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Honest Question: Do you believe Xbox Series could have been competitive this generation without gamepass?

Punished Miku

Punished Miku

Gold Member
In a few years maybe so. The hardware is there. The first party is not there yet, but there's so many acquisitions that its coming ... eventually. Gamepass buys them time every 2 weeks. Just literally can't even play it all. Hard to be mad.

If they add first party on top in 2 years its going to be a very competitive proposition.
 
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93xfan

93xfan

Banned
For the first 2 years, probably not.

Still, I love my BC and the way they’re preserving Halo through MCC, so it’s my go to.

Love playing;
SSX3
MGS3
Lost Odyssey
Beyond Good and Evil
Rayman Origins
Perfect Dark (n64 remaster)

and many, many more. Sony at least is starting to do better with BC, but has a long way to go
 
theStartupSound

theStartupSound

Member
I would have bought it cause I really liked its design and it plays almost all games, I‘m interested in. But I think for the mass market it has to have game pass (or even better: a significant lower price than the PS5) to have the chance to be the first choice as FIFA/GTA/COD/… machine.
 
SenjutsuSage

SenjutsuSage

Banned
Because of Bethesda with Starfield, Elder Scrolls 6, hell yes.

But Series S plays a big role, as does Game Pass in helping to maintain some element of momentum until those Bethesda juggernauts drop.

They would be competitive without Game Pass, but with Game Pass + Bethesda and not even factoring in Activision Blizzard yet, that's game changing.
 
Lognor

Lognor

Banned
No.

Xbox is game pass. Game pass is xbox. If they ever do away with game pass it'll be a blood bath.

That just goes to show you what an absolute game changer game pass is. It has made xbox a success again. Really cool to see. I wouldn't have bought a series x without game pass being a thing. I hadn't owned an Xbox since the og. Xbox is back
 
B

Beechos

Member
Yeah they def could be competive bethesda and the upcoming activision are huge gets. It prob like the japanese equivalent of someone buying capcom and sega.

If anything they would prob be making more money buy selling their games at retail, since gamepass is still in its growth phase.

Right now with gamepass/xcloud theyre trying to expand their userbase by multitudes. From there once they have the userbase they can control the terms for even more favorable gamepass contracts
from devs/pubs and jack the price up.

Its crazy how gaming seems like its going toward the cable/sat pay tv model and pay tv is going the a la carte route that gaming used to be.
 
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Deerock71

Deerock71

Member
I'll answer that question with a question: without Game Pass, would Microsoft have had enough money to buy up EA as WELL as Bethesda and Actblizz?
Thats Terrifying GIF by reactionseditor
 
The_Mike

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
I believe that they would still be competitive, it's just that game pass is a real killer service.

Xbox one generation was shit, but still had a user base. Of course not as high as the PlayStation, but they still had a big playerbase.

I went to pc instead of jumping this gen, but after my GPU turned faulty, and with the prices of the gpus today I jumped back on my one x after playing a little game pass on my pc, and the catalogue between these two platforms are like day and night.

I still love my pc, and I'd pick freedom and keyboard and mouse any day over any wallet garden, but being a person that can't toss out 800 euro for a GPU, an Xbox Series X is just cheaper.

I know what pc brings, but atm it's just too expensive. And with having my gf, going digital, sharing games with game pass, and being able to just buy one digital game and make us play simultaneously is just so much cheaper.

Without gamepass i would just suck it up and have bought a new GPU, but with game pass there's just so much content for so little money.

Game pass is not make or break for xbox, but together with series s it's a cheap entry price no pc or console manufacturer can compete against.
 
Guilty_AI

Guilty_AI

Member
They're developing their strategy around gamepass so of course they need it.
Its like asking if the Switch would be sucessful without nintendo games.
 
64bitmodels

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Was gonna say no, but thinking it over.... yes. If gamepass didn't exist then they'd have nearly 0 value proposition over Sony or Nintendo, and they'd have to purely rely on their exclusives. Theyd be pumping out first parties and exclusive deals in a desperate attempt to compete with Sony.
That being said, if gamepass didn't exist Xbox would probably be 6 feet under by now so eh...
 
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Matsuchezz

Matsuchezz

Member
Animated GIF


Nope, the quality it is not there just yet.

Xbox's joy boy, "mr promises", "mr wait 'till next year", "mr we have never been in a better position" has been promising the stars and the moon since forever and under delivered. Gamepass gave Xbox a great push. Because the games were simple not there, to appeal the great audience they created the best deal in gaming. As we all know Series X is not their flagship console, series S is.
So, I think that is a winning combo for people who just want to game no matter what. And then MS went ahead and bought large Publishers because they were tired of being 3rd 20 years straight. So they have sweetened the deal. Without Bethesda and Activision, GP would be an average service.

Now they can compete with brute force and higher quality products.
 
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Hohenheim

Hohenheim

Member
Without Game Pass they would probably do like Sony and have a lot more focus on exclusive content. With all their studios, and if Activision/Blizz goes through, that would mean the only option for folks to play CoD would be a 60/70$ purchase to MS soon.
So purely based on that: yeah, I think they would be fine.

But I doubt the Activision/Blizzard deal would go through if this was their business model, so a realistic scenario would be more complicated.

I'm very happy with the fact that the "major players" have quite different business models though. And judging by the development the last couple of years, the real "winner" in all this is PC platform, which undoubly gains a lot beacuse of MS's strategy. If MS had followed in Sonys footsteps I doubt we would see every of their major titles on PC, which again would probably keep Sony's stuff off the platform as well.
 
Belthazar

Belthazar

Member
Lbr, it hardly is even with gamepass, so no.

Also, without the prospect of turning the gaming business into a subscription focused endeavor with them at the forefront of this model, Microsoft would've pulled the plug a long while ago.
 
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ChorizoPicozo

ChorizoPicozo

Member
So far? No way in hell.

In fact, is thanks to Game Pass Xbox is still around/relevant.

If you just take Game Pass out of the equation, Xbox would be as dry as an 80-year-old coochie.
 
Haggard

Haggard

Banned
Nope

Microsoft has still not climbed out of the black hole that is their first party offerings which they dug during the x1 era and the fruits of their last 80 billion in studio acquisitions are still some time away.
 
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64bitmodels

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Matsuchezz said:
Xbox's joy boy, "mr promises", "mr wait 'till next year", "mr we have never been in a better position" have been promising the stars and the moon since forever and under delivered. Gamepass gave Xbox a great push. Because the games were simple not there, to appeal the great audience they created the best deal in gaming. As we all know Series X is not their flagship console, series S is.
Click to expand...
Gamepass encourages them to not bother with first party because why make games for your console when you can give someone a service that lets them play all of the OTHER games for 15 bucks a month?
I like gamepass, i truly do. But Xbox building the brand off of it instead of making it a simple compliment to first party doesn't work. it will destroy the brand even more in the long run because when other companies start up their streaming service, Xbox will have nothing to compete with since they don't release many first party games. Not to mention that the reason Gamepass also gets a lot of cheap games is because a lot of companies are going to naturally charge Xbox more than Playstation since they're third place. It's an uphill battle for Xbox that wouldn't exist if they prioritized first party which would in turn make their console more popular
 
DarkMage619

DarkMage619

$MSFT
64bitmodels said:
Gamepass encourages them to not bother with first party because why make games for your console when you can give someone a service that lets them play all of the OTHER games for 15 bucks a month?
I like gamepass, i truly do. But Xbox building the brand off of it instead of making it a simple compliment to first party doesn't work. it will destroy the brand even more in the long run because when other companies start up their streaming service, Xbox will have nothing to compete with since they don't release many first party games. Not to mention that the reason Gamepass also gets a lot of cheap games is because a lot of companies are going to naturally charge Xbox more than Playstation since they're third place. It's an uphill battle for Xbox that wouldn't exist if they prioritized first party which would in turn make their console more popular
Click to expand...
What are you talking about? MS owns companies like Bethesda and soon Activision. You realize other companies like Ubisoft and EA already have sub services and they don't hold a candle to anything Xbox is doing. How will Xbox suddenly have nothing to compete with? Xbox is in 'third place' with the traditional console selling model, a model they acknowledged they aren't focusing on anymore. They are finding success NOT doing what everyone else is doing and that is a good thing.
 
ToTTenTranz

ToTTenTranz

Banned
You mean if instead of throwing money down Gamepass if they had invested more heavily in upsizing their 1st party studios and buying franchises?

Probably no. Microsoft isn't doing great with most of their 1st parties.
 
64bitmodels

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
DarkMage619 said:
What are you talking about? MS owns companies like Bethesda and soon Activision. You realize other companies like Ubisoft and EA already have sub services and they don't hold a candle to anything Xbox is doing. How will Xbox suddenly have nothing to compete with? Xbox is in 'third place' with the traditional console selling model, a model they acknowledged they aren't focusing on anymore. They are finding success NOT doing what everyone else is doing and that is a good thing.
Click to expand...
They don't hold a candle because they don't have a console like Sony does. But Sony's clearly pushing up PlayStation Plus as an alternative and look what's happening. They're getting the heavy hitters like Assassin's creed, Yakuza, (keep in mind they're getting the ENTIRE yakuza series instead of just a rotation of the remakes + Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 3-6) and Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

They have the more popular console, so companies are running to try and immediately get their best games on their service, likely charging less than how much it did for MS to get them on Game pass.

Xbox will still have a MASSIVE amount to compete with... if their first parties can produce enough games to keep the service fresh. Seeing how we're going to go an ENTIRE YEAR with 0 new first party content, i think you can see how that's working out.
Until they can get the gears turning like Sony currently does with their well-oiled exclusive machine, The subscription wars will be an uphill battle for Microsoft.
 
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