, and all some people can see is "I am not paying much for my stuff!" Yeah exactly, which is why it sucks. It no longer can support the kind of craftsmanship required for excellence. These "worries" are not pulled out of anyone's rear, they are things that have happened and we are seeing the same thing potentially repeat here. The fact people can't make this connection because of "fandom" continues to astound me.

Jesus. Doom post much.

Gamepass has been around for 5 years, and the world still turns and great games keep getting produced with no evidence any type of game or genre changed or cancelled as a result of it.

MS is making a pile of money, so it ain't going no where. No need to clutch pearls just cause some rando is nervous via a wall of text article.

Industry is fine. It survived mobile, and it survived ET. It'll be fine.
 

Hezekiah

Banned
All I'm going to say on this topic is this:

If Xbox Game Pass is supposedly the "best value in gaming" as Xbox fans repeatedly drone on and on and on about, why do so many of them look for ways to game the system to avoid paying full retail price for the service? If $14.99 a month is such great value, why do so many of these fans exploit the Gold to Game Pass conversion loophole? Why are they not paying full retail to ensure the service they claim is not only a great value but the "future of gaming" becomes profitable?

That, more than anything else, is why the service will ultimately fail or never grow beyond niche status. Microsoft executives call the service "sustainable" for now, but sustainable is not the same as profitable. Zune, Windows Phone, NOKIA -- they were all "sustainable", but after a while of throwing money at them and not becoming profitable, they went the way of the dodo. Eventually Microsoft's execs, or their shareholders, will be fed up with the company throwing money at Game Pass unless they can demonstrate profitability.

Expect those loopholes to be closed soon, just like Sony did with the PSNow to Plus Premium loophole.
I think it will grow beyond niche status, but I don't think it will grow large enough to be sustainable long-term without a significant price increase.

Not when you take into account the number of first-party studios Microsoft has developing games, the length of game development, and the fact that numbers will fluctuate as people come on and off.

Already on this forum you can see subscribers baulking at the idea of paying even mid-level prices for games because they've become conditioned to pay a pittance for them - in that sense the loss leader phase may be counter-intuitive once prices reach a more realistic level.
 

Lognor

Banned
Developers doing tours! 🔥

Bill Gates Microsoft GIF
Good Times Reaction GIF
Adapt... whatever it takes.
How will gaming adapt? Musicians can tour, movies are released on theaters and those avenues are where they make most of their revenues.
Games Make money by sales and MTX.
My bet is that budgets will be reduced and MTX are going to become more and more predatory.
I dunno. I'm not being paid big bucks too brainstorm that. We'll see how folks adapt. Adapt or die.
Or maybe it can do what Its been doing for the last 20 years.
Alot of games and studios are selling more games than ever
No. They can't. Not even Sony is doing that. They're going multiplatform. They're releasing games on pc. They're releasing a competitor to game pass. They are NOT doing what they were doing 20 years ago...
 
Lol no

25m x 40 = 900m
25m x 1$(Conversion) = 25m
25m +900m = 925m

I see what you are saying, but again the numbers don’t lie unless you can get it even cheaper than that? And that nearly everyone is using it.

Yeah Nintendo and Sony do, yet Microsoft doesn’t. So there straight away, it immediately throws into question any numbers that are reported by anyone else.

It would be almost impossible to come up with an accurate amount when an important number is not available.

I’m off to bed, we could go round and round with this and still not be any further forward lol

What is the 40 for? Is that $40? 40 months? There's no unit of measure attached to it, it's just floating there so it's throwing the whole calculation off for me.

Unless additional numbers are put out (or better yet, MS puts out revenue numbers themselves specifically for GP), I'm fairly confident in the stuff we crunched in that other thread are probably the closest we have to some accurate annual revenue amounts for GamePass. You can't just take the flat price, user count, months of the year and multiply them all together as a baseline figure. Not when there are a myriad of ways to get GamePass for cheaper than $10/mo or $15/mo.

For comparison, it's very likely we won't get subscriber breakdown per tier for the new PS+, but since Sony actually provides upfront revenue numbers for PS+, we will be able to infer at the very least how much extra revenue their service restructure brings in, and may be able to do some inference on how many of whatever number of subscribers they report, are on the higher tiers. We'll also be able to infer by what amounts the extra revenue is coming from current subs moving up to higher tiers, new subs joining at the higher tiers, or even how many people might instead be subbing at the default/base tier.

All of this despite the fact Sony, like Microsoft, also are primarily serving their shareholders when providing fiscal results.

WIth each new generation, we are seeing more and more diminishing returns, games released on the 6th or 7th gen still look great on PC and can be bought dirt cheap. There is no need to buy the latest and greatest day one any more.

Subjective opinion; going by actual sales of most AAA games that release on the market, the majority of customers seem to disagree with your notion here. You're also underestimating that there is a sizable portion of the customer base who are not necessarily interested in playing older games even if they are very cheap and easy to access.

The only exceptions to this tend to be games old enough to be considered "retro" and therefore provide strong nostalgia for players.

You are not missing anything compared to missing the greats of the past at its time.

Extremely subjective take; I may personally when talking about specific games, IP, or even genres, but we're in the minority on this one. Some people are simply adverse to playing retro games; a lot are adverse to playing old releases that aren't new enough to be considered recent yet aren't old enough to be retro (and therefore develop some sort of nostalgia for players).

No. They can't. Not even Sony is doing that. They're going multiplatform. They're releasing games on pc. They're releasing a competitor to game pass. They are NOT doing what they were doing 20 years ago...

You're stretching the definition of 'multiplatform' here. In Sony's case multiplatform means PlayStation & PC except for very specific releases like MLB The Show, Destiny 2 and Bungie's next IP, which will also be for Xbox and possibly Nintendo platforms. They're bringing games to PC but outside of potential live-service GaaS titles none of those will be Day 1 releases (at least with the way things are currently). Their PS+ revamp is technically a GamePass competitor but is not trying to sell itself on the same features as GamePass; for example they aren't advertising a main selling hook such as all 1P games Day 1 into the service.

So yeah in some ways they are switching it up, but in other ways they aren't doing anything too different from what they did wayyyy back in the day of PS1 even (some 1P games, specifically Psynosis games, got ported to PC and even other systems like N64 and Saturn). And in yet other ways, they have very clear delineation from GamePass in several key areas.
 
Last edited:
This is a fact. I would be scared too. People can pretend it's a non issue or "concern trolling" all they want, but that makes you naive. This will be an issue if you give a shit about quality AAA games.

*unsubscribes*
Anyone who thinks it is mere "concern trolling" is probably too young to have seen the downfall of these other industries first-hand.
 
It is considered concern trolling because the loudest complainers aren't even customers of the service or owners of the platform. It is a service. If you don't like the service don't subscribe. If enough people don't sub it will end and those complainers will find their happiness. Just sit back and watch it fail if it is so bad. Concerns for the actual customers rings quite hollow.
I own an Xbox, I sub to Game Pass. I can also see problems down the road for the industry as a whole because of Game Pass style sub services. You don't need to turn every issue into a console war.
 

Shmunter

Member
It is considered concern trolling because the loudest complainers aren't even customers of the service or owners of the platform. It is a service. If you don't like the service don't subscribe. If enough people don't sub it will end and those complainers will find their happiness. Just sit back and watch it fail if it is so bad. Concerns for the actual customers rings quite hollow.
Not sure you read or listened to the interview. It’s highlighted It’s seductive for consumers, bad for industry.

Consumers won’t stand on principle if they are benefitting and will easily just ride the death spiral to the bitter end when everyone loses.

Terms like ‘race to the bottom’ are applicable.

The biggest issue here is Sony getting on board, eventually leaving no healthy ground options.
 
Last edited:
I own an Xbox, I sub to Game Pass. I can also see problems down the road for the industry as a whole because of Game Pass style sub services. You don't need to turn every issue into a console war.
Care to elaborate? How is Game pass hurting you and if you believe that why would you sub and contribute to the problem?

Not sure you read or listened to the interview. It’s highlighted It’s seductive for consumers, bad for industry.

Consumers won’t stand on principle if they are benefitting and will easily just ride the death spiral to the bitter end when everyone loses.

Terms like ‘race to the bottom’ are applicable.

The biggest issue here is Sony getting on board, eventually leaving no healthy ground options.
As a customer how are we affected? Death spiral? How is that even possible from the 3rd place platform holder? I keep hearing MS is inept so I don't think there is anything to worry about at all. I prefer David Jaffe's take.

 

Shmunter

Member
Care to elaborate? How is Game pass hurting you and if you believe that why would you sub and contribute to the problem?


As a customer how are we affected? Death spiral? How is that even possible from the 3rd place platform holder? I keep hearing MS is inept so I don't think there is anything to worry about at all. I prefer David Jaffe's take.


Unless there is infinite growth there is only so much room for games/studios on the service. As viewed by Netflix who in their hubris realised there is no such thing - we now have the case study.

That being the case, you’ll agree there is only limited room on the service for games and pubs, you cannot stretch it beyond a certain ratio.

Devs will be left out in the cold not able to join service -or- sustain too little profit share to make it feasible.

Consumer habits do get shaped by such services, I don’t think anyone questions this any longer, when people get more than enough to keep busy, looking outside becomes the exception not the norm.

Games outside of the service conversely do not receive enough sales due to the consumer spend habits and have nowhere to go. Death spiral.
 

Leyasu

Banned
What is the 40 for? Is that $40? 40 months? There's no unit of measure attached to it, it's just floating there so it's throwing the whole calculation off for me.

Unless additional numbers are put out (or better yet, MS puts out revenue numbers themselves specifically for GP), I'm fairly confident in the stuff we crunched in that other thread are probably the closest we have to some accurate annual revenue amounts for GamePass. You can't just take the flat price, user count, months of the year and multiply them all together as a baseline figure. Not when there are a myriad of ways to get GamePass for cheaper than $10/mo or $15/mo.

For comparison, it's very likely we won't get subscriber breakdown per tier for the new PS+, but since Sony actually provides upfront revenue numbers for PS+, we will be able to infer at the very least how much extra revenue their service restructure brings in, and may be able to do some inference on how many of whatever number of subscribers they report, are on the higher tiers. We'll also be able to infer by what amounts the extra revenue is coming from current subs moving up to higher tiers, new subs joining at the higher tiers, or even how many people might instead be subbing at the default/base tier.

All of this despite the fact Sony, like Microsoft, also are primarily serving their shareholders when providing fiscal results.



Subjective opinion; going by actual sales of most AAA games that release on the market, the majority of customers seem to disagree with your notion here. You're also underestimating that there is a sizable portion of the customer base who are not necessarily interested in playing older games even if they are very cheap and easy to access.

The only exceptions to this tend to be games old enough to be considered "retro" and therefore provide strong nostalgia for players.



Extremely subjective take; I may personally when talking about specific games, IP, or even genres, but we're in the minority on this one. Some people are simply adverse to playing retro games; a lot are adverse to playing old releases that aren't new enough to be considered recent yet aren't old enough to be retro (and therefore develop some sort of nostalgia for players).



You're stretching the definition of 'multiplatform' here. In Sony's case multiplatform means PlayStation & PC except for very specific releases like MLB The Show, Destiny 2 and Bungie's next IP, which will also be for Xbox and possibly Nintendo platforms. They're bringing games to PC but outside of potential live-service GaaS titles none of those will be Day 1 releases (at least with the way things are currently). Their PS+ revamp is technically a GamePass competitor but is not trying to sell itself on the same features as GamePass; for example they aren't advertising a main selling hook such as all 1P games Day 1 into the service.

So yeah in some ways they are switching it up, but in other ways they aren't doing anything too different from what they did wayyyy back in the day of PS1 even (some 1P games, specifically Psynosis games, got ported to PC and even other systems like N64 and Saturn). And in yet other ways, they have very clear delineation from GamePass in several key areas.
I already said 40 for a yr gold. The cheapest possible. Unless you know a cheaper way to get it? I have asked you this no?

No, your numbers were based on misinformation, and don't even come near to the cheapest possible way of getting a yr of GP. Therefore, are just the same speculation (albeit low) as everyone else's
 
Last edited:

Justin9mm

Member
I'm concerned about the price of entry for subscriptions like gamepass. I'm in Australia and pay $15.95 per month for Gamepass Ultimate. If that rises to $20, I'm not sure I'd be subscribing every month. It changes from month to month whether I think its worth it. Right now with the lack of MS Exclusives, it's not the best at the moment. There's a lot of shit I don't wanna play on it.
 

Filben

Member
I remember the Last of Us releasing in 2013 with singleplayer and multiplayer components on day one. Now here we are in 2022 and the game's sequel released nearly two years ago, yet we are still waiting for the multiplayer component of TLoU2 to release (and probably for another upfront charge). Was this also a "Game Pass" effect?
And don't forget the "roadmaps" and life service aspects to games that don't need it in the first place. Why finish games day one when people buy it day one nonetheless and you can fix it along the way.

Those companies don't deserve the money upfront. In many other business oriented parts you would get interest for delay or some money back if you don't deliver on time. And if they make a fuckton of money and try to press every dime and nickel out of it with MTX, subscription fees, season passes, collecting data and make money with it etc. why should we treat them differently? They're not our friends and they don't do it for altruistic reasons. This is a business relationship but some gamers/consumers still think they have to be grateful for their favourite toy.
 
Unless there is infinite growth there is only so much room for games/studios on the service. As viewed by Netflix who in their hubris realised there is no such thing - we now have the case study.

That being the case, you’ll agree there is only limited room on the service for games and pubs, you cannot stretch it beyond a certain ratio.

Devs will be left out in the cold not able to join service -or- sustain too little profit share to make it feasible.

Consumer habits do get shaped by such services, I don’t think anyone questions this any longer, when people get more than enough to keep busy, looking outside becomes the exception not the norm.

Games outside of the service conversely do not receive enough sales due to the consumer spend habits and have nowhere to go. Death spiral.
It sounds like the same argument people had when MS stated they were entering the console market. We are still waiting for them to either destroy it or go out of business. There is no evidence whatsoever that Game pass is hurting the industry but there is plenty of evidence that consumers are quite happy with the service so far and that's what matters to me because I'm a customer. If the service gets bad it will end. As long as it remains optional and normal retail channels stay open it will continue to be an added benefit to the Xbox ecosystem. Life spiral.
 

yurinka

Member
I've been wondering if we'll start to see more game's designed for Gamepass at Xbox's show in June, like episodic games

It would be very bad for gaming imo
In the same way Halo went GaaS you'll see more MS, Zenimax and ABK big AAA IPs going full GaaS. The next one is Forza Motorsport.

With GP MS should get way less revenue from game sales, which I assume their idea is to compensate it with microtransactions, dlcs and season passes.

Then I assume they will mix this with indies or smaller and shorter games from people like DoubleFine or Ninja Theory.

I don't see episodic games coming back in a traditional way, but more in a GaaS fashion where they'd keep adding stuff to Halo Infinite and the others.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Game pass is hurting the industry
The theory is that it would become hurthul in the case it would become important and would dominate the market as happened with Netflix or Spotify. But as of now GP is a small part of the game subs, and the game subs are a tiny portion of the total gaming market. So in their curent scale, and the one they'll have in a couple years from now it isn't dangerous at all.

In addition to this, every month hundreds if not thousands of games get released every month. If a subscription heavily dominates the market and people stops buying games then it would be reduced to a few new games per month. It basically would kill most publishers and devs.
 
Last edited:

Shmunter

Member
It sounds like the same argument people had when MS stated they were entering the console market. We are still waiting for them to either destroy it or go out of business. There is no evidence whatsoever that Game pass is hurting the industry but there is plenty of evidence that consumers are quite happy with the service so far and that's what matters to me because I'm a customer. If the service gets bad it will end. As long as it remains optional and normal retail channels stay open it will continue to be an added benefit to the Xbox ecosystem. Life spiral.
So the argument is cheap = good for me. Solid.
 
So the argument is cheap = good for me. Solid.
Nope the argument is that if you offer consumers a good value people will subscribe.
The theory is that it would become hurthul in the case it would become important and would dominate the market as happened with Netflix or Spotify. But as of now GP is a small part of the game subs, and the game subs are a tiny portion of the total gaming market. So in their curent scale, and the one they'll have in a couple years from now it isn't dangerous at all.
Sounds like if anyone is concerned that Game pass is going to harm anything the remedy is to offer customers a superior value. It can't dominate if there is a better offer on the free market. Competition is good for the consumer.
 

yurinka

Member
Sounds like if anyone is concerned that Game pass is going to harm anything the remedy is to offer customers a superior value. It can't dominate if there is a better offer on the free market. Competition is good for the consumer.
Nah, the remedy is publishers and devs not putting their games in subscriptions until they sold all the game units they could, and use subscriptions as a secondary, complementary revenue source instead of as the main one.
 
Nah, the remedy is publishers and devs not putting their games in subscriptions until they sold all the game units they could, and use subscriptions as a secondary, complementary revenue source instead of as the main one.
Publishers and developers are free to participate in any business deal that is beneficial to their company. No one is forced to add content to Game pass or any other service. You nor anyone else has the right limit how they want to distribute their games. The business will work out the way they want it to.
 

Shmunter

Member
Nope the argument is that if you offer consumers a good value people will subscribe.
Free is even better consumer value, hack pay you to take it the best!. Doesn't make it a sound business decision.

Look at the F2P market and how it's shaped game design. GaaS never ending, selling useless bling to kids. Good or bad, doesn't matter - it channeled the game design in a certain way. Many have failed, and still many will, some have seen tremendous success - there is only so much to go around.
 
Last edited:

Kokoloko85

Member
No. They can't. Not even Sony is doing that. They're going multiplatform. They're releasing games on pc. They're releasing a competitor to game pass. They are NOT doing what they were doing 20 years ago...

There slightly going multi platform doesnt mean they have to have games on sub service day 1. Thats what I mean they can carry on selling games.

Nintendo and Playstation are selling there 1st party games at 10-20-40million units.
They are pretty healthy doing it the old way.
 
Care to elaborate? How is Game pass hurting you and if you believe that why would you sub and contribute to the problem?
I never said Game Pass is hurting me, that's a strawman. Game Pass doesn't "hurt" me any more than a Netflix sub would. The problem is that sub services in other entertainment mediums have demonstrably changed those industries, and it is already changing our current attitude towards buying games.

Major music artists used to sell millions upon millions of copies of their albums in week 1. Now, you can see number 1 albums selling maybe 250000 copies, because everyone just streams music for free, or for a small monthly fee. The artists get squat. Twenty to forty years ago, there were so many huge music acts, and now it basically solo pop stars and no one else. Major bands don't break out anymore. Yes, we still get music, but I haven't discovered a single new band that I like in over a decade. Is that a good thing?
Netflix sure has a lot to watch, but 99% of it is trash that you would never bother with. Is that a good thing? Another byproduct of sub services.

The problem with sub services is like boiling a frog. It gets bad gradually enough that we don't notice. I've already seen my Game Pass sub become much less valuable to me in just a couple years. I look at the list of games, and there's just not much there that I want to play. I've been subbed since it started, and I've played mostly everything I was willing to invest time into, and now we wait for ANYTHING that might interest us. Same thing I do with Netflix now, hoping that they put out 1 or 2 shows that I might actually enjoy once in a awhile. The subs seem good when you first subscribe, but quickly you run out of things you actually want to engage with.

The problem with Game Pass is something we are already witnessing, but a lot of gaf refuses to admit. Without fresh games that people want to play, they're going to have trouble enticing people to stay subbed. Netflix just recently hit that wall, and they're losing subs. Did they say that they are going to refocus their efforts to bring their customers better content? No! Instead they started laying off employees. When MS hits that same wall (which they will), they'll start shutting down studios. And when you have MS and Sony both locked in this ridiculous acquisition war, eventually this will screw us over, because we're going to lose dev studios that would have otherwise survived. We may not see the real problems for many years, but yes, it will be a problem later. You cannot erode the foundation for creators forever without changing the makeup of said creators.
 
So the argument is cheap = good for me. Solid.
If the argument is ever not that, then you're in trouble. If boxed sales can't compete they will disappear. No one is going to convince everyone to buy expensive games just to prevent something bad from happening. If thats their only defense then they can just give up now. Its a competition not a charity.
 

Shmunter

Member
If the argument is ever not that, then you're in trouble. If boxed sales can't compete they will disappear. No one is going to convince everyone to buy expensive games just to prevent something bad from happening. If thats their only defense then they can just give up now. Its a competition not a charity.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a cigar smoking capitalist with the best of them and are fully versed on the free market and cream rising to the top.

But I’m also a video gaming hobbits and want a specific evolution, not sales models. Certain models clearly devalue products. Product preciousness is a concept. Never has a buffet elevated the quality of a meal, clearly quite the opposite to a Michelin rated chef.

Perhaps a bit of a simplistic analogy, but games are just as much art as they are a product.

From a business perspective I see this approach as consumer friendly loaded upfront with a rotting corpse on the opposite end of the bell curve. It’s early seduction is a poisoned chalice.
 
Last edited:

Flutta

Banned
Every person with a quarter-functioning brain has been saying that, thank God Sony is still competent in that regard and knows that perceived quality is valued to their brand as a whole.
If more gamers choose to jump on the GP train specielly the casual crowd this will def have an impact on Sony business strategy as a whole. Thus it will force Sony to adapt in some way.

I think w’ll have a clearer picture when COD releases on GP.

This is a sad future for gaming that for sure.
 
At the end of the day, all we can do is see how it plays out. Of course some see warning signs everywhere with something like GP, while others don't. Trying to predict where GP ends up is a fool's errand. Trying to predict what effect GP has on the industry as a whole even more so.

I believe any tangible effects from GP on the wider industry would already be apparent by now. GP has been around for years now, and up until this point has been nothing more than a nice benefit that resides just fine next to the more traditional sales industry. The same people who cried about GP not being sustainable the first couple of years, are the ones who will be clutching to grasp at this hot takeas well. It's almost a given at this point, that yet another if they're concerns and criticisms will go by unfulfilled as GP's success continues.

We've seen multiple companies now try and implement their own flavor of sub services. Now that results are in for much of the early ones, we're seeing which ones have succeeded and which ones didn't. GP is definitely one of the former, while Sony's offering was one of the latter. How long are some of you going to keep pretending Sony has this all figured out, while MS is left in the dark. Especially given their track record so far with sub services.
 

Lognor

Banned
You're stretching the definition of 'multiplatform' here. In Sony's case multiplatform means PlayStation & PC except for very specific releases like MLB The Show, Destiny 2 and Bungie's next IP, which will also be for Xbox and possibly Nintendo platforms. They're bringing games to PC but outside of potential live-service GaaS titles none of those will be Day 1 releases (at least with the way things are currently). Their PS+ revamp is technically a GamePass competitor but is not trying to sell itself on the same features as GamePass; for example they aren't advertising a main selling hook such as all 1P games Day 1 into the service.

So yeah in some ways they are switching it up, but in other ways they aren't doing anything too different from what they did wayyyy back in the day of PS1 even (some 1P games, specifically Psynosis games, got ported to PC and even other systems like N64 and Saturn). And in yet other ways, they have very clear delineation from GamePass in several key areas.
Multiplatform = more than one platform. And Sony has changed from just a year ago. Beginning of 2021 Sony only made games for PlayStation. Then they started making games for pc. Then they started making the show for other consoles. Then they acquired bungie and announced those games would be on Xbox.

So your view is very myopic. You say there are only a couple of exceptions (the show, destiny, etc). But there are only those exceptions FOR NOW. In another year you might add a couple more exceptions and then a couple more the year after and then all of a sudden these examples AREN'T exceptions. So Sony is adapting. How much more will they go multiplatform? Who knows, but two years ago you wouldn't think the show would end up on Xbox!
 
Last edited:
Anyone who thinks it is mere "concern trolling" is probably too young to have seen the downfall of these other industries first-hand.
I saw Blockbuster get decimated during my childhood...but I can care less because now I can click a few buttons on my TV remote and watch any movie or show I want.
 

Razvedka

Banned
“Spotify didn’t cut the music business in half – piracy did,” he said. “Spotify, and the cloud-based technology on which it relies, actually gave music fans a more convenient, legal and monetised alternative to piracy.

LMAO
 
Last edited:
Multiplatform = more than one platform. And Sony has changed from just a year ago. Beginning of 2021 Sony only made games for PlayStation. Then they started making games for pc. Then they started making the show for other consoles. Then they acquired bungie and announced those games would be on Xbox.

So your view is very myopic. You say there are only a couple of exceptions (the show, destiny, etc). But there are only those exceptions FOR NOW. In another year you might add a couple more exceptions and then a couple more the year after and then all of a sudden these examples AREN'T exceptions. So Sony is adapting. How much more will they go multiplatform? Who knows, but two years ago you wouldn't think the show would end up on Xbox!

I'm just saying, what's common sense insofar as their multiplatform support, realistically speaking? The average person would assume it extends to PC and limiting any other console support to just certain sports games (like MLB, which wasn't up to Sony but rather the MLB League) and specific live-service titles like Bungie's output in things like Destiny 2.

There is no logical reason to assume, going off their financials from PS division, why they would need to potentially jeopardize their console brand image and marquee status of defining IP, let alone taking on the burden of splitting dev resources among more hardware profiles (meaning less optimizations in similar time frames than if they just focused on their own hardware), by bringing anything that isn't a specific sports title, or certain live-service GaaS titles, to non-PlayStation consoles. Especially considering that in such a case we are at that point talking about PS Studios games, when we do not see the equivalent from XGS titles going to platforms other than Xbox & PC, or certain Nintendo games going anywhere else but Nintendo platforms.

There is no financial situation where Sony would be forced to compromise their console's brand image and selling power by doing such a thing, no wider long-term industry-related situation either (before you say "chip shortages!", they can pay for priority and figure out new product ideas that still keep vertical integration within their own specific hardware line, increasing revenue and profit potentials and retaining independence). So it's rather easy to figure "how much more" they will go multiplatform, you only need to look at the actual trends on their end and be honest about their market position and division results. Which, when you do so, should be easy enough to realize that multiplatform support will very likely remain PS & PC, PC Day 1 only for certain live-service GaaS titles, and Xbox (maybe Nintendo) support only for select sports games and GaaS titles. IF Sony happen to purchase another major publisher who has key IP established on, say, Nintendo, then their multiplatform support would probably extend to retaining those games on such a platform, perhaps with some timing of release changes depending on any internal developments.

I already said 40 for a yr gold. The cheapest possible. Unless you know a cheaper way to get it? I have asked you this no?

No, your numbers were based on misinformation, and don't even come near to the cheapest possible way of getting a yr of GP. Therefore, are just the same speculation (albeit low) as everyone else's

25 million people would not be paying for Gold, however. Your calculations are wrong because you're assuming every GP subscriber has converted from Gold, but if that's the case then XBLG subs would be near zero if you take typical install base > subscriber base ratios into account which we can see from PlayStation and Switch.

Now, we don't know what rate of XBLG subs have converted to GPU; it's probably more than 50% but it's definitely not near 100%. Which means you have some amounts of people on GP who are paying month-to-month, but likely aren't paying for the entire year. Then you have others who might be on a free trail and don't sub afterwards, others still who are using MS Reward points to more or less get months for free, etc. Also, in certain territories GP/GPU subscription rates are a lot lower, India for example is one such place.

So no I'm still rather confident in those numbers from the other thread; if those were based on misinformation then you're basically saying not just the article, but several of the websites used that track market data, and even Sony and Nintendo's own fiscal results WRT services, are also misinformation. I did say the calculations weren't perfect because it's extremely difficult to line all that data up in a simple timeline/timeframe, some results have to be extrapolated from guessimates that are reasonable enough etc. But realistically I don't think those calculations in the other thread (particularly the last ones we came up to) are that far off from where GP annual revenue actually sits.
 
Last edited:

ClosBSAS

Member
so again...as a gamer...why do i care if its sustainable for the devs or not? all i care about are my games...so fuck it. its about time we get some pro consumer shit in this industry full of ripoffs.
 
Top Bottom