• 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.

EXCLUSIVE | Microsoft plans Starfield launch for PlayStation 5

Gojiira

Member
I think all 4 games they've chosen must've been relatively easy ports, it makes more sense that way.

I still don't know why they don't release Halo multiplayer on PS.. I bet they think it will do too much damage to the "brand" but really, its a multiplayer game, and for those you need the biggest amount of players you can get.
Yeah I think the Master Chief Collection should have been a no brainer, its had all the sales its ever gonna get on Xbox but the package itself could offer a lot of tempting value for Playstation owners… And lets be real Halo is dead, ever since Bungie left its been on a downward trajectory so going multiplat wouldnt damage the brand any more than the devs have.
If they had brought that and Infinite over, I think that would have generated a lot of goodwill, maybe not among the Xboys but well this is what happens when you dont buy the games you play lol
And yeah for sure,they could really do with a injection of new players.
 

Taycan77

Member
You seem really concerned. Why not let the people paid to manage Xbox worry about all that?
As an informed consumer who's followed this industry for decades I am perfectly happy to let Xbox (well, Microsoft) worry about all of the above. With my experience I can also foresee challenges ahead, I expect many other gamers can too. Serious damage has been inflicted to an already struggling Xbox brand that will have repercussions on the viability of their hardware division and retail presence. This will have knock-on effects on Gamepass growth and retail software sales. This will only lead to an acceleration of their 3rd Party plans rather than the cautious approach some are still espousing.

Why IS this thread still open?
The report stated Starfield on PS5 is being planned after the forthcoming DLC is released for Xbox/PC. Nothing in Xbox's official communications or insider leaks suggests a change in plans. I've no doubt Spencer and co already have tentative dates for the next 12-18 months, with many of these ports already underway. Corporate PR attempts to control the narrative to maximise sales, whether that's, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, or anyone else. I'd like to think consumers are a little more savvy than to think nothing is in the works until Microsoft (or whoever) releases an official press release. This is the nature of the industry, projects are often in the works for many years before the public hears about them.
 
Last edited:

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
My feeling is that the time-line probably got pushed up sharply thanks to the financials, leaving Xbox management scrambling to put together a plan before they had all the pieces in place. The reason for the slow response to the PR crisis caused by the leaks is that they had nothing solidly planned out to get signed off-on and present.

To be fair, they've got an immense amount on their plate bringing ABK into the fold. but still, they got caught flat-footed with presumably Satya basically demanding that they start showing immediate gains.
The Satya part definitely goes deeper than that -- which is key but everyone is ignoring it.

Part of Satya's bonuses were tied to Game Pass growth. We now know that Game Pass lost at least 3 million subscribers since January 2022.

After seeing the continuous decline (well before we did), he removed Game Pass growth as a KPI for his executive bonuses and replaced it with "Content & Services Growth". Interestingly, that includes all the Xbox revenue that comes from PlayStation and Nintendo (e.g., ESO, Minecraft, and now COD, etc.).

Now he wants that to grow so he can get more bonuses. And for that to happen, they need to increase their content on those platforms. Satya doesn't care about Game Pass anymore. He is focused on total content & services revenue.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Yeah I think the Master Chief Collection should have been a no brainer, its had all the sales its ever gonna get on Xbox but the package itself could offer a lot of tempting value for Playstation owners… And lets be real Halo is dead, ever since Bungie left its been on a downward trajectory so going multiplat wouldnt damage the brand any more than the devs have.
If they had brought that and Infinite over, I think that would have generated a lot of goodwill, maybe not among the Xboys but well this is what happens when you dont buy the games you play lol
And yeah for sure,they could really do with an injection of new players.
This was my thought right back at the beginning of the meltdown.

MCC has been on GPU since its inception. Nobody is buying it anymore. Just get a few million PlayStation sales and get a bit of coin in the till. I’d expect this to sell more than Grounded and Pentiment together. But maybe MS don’t want these games to sell so they can prove the ‘business decision’ to Nadella is a flawed one. They can say we tried but it didn’t work therefore we won’t carry on.

Bring something (in their opinion) AAA to see if stuff sells - but I think they’re to scared to try that approach in case it really works. I think Phil deep down is Xbox games on Xbox only despite his PR mantra ‘when we all play’

They release Indy day one on PS it’s gonna sell. it’s not gonna sell on Xbox because of the problem they’ve created. Game Pass. But they don’t want to admit they’ve created a monster.
 
Last edited:
The Satya part definitely goes deeper than that -- which is key but everyone is ignoring it.

Part of Satya's bonuses were tied to Game Pass growth. We now know that Game Pass lost at least 3 million subscribers since January 2022.

After seeing the continuous decline (well before we did), he removed Game Pass growth as a KPI for his executive bonuses and replaced it with "Content & Services Growth". Interestingly, that includes all the Xbox revenue that comes from PlayStation and Nintendo (e.g., ESO, Minecraft, and now COD, etc.).

Now he wants that to grow so he can get more bonuses. And for that to happen, they need to increase their content on those platforms. Satya doesn't care about Game Pass anymore. He is focused on total content & services revenue.

He's definitely the one pushing this and not Phil. That makes a huge difference.
 

Ozriel

M$FT
Bring something (in their opinion) AAA to see if stuff sells - but I think they’re to scared to try that approach in case it really works. I think Phil deep down is Xbox games on Xbox only despite his PR mantra ‘when we all play’

They release Indy day one on PS it’s gonna sell. it’s not gonna sell on Xbox because of the problem they’ve created. Game Pass. But they don’t want to admit they’ve created a monster.

If GamePass was such a massive problem for them, you'd have thought they'd have used this business update session to start walking back from it. Instead they're doubling down on the service and reiterating that games will continue to hit the service day 1.
Almost as if forum conjecture is often flawed.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
I guess they want it to be like an Office 365 subscription where the user is so tied into Office (Word / Excel) that they always renew.

The problem with Game Pass as opposed to 365 is that there are often months free trials, the conversion trick, the rewards programme etc where nobody is paying £10.99 a month for GPU. That’s the problem they’ve created. Too much goodwill and to many ways to circumvent having to pay an actual subscription for it.

Every time I spend 35,000 points for 3 months I expect it to say look you are taking the piss here you can’t redeem any more free codes but no it just stacks and stacks.

How are they going to get me, and many more like me, to spend actual money on their service? Are they including me on their 34,000,000 because I’ve never paid a single penny for GPU.
 
Last edited:

Ozriel

M$FT
I guess they want it to be like an Office 365 subscription where the user is so tied into Office (Word / Excel) that they always renew.

The problem with Game Pass as opposed to 365 is that there are often months free trials, the conversion trick, the rewards programme etc where nobody is paying £10.99 a month for GPU. That’s the problem they’ve created. Too much goodwill and to many ways to circumvent having to pay an actual subscription for it.

Lmao, not sure if serious. That’s like popping up to claim everyone on Steam is buying games via key resellers and VPN tricks.

How are they going to get me, and many more like me, to spend actual money on their service? Are they including me on their 34,000,000 because I’ve never paid a single penny for GPU.

If you’re an active user of GamePass, then yes you’re included.
You grinding away at Microsoft rewards is using the system as intended. Xbox gets the money equivalent when you cash in your rewards points.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
I never said everyone but I'm sure thousands upon thousands do the same on Steam yes.

Second point - fair enough 👍
 
Last edited:

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
The Satya part definitely goes deeper than that -- which is key but everyone is ignoring it.

Part of Satya's bonuses were tied to Game Pass growth. We now know that Game Pass lost at least 3 million subscribers since January 2022.

After seeing the continuous decline (well before we did), he removed Game Pass growth as a KPI for his executive bonuses and replaced it with "Content & Services Growth". Interestingly, that includes all the Xbox revenue that comes from PlayStation and Nintendo (e.g., ESO, Minecraft, and now COD, etc.).

Now he wants that to grow so he can get more bonuses. And for that to happen, they need to increase their content on those platforms. Satya doesn't care about Game Pass anymore. He is focused on total content & services revenue.

Well, I've thought for awhile, if you were in Phil Spencer's shoes, how would you justify the fact that the majority of your profit drivers are multi-platform properties that have been bought-in, and run largely as they were?

Minecraft, CoD and all the ABK mobile franchises are likely to represent a huge chunk of annual income going forwards, and obviously performance comparisons will be made with Bethesda and the other former Zenimax studios that are getting pulled into the traditional first-party model and are producing reduced revenue as sources of income outside of Xbox slowly dry up.

I'm not sure how you can present this to C Suite execs who have no particular affinity with gaming in a way that looks favourable to the old platform-first method? Doubly so when its Microsoft, the biggest software company on the planet, meaning that their natural disposition is always that hardware is only a means towards selling more software.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Yeah, thousands. But many games sell in the millions. It’s a relatively small percentage on Steam, and most likely the same for GP.
We might be talking two separate things here and if I've caused the confusion then I'm sorry.

Nobody buys games on Xbox because of Game Pass. If they do it is certainly not in the millions you suggest. People get a free month, play the game they want, then fuck it off or do conversion tricks or rewards.

EDIT I need to make CoD / FIFA / Madden the exceptions due to their nature - sounds like I am contradicting myself but my point still stands. If CoD ever went onto Game Pass nobody on Xbox would buy it.
 
Last edited:

Ozriel

M$FT
We might be talking two separate things here and if I've caused the confusion then I'm sorry.

Nobody buys games on Xbox because of Game Pass. If they do it is certainly not in the millions you suggest. People get a free month, play the game they want, then fuck it off or do conversion tricks or rewards.


I thought it was fairly obvious i was talking about GamePass subscribers. Thats what we were discussing.
i brought up Steam as an analog to highlight that many of these deals aren’t as widespread as you think.

‘Nobody buys games on Xbox because of GamePass’ also doesn’t make sense since we can tell from slowing GP growth that there’s a decent sized contingent of Xbox owners that aren’t interested in subscription services, as echoed by Spencer himself.

It’s clear at this point that GamePass cannibalizes software sales. But twice now you’ve leant into over the top exaggeration. ‘Nobody pays full price for GamePass’ and ‘Nobody buys Games on Xbox’.
 

Ogbert

Member
Starfield isn’t going to launch on PS. Bethesda will provide the exclusive titles like Elder Scrolls 6, that will sit alongside Halo and Gears.

I think it’s titles like Indiana Jones that are up for grabs.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
I thought it was fairly obvious i was talking about GamePass subscribers. Thats what we were discussing.
i brought up Steam as an analog to highlight that many of these deals aren’t as widespread as you think.

‘Nobody buys games on Xbox because of GamePass’ also doesn’t make sense since we can tell from slowing GP growth that there’s a decent sized contingent of Xbox owners that aren’t interested in subscription services, as echoed by Spencer himself.

It’s clear at this point that GamePass cannibalizes software sales. But twice now you’ve leant into over the top exaggeration. ‘Nobody pays full price for GamePass’ and ‘Nobody buys Games on Xbox’.
As its a Starfield thread, do you know how many millions of copies it's sold on Xbox to date?
 
Last edited:

jwaxeman

Member
The Satya part definitely goes deeper than that -- which is key but everyone is ignoring it.

Part of Satya's bonuses were tied to Game Pass growth. We now know that Game Pass lost at least 3 million subscribers since January 2022.

After seeing the continuous decline (well before we did), he removed Game Pass growth as a KPI for his executive bonuses and replaced it with "Content & Services Growth". Interestingly, that includes all the Xbox revenue that comes from PlayStation and Nintendo (e.g., ESO, Minecraft, and now COD, etc.).

Now he wants that to grow so he can get more bonuses. And for that to happen, they need to increase their content on those platforms. Satya doesn't care about Game Pass anymore. He is focused on total content & services revenue.
Last summer Xbox showed us they anticipated having three times the number of GP users they have now by 2026/27. And that was in 2022, before they started counting Xbox Live Gold members as Game Pass Core members. Phil’s testimony indicated they’d be out of business if they didn’t hit goals.

Now sure you can say a lot of that is posturing for the ABK trial, and I’m sure it is. But you can also view starting to shift software on competing hardware as a sign that something did indeed have to give within Microsoft. I think internally a lot of people were frustrated by the money lost trying to compete with Sony rather than the money potentially gained treating Sony as a client. So yeah it’s four games today. A year from now? Well let’s just see.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Yeah I think the Master Chief Collection should have been a no brainer, its had all the sales its ever gonna get on Xbox but the package itself could offer a lot of tempting value for Playstation owners… And lets be real Halo is dead, ever since Bungie left its been on a downward trajectory so going multiplat wouldnt damage the brand any more than the devs have.
If they had brought that and Infinite over, I think that would have generated a lot of goodwill, maybe not among the Xboys but well this is what happens when you dont buy the games you play lol
And yeah for sure,they could really do with a injection of new players.

I've played the MCC to death on my Series S. Fucking love Combat Evolved and Reach.

However, release it on the PS5 and I'll buy it in a heartbeat.
 
Last edited:

Gojiira

Member
This was my thought right back at the beginning of the meltdown.

MCC has been on GPU since its inception. Nobody is buying it anymore. Just get a few million PlayStation sales and get a bit of coin in the till. I’d expect this to sell more than Grounded and Pentiment together. But maybe MS don’t want these games to sell so they can prove the ‘business decision’ to Nadella is a flawed one. They can say we tried but it didn’t work therefore we won’t carry on.

Bring something (in their opinion) AAA to see if stuff sells - but I think they’re to scared to try that approach in case it really works. I think Phil deep down is Xbox games on Xbox only despite his PR mantra ‘when we all play’

They release Indy day one on PS it’s gonna sell. it’s not gonna sell on Xbox because of the problem they’ve created. Game Pass. But they don’t want to admit they’ve created a monster.
Yep exactly, Gamepass cannibalises sales to the point where Gamepass has affected their entire business.
I think your kinda right about Phil, I dont think he is a Xbox games for Xbox players kinda guy, he’s more the ‘I wish Xbox was the only platform’ kinda guy. Just his rhetoric recently about how ‘Xbox is the biggest publisher on PS and NS’….No just no, Sony and Nintendo respectively are…But it shows his attitude, its not even Xbox anyway,its Activision and Zenimax,successes he and Xbox had nothing to do with…
But yeah not bringing over a ‘AAA’ game to test the waters is just dooming the endeavour from the get go unless say a million sales each is considered a success Idk
 

ShaiKhulud1989

Gold Member
give it a year and cloud on mobile will be there big push
Have you looked at Apple's EU rules? Mobile is going nowhere, it was a wild goose chase to begin with.

I think mobile fiasco was actually a stick that broke the camel's back in the end and now we have Xbox slowly going 3rd party. Partly because mobile bet basically died with some creative AppStore thinking on Apple's part.
 
Last edited:

twilo99

Member
Have you looked at Apple's EU riles? Mobile is going nowhere, it was a wild goose chase to begin with.

I think mobile fiasco was actually a stich that broke the camel's back in the end and now we have Xbox slowli going 3rd party. Partly because mobile bet basically died with some creative AppStore thinking on Apple's part.

Yea, mobile is dead as long as Apple is allowed to do what they do…
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
giphy.gif
 

Shut0wen

Member
Have you looked at Apple's EU rules? Mobile is going nowhere, it was a wild goose chase to begin with.

I think mobile fiasco was actually a stick that broke the camel's back in the end and now we have Xbox slowly going 3rd party. Partly because mobile bet basically died with some creative AppStore thinking on Apple's part.
Eu rules go in ms favour of putting gamepass on every mobile device
 

Megatron

Member
This was my thought right back at the beginning of the meltdown.

MCC has been on GPU since its inception. Nobody is buying it anymore. Just get a few million PlayStation sales and get a bit of coin in the till. I’d expect this to sell more than Grounded and Pentiment together. But maybe MS don’t want these games to sell so they can prove the ‘business decision’ to Nadella is a flawed one. They can say we tried but it didn’t work therefore we won’t carry on.

Bring something (in their opinion) AAA to see if stuff sells - but I think they’re to scared to try that approach in case it really works. I think Phil deep down is Xbox games on Xbox only despite his PR mantra ‘when we all play’

They release Indy day one on PS it’s gonna sell. it’s not gonna sell on Xbox because of the problem they’ve created. Game Pass. But they don’t want to admit they’ve created a monster.
Uncharted Legacy if thieves has been on Ps plus extra since its inception. They’ve gotten all the sales they are going to get. Should Sony port it to Xbox?
 

pasterpl

Member
Part of Satya's bonuses were tied to Game Pass growth. We now know that Game Pass lost at least 3 million subscribers since January 2022.
Lots of assumptions with this lost users number. Lots of variables but you like state stuff like this as facts just to trow some negative context.
 
The way I see it is this and I don’t think anyone else has said this.

MICROSOFT doesn’t have the fan base to maximize Profit out of a Triple A exclusive anymore they will be losing money at this point to not put it on PlayStation and they also conditioned their fan base to Gamepass which doesn’t help .
 

Gojiira

Member
I thought it was fairly obvious i was talking about GamePass subscribers. Thats what we were discussing.
i brought up Steam as an analog to highlight that many of these deals aren’t as widespread as you think.

‘Nobody buys games on Xbox because of GamePass’ also doesn’t make sense since we can tell from slowing GP growth that there’s a decent sized contingent of Xbox owners that aren’t interested in subscription services, as echoed by Spencer himself.

It’s clear at this point that GamePass cannibalizes software sales. But twice now you’ve leant into over the top exaggeration. ‘Nobody pays full price for GamePass’ and ‘Nobody buys Games on Xbox’.
Then it would be safer to say that the number who buy versus the number who play by subscription doesnt make up for the cannibalised sales.
And this lack of sizeable number of sales has had a considerable impact on the profit made by Xbox.
Unfortunately I think you misrepresent that ‘decent sized contingent’ of players who dont use GP. If they were a decent number then you would expect at least some games to healthy sales figures but they simply dont, in fact a lot of studios simply dont bother with Xbox at all anymore, the money they get from GP simply doesnt make up for the loss in sales. The only studios contrary to this are companies with Xbox leanings or first party who somehow never have a bad thing to say…
 

RickMasters

Member
Yeah I think the Master Chief Collection should have been a no brainer, its had all the sales its ever gonna get on Xbox but the package itself could offer a lot of tempting value for Playstation owners… And lets be real Halo is dead, ever since Bungie left its been on a downward trajectory so going multiplat wouldnt damage the brand any more than the devs have.
If they had brought that and Infinite over, I think that would have generated a lot of goodwill, maybe not among the Xboys but well this is what happens when you dont buy the games you play lol
And yeah for sure,they could really do with a injection of new players.
Excuse Me Reaction GIF by One Chicago



Infinitys MP plays better than any previous halo though. I have all the halos and play them regular. As much as love halo 3, I quickly miss the sprint feature, along with the power ups of infinity. Infinity also has a better BTB mode.


Meanwhile…. Destiny’s MP is an unbalanced mess that they haven’t been able to get right. The story continues to disappoint, and they have morphed into a company with some of the worst price gouging practices.

While halo has had some missteps at the hands of 343, I’ve Atleast never fealt ripped off by their work…. And I’m saying that as a former destiny die hard. I got burnt out on that game ages ago…. I’m still playing halo tho…. Nuff said….
 

pasterpl

Member
They did. There is no assumption there. Here is an official source.

AcJFMcq.jpg


OOtSyU0.jpg

(source)
You are assuming that all of them stayed and no one unsubscribed. Do you have data confirming this?

Also ignoring things like this;

there are too many variables that we don’t know to stating something as a fact. You based you statement on your own assumptions.
 
You are assuming that all of them stayed and no one unsubscribed. Do you have data confirming this?

Also ignoring things like this;

there are too many variables that we don’t know to stating something as a fact. You based you statement on your own assumptions.

So the fact that MS changed the name of Live Gold to GamePass Core with automatic migration is an assumption now??

Dr Evil Whatever GIF
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
You are assuming that all of them stayed and no one unsubscribed. Do you have data confirming this?

Also ignoring things like this;

there are too many variables that we don’t know to stating something as a fact. You based you statement on your own assumptions.
Yes, they unsubscribed. That is what my post was about -- that 3 million Game Pass subscribers unsubscribed.

What do you think I was talking about?

- Game Pass had 25 million subscribers by January 2022.
- XBLG had 12 million subscribers.
- Microsoft combined Game Pass and XBLG.
- The total would have become 37 million subscribers (25 + 17).
- But the total is now 34 million subscribers.
- That means 3 million people unsubscribed.

That exactly what I said.

Part of Satya's bonuses were tied to Game Pass growth. We now know that Game Pass lost at least 3 million subscribers since January 2022.
 

Gojiira

Member
Excuse Me Reaction GIF by One Chicago



Infinitys MP plays better than any previous halo though. I have all the halos and play them regular. As much as love halo 3, I quickly miss the sprint feature, along with the power ups of infinity. Infinity also has a better BTB mode.


Meanwhile…. Destiny’s MP is an unbalanced mess that they haven’t been able to get right. The story continues to disappoint, and they have morphed into a company with some of the worst price gouging practices.

While halo has had some missteps at the hands of 343, I’ve Atleast never fealt ripped off by their work…. And I’m saying that as a former destiny die hard. I got burnt out on that game ages ago…. I’m still playing halo tho…. Nuff said….
Speak for yourself
 
Top Bottom