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[Drizzlehell]

Let's preface this with a statement that I don't care about console war arguments. This thread is bound to eventually devolve into that stupid shit but for those of you interested in giving a genuine answer, know that it's a genuine question that I'm asking because my knowledge about this stuff is very surface level and I'm looking to get a layman's perspective here. I have no patience to sit around and read pages upon pages of forum threads and articles on Business Insider about this so I'm just connecting dots here.

All I know is this: Microsoft has a bit of a history of chasing trends and investing in their own versions of whatever dumb shit is popular at the time, only for it to fail miserably. Just off the top of my head, I can remember Games for Windows, Kinect, or the entire Xbox One launch which damn near killed the brand, but the biggest case study is when they tried to cut that slice of game streaming pie by launching Mixer and then investing millions to get Ninja and Shroud to shill for it. And then it crashed an burned.

And now they're pouring so much resources into Game Pass, acquisition deals, and all that crap, but they're spending so much money on this and all I'm ever hearing is how it will take them years to recoup these investments, or how a subscription model is unsustainable in the long run because games aren't cheap to make and you need those initial sales to break even. I'm not at all surprised that Sony doesn't put their heavy hitters on PS Plus on day one, even for Premium subscribers. Those are the money makers that need guaranteed sales in the opening weeks. You put that stuff in a subscription service at least a year later because then it makes more sense to have it there as an incentive after you get those initial sales out of the way. And I know that papa Phil keeps saying in interviews that they're doing great and that GP is a money printing machine but come on. When did a corporate figure head ever tried to sell you anything that wasn't snake oil. He will never say anything that could hurt the stock prices and piss off investors.

My main concern here is that one day we're gonna wake up to the news that Microsoft pulled the plug with some bullshit corporate statement apologizing to everyone, because they've had enough of Phil Spencer and Game Pass because it never made them any money. And then all of that blood, sweat, and tears (and money) that you invested in on your Xbox account is gonna go down the drain, just like when it did on GFWL. Just like it did with Mixer.

Now I begrudgingly click the "post" button because I can already see those first responses accusing me of being a sony shill or whatever. Curiosity killed a cat, I guess.

 

[reksveks]

ABK is an extremely profitable business, Mixer never was.

 

[Roxkis_ii]

Edit:Changed my mind.

 

[feynoob]

It's not guaranteed that most business are profitable. Some are, while others are a net loss.

It's like a gamble. sometimes being late or early to the market can affect the outcome of your business.

ABK is profitable, because their IPs are huge seller. Gamepass is the future, so it makes sense for MS to invest in that model. Cloud is the same too.

Think of it like VR. It's nichie right now, but Sony is spending billions investing in that market, when they could use that money expanding their gaming business.

 

[feynoob]

Couldn't the same be said about Nokia before Microsoft came into the picture?

iOS and android killed Nokia. Even without MS, Nokia wouldn't have been able to keep up with these two.

 

[mdkirby]

I’ve always really struggled to see how they get gamespass profitable. It’s expensive to run, it’s expensive to licence third party games to it, especially day one titles, marketing is also expensive, developing first party titles is very expensive. Even excluding the cost of the acquisitions it’s barely profitable. If you throw in what will it be after acti? 95bn ish? Whilst taking on all the staff for those studios. Longer term it also programs an entire generation of gamers to NEVER buy games on xbox. Right now it’s a mixed bag, it’s hurting game purchases but also providing marketing and mindshare for those games and there’s plenty of gamers outside of gamespass. 5-10 years from now all the 13 year olds playing now will have always just had all their games “for free” they won’t be buying games. So I really don’t see how it doesn’t crumble under its own weight never mind recouping the crazy cost of the acquisitions.

Their ai investments whilst currently openAi is burning through cast at a crazy rate I do expect to flip to being very profitable and in turn profitable for microsoft.

 

[ShadowNate]

Wow, Mixer. That's a blast from the past. What a fantastic flop.

That. nobody. and I couldn't stress that more. saw. coming.

 

[ManaByte]

The fantasy that MS is exiting the console business that some people have needs to be classified as Xbox Derangement Syndrome.

 

[RoboFu]

Here is my understanding of it all…

It’s all about investors and stock prices. No one at MS (or whatever company) will be there in the long run. They want to bring up the stock to make investors happy. One good way to do that is simply just to show you are firmly into a market even if there is really never a return on the actual thing that was purchased.

so basically a billion dollar investment drives stock interest which in turn drives dividends and the ceos yearly bonus. They don’t really care about 20 - 40 years from now but the outcome usually favors the future anyway in the end by at least keeping interest up.

 

[reksveks]

I’ve always really struggled to see how they get gamespass profitable. It’s expensive to run, it’s expensive to licence third party games to it, especially day one titles, marketing is also expensive, developing first party titles is very expensive. Even excluding the cost of the acquisitions it’s barely profitable. If you throw in what will it be after acti? 95bn ish? Whilst taking on all the staff for those studios. Longer term it also programs an entire generation of gamers to NEVER buy games on xbox. Right now it’s a mixed bag, it’s hurting game purchases but also providing marketing and mindshare for those games and there’s plenty of gamers outside of gamespass. 5-10 years from now all the 13 year olds playing now will have always just had all their games “for free” they won’t be buying games. So I really don’t see how it doesn’t crumble under its own weight never mind recouping the crazy cost of the acquisitions.

Their ai investments whilst currently openAi is burning through cast at a crazy rate I do expect to flip to being very profitable and in turn profitable for microsoft.

its arbitrage, in the same way that Prime works.

Give free delivery/discount
- Get more users
- Increase engagement
- Reduce people shopping around.

 

[Roxkis_ii]

iOS and android killed Nokia. Even without MS, Nokia wouldn't have been able to keep up with these two.

They could have hopped on the android train like the current Nokia goes and not lost nearly as much market share as going windows phone.

 

[Drizzlehell]

The fantasy that MS is exiting the console business that some people have needs to be classified as Xbox Derangement Syndrome.

Sure, because I fantasize about my Xbox account getting nuked and me losing all those digital games that I bought for that console.

 

[phil_t98]

they have the money to experiment with things like mixer. if it takes off it can be massive if not they cut their losses.

 

[crackajack]

In worst case MS pulls out and sells to Tencent (or some sheikh or whatever). Unless the market as a whole collapses, every invested billion should be recoverable. So the risk even though enourmos sums seems not that high. And losing billions as business modell is en vogue now for many big companies. Crazy times.
Even if they stay at 40mio customers as their ceiling that's still a lot of customers someone would want.

Even as a loyal Sony fan I can't see how gamepass and the acquisition spree won't show some results later this gen, probably more next gen. For now they still have to suffer through the Xbone failure and PS4 success, lacking any proper momentum, but I can't see how they won't do at least 360 numbers next gen. Starfield probably being the first real test, if big games can pull some numbers.

 

[ManaByte]

Sure, because I fantasize about my Xbox account getting nuked and me losing all those digital games that I bought for that console.

Do you understand the lawsuits MS would face if they tried something like that? Hell, it’d kill the entire company.

 

[Bonfires Down]

And then all of that blood, sweat, and tears (and money) that you invested in on your Xbox account is gonna go down the drain, just like when it did on GFWL. Just like it did with Mixer.

In the extremely unlikely scenario that they give up on Xbox they would still keep the digital store up for a long time to avoid lawsuits, like Nintendo did with Wii U and 3DS. They wouldn’t just remove all access overnight if this is what you’re imagining.

 

[T4keD0wN]

Companies often willingly sacrifice short term profits in order to chase massive long term profits. They will often invest in their long term future, sometimes it pays off eventually, but sometimes it doesnt (like your mixer example). Gamepass is still in its growth phase (this year sounds like a big year for them) and it will likely take some time for it to start paying big dividends, could be a few years, could be decade, but i wouldnt worry about Microsofts wellbeing, they wouldnt be so nice to care for yours. Gamepass is a long-term bet/experiment and if it doesnt pay off already it might a lot in the future.

Tbh, i wouldnt be surprised if gamepass already doesnt make them money as copies sold arent the only metric.
Customers would likely buy less consoles if gamepass didnt exist and that would create a big spiral where people would likely pour less money into their ecosystem by spending less on mtx, they wouldnt buy stuff that isnt on gamepass, advertising to their friends for free. People cant do that if they have no reason to buy their console and gamepass could be that reason for many.

MS taking a 30% cut on everything that is on their store is a big deal, them luring you into their store with gamepass and having you spend more money on other stuff is one of their goals. Another thing to note is that Gamepass also doesnt always give you access to every dlc, so theyll lure you in with gamepass only for you to spend money on dlc.

I believe Sony and Nintendo do the same thing, but with their exlusives. They are meant to lure you into their ecosystem (its just a bonus if they manage to turn a profit) so that youll continue to buy Fortnine skins, FIFA packs and games in their store and not their competitors. They cant collect a 30% cut from things that they havent spent any resources on making if nobody is in their ecosystem, they need a way to get you into it and Microsoft couldnt compete with exclusives so they came up with gamepass.

 

[64bitmodels]

its less about profit these days and more about investors. Even if you don't make money so long as you make your investors happy & grow, it doesn't matter. Like other people said being in a market is probably enough to get dumb investors to buy in and that's the goal MS is shooting for.

And besides, these failures don't seem to affect them too much judging by how they're still one of the richest companies in the world.

IMO when a company gets to a point where they can repeatedly make many failures and yet never fall down from their gigantic money podium, we need to start implementing measures to prevent that because that's how corporate states start.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Do you understand the lawsuits MS would face if they tried something like that? Hell, it’d kill the entire company.

In the extremely unlikely scenario that they give up on Xbox they would still keep the digital store up for a long time to avoid lawsuits, like Nintendo did with Wii U and 3DS. They wouldn’t just remove all access overnight if this is what you’re imagining.

I mean, it's kinda what happened to GFWL. I know that it was eons ago, and it was a much smaller brand compared to current day Xbox, but they really had no qualms about pulling the plug and leaving many games dead in the water. It's only thanks to the generosity of some publishers that they later patched that garbage out of their games to make them playable again but some never did.

Dunno what would be the exact scenario this time since, again, currend day Xbox it's a bit of a different beast, but I wouldn't put it past them to just abandon any support for it and your games' availability deteriorating over time. In the scenario where Xbox would fail, I mean.

 

[Daneel Elijah]

I see it the same way that I see all of Google failed attempts at doing something new. They have money, but fear to be left out of the future and be supplanted by new tech start ups the same way they did it to older companies like IBM and Xerox.
For Xbox specifically they are heavily investing and have made it so their gaming division is linked to their cloud efforts by gamepass and want to do the same for their AI initiatives. At this point they are almost garanteed to continue trying in the gaming market this decade. But the doom and gloom we are seeing about Xbox have a part of truth in it. I believe that Microsoft can end their Xbox division, even if I just said the opposite. It would not be like Google Stadia, where they just abandonned seemingly overnight. But it would be because they recognise that the actual xbox management lied to them about gamepass potential for example. Or assured Microsoft that buying ABK would end their issues and make Xbox profitable immediatly. IF, and I said IF this happends I can see Microsoft exiting the market. But they are way too much in it to do so without a good reason.

The fantasy that MS is exiting the console business that some people have needs to be classified as Xbox Derangement Syndrome.

Part of the problem is that Xbox do not really exist outside the US. They really need to do more marketing in europe in my opinion.
A lot of this "fantasy" is more about Xbox has to get good or get out, and maybe allow someone else to try. At least it is thay way for me.

 

[Ozriel]

Let's preface this with a statement that I don't care about console war arguments. This thread is bound to eventually devolve into that stupid shit but for those of you interested in giving a genuine answer, know that it's a genuine question that I'm asking because my knowledge about this stuff is very surface level and I'm looking to get a layman's perspective here. I have no patience to sit around and read pages upon pages of forum threads and articles on Business Insider about this so I'm just connecting dots here.

All I know is this: Microsoft has a bit of a history of chasing trends and investing in their own versions of whatever dumb shit is popular at the time, only for it to fail miserably. Just off the top of my head, I can remember Games for Windows, Kinect, or the entire Xbox One launch which damn near killed the brand, but the biggest case study is when they tried to cut that slice of game streaming pie by launching Mixer and then investing millions to get Ninja and Shroud to shill for it. And then it crashed an burned.

And now they're pouring so much resources into Game Pass, acquisition deals, and all that crap, but they're spending so much money on this and all I'm ever hearing is how it will take them years to recoup these investments, or how a subscription model is unsustainable in the long run because games aren't cheap to make and you need those initial sales to break even. I'm not at all surprised that Sony doesn't put their heavy hitters on PS Plus on day one, even for Premium subscribers. Those are the money makers that need guaranteed sales in the opening weeks. You put that stuff in a subscription service at least a year later because then it makes more sense to have it there as an incentive after you get those initial sales out of the way. And I know that papa Phil keeps saying in interviews that they're doing great and that GP is a money printing machine but come on. When did a corporate figure head ever tried to sell you anything that wasn't snake oil. He will never say anything that could hurt the stock prices and piss off investors.

My main concern here is that one day we're gonna wake up to the news that Microsoft pulled the plug with some bullshit corporate statement apologizing to everyone, because they've had enough of Phil Spencer and Game Pass because it never made them any money. And then all of that blood, sweat, and tears (and money) that you invested in on your Xbox account is gonna go down the drain, just like when it did on GFWL. Just like it did with Mixer.

Now I begrudgingly click the "post" button because I can already see those first responses accusing me of being a sony shill or whatever. Curiosity killed a cat, I guess.

Why do you people think Xbox has to ‘recoup’ the cost of the Activision purchase and it’s showing up as a $70bn loss on the balance sheets.

Im also not sure what you want anyone to say to you, now you’ve already made your mind up that the likes of GamePass are losing money.

 

[Morrie’s wig shop]

It just comes down to having the money to burn on these types of ventures even though the risk is a known high one.

I though mixer was pretty fucking cool and so simple to just stream or watch someone on your friends list playing something.

My days of just clicking the stream button and titling it Meandering through Skyrim and before you know it there’s like 300 people just watching you walk around Skyrim lol.

 

[skit_data]

Pre-ABK I considered the risk of them leaving as pretty low (Zenimax had financial troubles IIRC so if anything they would rather be a liability in terms of economics) but now I’d say it’s pretty much non-existent due to ABK being able to outweigh pretty large losses.
But you never know, if they somehow manage to screw up ABK to such an extent that they become a liability it will certainly would become a possibilty.

The risky part with at least Activision and Blizzard (don’t know much about King) is the rather extreme reliance on a few key IPs rather than a wider catalogue. Activisions width has decreased significantly as more and more studios get folded into CoD/Blizzards development.
This, I see as a potential risk in case of changing circumstances. CoD and WoW have been going for a while now and if for some reason (loss in quality or external factors like a groundbreaking competitor) they lose large parts of their playerbase it’s going to be rather tough to mitigate that loss due to the sheer size of the playerbase.

TLDR; With the acquisition of ABK I deem it pretty much a straight ”No, they won’t”. But if they somehow fuck ABK up or it gets put in a bad spot economically it would be very very bad for Xbox.

 

[nowhat]

Think of it like VR. It's nichie right now, but Sony is spending billions investing in that market, when they could use that money expanding their gaming business.

I get your point, but I'd argue investing in VR is (an attempt at) expanding their gaming business. Whether it works out remains to be seen.

 

[Godot25]

ABK is already profitable business. They have half of profits that generates entire SIE per year.

Mixer failed because Microsoft moneyhatted big streamers and it still got them nowhere.

So it's really not a good argument.

Microsoft will plug ABK into their ecosystem and they will even increase their profits, because if they will own ABK, they don't need to take 30% platform holder cut from every COD/Overwatch/Diablo transaction on Xbox consoles. So it will be even better for them profits-wise.

 

[Three]

they have the money to experiment with things like mixer. if it takes off it can be massive if not they cut their losses.

The OP's fear is that this is the same as gamepass.

Personally I don't think this will happen. At worst they would just lower the quality like they did with GwG to a point where they are making a profit from people paying for it.

 

[DeltaPolarBear]

It's not guaranteed that most business are profitable. Some are, while others are a net loss.

It's like a gamble. sometimes being late or early to the market can affect the outcome of your business.

ABK is profitable, because their IPs are huge seller. Gamepass is the future, so it makes sense for MS to invest in that model. Cloud is the same too.

Think of it like VR. It's nichie right now, but Sony is spending billions investing in that market, when they could use that money expanding their gaming business.

PSVR is making money. Also Sony did not go all-in. PSVR2 will succed or fail by its own merits, it wouldn't be propped up by money from other departments. That's the difference.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

They purchased rock solid studios that have decades long history of making games. Their is nothing that can fail there.

At worst, they will chicken out of making gamepass best deal in gaming and turn it into a merely good deal in gaming.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Sure, because I fantasize about my Xbox account getting nuked and me losing all those digital games that I bought for that console.

Do you understand the lawsuits MS would face if they tried something like that? Hell, it’d kill the entire company.

Well this is just dumb. You would still have access to those games.

 

[DeltaPolarBear]

They purchased rock solid studios that have decades long history of making games. Their is nothing that can fail there.

There is. The common ground is that all the studios they already own are managed by Microsoft. And the studios that they recently purchased were previously not managed by Microsoft.

Ask EA what happens when a good studio get bought out by bad management.

 

[ManaByte]

I mean, it's kinda what happened to GFWL. I know that it was eons ago, and it was a much smaller brand compared to current day Xbox, but they really had no qualms about pulling the plug and leaving many games dead in the water. It's only thanks to the generosity of some publishers that they later patched that garbage out of their games to make them playable again but some never did.

Dunno what would be the exact scenario this time since, again, currend day Xbox it's a bit of a different beast, but I wouldn't put it past them to just abandon any support for it and your games' availability deteriorating over time. In the scenario where Xbox would fail, I mean.

There’s zero comparison to GFWL and MS deleting the Xbox division.

 

[phil_t98]

The OP's fear is that this is the same as gamepass.

Personally I don't think this will happen. At worst they would just lower the quality like they did with GwG to a point where they are making a profit from people paying for it.

they have said gamepass is profitable at the moment, this could go either way after Activision purchase (if it happens) it could make xbox the place to play COD rather than PS and see huge increases. one of the problems with threads like this when worrying about gamepass there always discount that games are still selling, not as much as before but that's part of the plan. you only have to look at the user numbers that got to play Forza horizon 5 ultimate before the game came to gamepass. any sale goes towards the costs of gamepass and the cost of making the game

 

[SmokedMeat]

Microsoft has pulled the plug on so much shit over the years.

I don’t think they could get away with pulling the plug on Game Pass. It’s just way too big, with so much money invested - it would absolutely kill whatever goodwill they have with their fanbase.

 

[Three]

they have said gamepass is profitable at the moment,

Take it up with the OP. It's in the title.

one of the problems with threads like this when worrying about gamepass there always discount that games are still selling,
not as much as before but that's part of the plan. you only have to look at the user numbers that got to play Forza horizon 5 ultimate before the game came to gamepass. any sale goes towards the costs of gamepass and the cost of making the game

They're not. You can point to some game's player leaderboards and suggest games are selling but if you look at any sales tracker you would see they are not really selling when they're on GP.

 

[Holammer]

Microsoft running a dating site was so weird, or whatever it was.

 

[Touch fuzZy. get BizZay]

100% chance they are doing that

 

[phil_t98]

Take it up with the OP. It's in the title.


They're not. You can point to some game's player leaderboards and suggest games are selling but if you look at any sales tracker you would see they are not really selling when they're on GP.

when you look at sales trackers a lot of them don't track digital sales and digital sales on xbox. its getting harder to track how games are doing. leaderboards fair enough but as they said gamepass is profitable for them at the moment.

 

[Three]

when you look at sales trackers a lot of them don't track digital sales and digital sales on xbox. its getting harder to track how games are doing. leaderboards fair enough but as they said gamepass is profitable for them at the moment.

A lot of them do. NPD does, GSD does. It's a hell of a lot more reliable to track sales than player leaderboard usernames.

Microsoft running a dating site was so weird, or whatever it was.

I'm pretty sure this is a joke but in case it isn't it was a Youtube or twitch like competitor.

 

[phil_t98]

A lot of them do. NPD does, GSD does. It's a hell of a lot more reliable to track sales than player leaderboard usernames.


I'm pretty sure this is a joke but in case it isn't it was a Youtube or twitch like competitor.

when you look at a lot of them they always have *not including digital sales on xbox or Nintendo. it will usually apply to own brand games I think

 

[Ozriel]

I’ve always really struggled to see how they get gamespass profitable. It’s expensive to run, it’s expensive to licence third party games to it, especially day one titles, marketing is also expensive, developing first party titles is very expensive. Even excluding the cost of the acquisitions it’s barely profitable. If you throw in what will it be after acti? 95bn ish?

It doesn’t cost THAT much to license the level of third party content they include in the service. They’re unlikely to have paid more than, say, $30 million for the likes of Outriders and MLB. Most other third party AAA games are months or years old upon inclusion.

Marketing is incremental over their regular Xbox marketing and first party titles still get sold at retail and on Steam, covering development costs.
You shouldn’t put the acquisition costs on Gamepass. Why would you do that?

And with all that, if they’re getting $8 average from 25 million people, that’s $200 million monthly. Easily covers the typical third party content they provide.

Longer term it also programs an entire generation of gamers to NEVER buy games on xbox. Right now it’s a mixed bag, it’s hurting game purchases but also providing marketing and mindshare for those games and there’s plenty of gamers outside of gamespass. 5-10 years from now all the 13 year olds playing now will have always just had all their games “for free” they won’t be buying games. So I really don’t see how it doesn’t crumble under its own weight never mind recouping the crazy cost of the acquisitions.

You forget that in this scenario, Gamepass revenue skyrockets. Which is pretty much what they want.

GamePass has been a thing since 2018 and still customers haven’t been conditioned not to pay for big games that aren’t coming to the service. Any Xbox user than wants to play Street Fighter 6, FIFA, Madden etc will pay for them as usual.

 

[Three]

when you look at a lot of them they always have *not including digital sales on xbox or Nintendo. it will usually apply to own brand games I think

No, not on xbox. Some Nintendo games, yes.

 

[Ozriel]

They're not. You can point to some game's player leaderboards and suggest games are selling but if you look at any sales tracker you would see they are not really selling when they're on GP.

Sea of Thieves sold 6 million on Steam despite being on Gamepass. Forza Horizon 4 sold millions there, too. Even the most conservative estimates for Grounded sales on Steam have it at 2+ million sales on Steam.

Forza Horizon 5 outsold Ratchet Rift Apart despite being on the market for much less time…and also being a GamePass title.

Retail doesn’t end with Xbox console.

 

[phil_t98]

No, not on xbox. Some Nintendo games, yes.

wasnt there a thread a few months back that more people with a ps5 prefer physical games and xbox prefer digital?

 

[Thirty7ven]

wasnt there a thread a few months back that more people with a ps5 prefer physical games and xbox prefer digital?

Sales splits that include digital have shown the slight difference in digital vs physical on both systems to have a very slim impact on the splits.

What’s happening right now is Xbox becoming a gamepass machine, and PS5 is what’s keeping the market healthy for premium releases on console. If Xbox was in PlayStation shoes in terms of market share, third party publishes would be in trouble on consoles.

 

[phil_t98]

Sales splits that include digital have shown the slight difference in digital vs physical on both systems to have a very slim impact on the splits.

What’s happening right now is Xbox becoming a gamepass machine, and PS5 is what’s keeping the market healthy for premium releases on console. If Xbox was in PlayStation shoes in terms of market share, third party publishes would be in trouble on consoles.

and third party publishers still put games on PS+ and gamepass eventually. PS always sold more consoles so will always have bigger sales on that device. things could change in the future who knows

 

[Thirty7ven]

and third party publishers still put games on PS+ and gamepass eventually. PS always sold more consoles so will always have bigger sales on that device. things could change in the future who knows

Subs have proven to be a great way to extend the lifespan of a videogame. Gamepass approach of day 1 games has trained Xbox audience to wait for games to come to gamepass.

Xbox is gamepass right now. Ironically enough, the bigger the market share Xbox takes from PlayStation, the smaller the audience gets for premium game releases.

You don’t have to consider that a bad thing, but it is a thing.

 

[Black_Stride]

Is this a rehash of the Microsoft leaving the gaming industry thread...............noting that Microsoft have been in Gaming since the 80s.

Gaming is one of the fastest growing tech industries.......more big corpos are trying to join than leave.
If anything at this point Microsoft should be looking 10 or 15 years into the future, just like Sony are buying up GaaS studios today thinking about the future.........they[MS] could burn 70 billion dollars today while planning to make that all back over the course of the next 15 years.
If their plan works, Gamepass will be the defacto Game Subscription/Game Streaming service.
I know people who call PS+E(PSNow) Gamepass for Playstation......even if PSNow actually came first.

Even if they stopped making consoles, they would maintain Xbox Live and Gamepass at the very least.


P.S Thinking about Mixer......those Beam fuckers made a killing selling to MS.....who then sold it to Facebook[Meta]

Look at these lanky fuckers.....sold MS a dud and they knew it, they knew it......well I guess its still going strong with Facebook Gaming......or is it?

 

[Three]

Sea of Thieves sold 6 million on Steam despite being on Gamepass. Forza Horizon 4 sold millions there, too. Even the most conservative estimates for Grounded sales on Steam have it at 2+ million sales on Steam.

Forza Horizon 5 outsold Ratchet Rift Apart despite being on the market for much less time…and also being a GamePass title.

Retail doesn’t end with Xbox console.

I don't want to derail the thread. Just look at actual sales trackers please and show me the games selling, I don't want to get into sales estimates from steam reviews, when you can just look at NPD which includes steam sales.

It's funny you're going back to 5 years ago when gamepass had far fewer users and day one was only just started that year.


Comparing FH5 to R&C is the worst of them all. As if that is some massive accomplishment. A game on 3 platforms with big install base vs R&C launching on 1 platform near platform launch where install base is really low. I would absolutely expect it to sell more even if it weren't but you're clutching at straws there.

 

[Three]

wasnt there a thread a few months back that more people with a ps5 prefer physical games and xbox prefer digital?

Not really but I expect it to be a higher percentage of sales on xbox due to Series S sales but again the sales trackers include digital sales on xbox so this is irrelevant. The digital sales are counted already.

 

[phil_t98]

Subs have proven to be a great way to extend the lifespan of a videogame. Gamepass approach of day 1 games has trained Xbox audience to wait for games to come to gamepass.

Xbox is gamepass right now. Ironically enough, the bigger the market share Xbox takes from PlayStation, the smaller the audience gets for premium game releases.

You don’t have to consider that a bad thing, but it is a thing.

Well we can see when later this year we get Forza and star field and then judge the quality of them games