• 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.

[Xbox Wire] Play Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Day One Game Pass

BigLee74

Member
Well, that’s a nice little 60 saving (not that I have minded paying for Call Of Duty because it gets a lot of playtime). 😃
 

Mr Moose

Member
79kq.gif
 

OverHeat

« generous god »
They should have done this at the beginning of a console generation to sway players from others platform
 
Wonder if they will take a cost hit on that or announce new tier pricing during the event.

If it's during the event, they better be smart and do it between some big pieces of good news. That way most people don't even notice it or it won't register as a shock.

Sony kind of did that at E3 2013 (damn I miss E3 😭) when announcing paid online for PS+; right after they did the price reveal that basically destroyed Xbox One massively, and the PS4 price reveal was them closing out their conference. MS already beginning to self-destruct from May that year only made the impact stronger (and the PS+ paid online announcement even less of an issue).

I don't think Microsoft will have as strong of factors at play for them as Sony did back then, but if they have some really amazing new game (that's not DOOM; maybe put DOOM before the price hike tho) to reveal (and a real reveal, i.e there needs to be gameplay not just CGI), they better use that to close out their show after announcing the GP price hike (& other changes).

As a general rule you should always show people why something is worth potentially paying more for, and do it with something related in the same space, preferably right after showing a price increase for something. That's why the PS4 $399 worked so well after the PS+ paid online announcement. It's why, IMO, the movie bonuses announced like a week after that huge price hike on PS+ didn't work much at all; not only was it way after the 'bad' news (giant PS+ price increase), the benefit had NOTHING to do with video games!
 

Probably good numbers from Brad here, but that's also assuming what Microsoft's expectations are. They could see it as a loss leader to get a certain about of subs. We'll never know their true numbers. I wonder how many PC subs this creates. That's probably the best value assuming it stay at $10 a month.
 

Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
This is such a bad move financially lmao.

As a gamer? Shit yeah why not!? But when you have one of the biggest selling IPs every year and want to flush a bunch of actual purchased copies down the drain to bump gamepass metrics? Yeesh.

I’m not a marketing analyst or some kind of numbers guru but this can’t be a move that will net them more profit.

Luckily I’m the consumer so this is a win for me lol.
 
Wait wait wait... When was BO5 released?
While it wasn't a numbered entry, Black Ops Cold War was the fifth Black Ops game. It even had a Black Ops V logo during the first days it launched lol, so it seems that was supposed to be the name before they changed it for whaterver reason.
 
Good to see cold shower from Matt, really.

Nobody will ditch their current platform for CoD, but it could bump the service a bit like a last hurrah.
It was inevitable that the upcoming cod along with past titles would end up on gamepass, on top with an increase in gamepass prices to make up for the potential loss of revenue, that would come with giving the game free on the service (the price increase is pending, but it's almost definitely on the cards).

But, if the needle didn't move the day that the acquisition was announced as having gone through, given the fact that gamers expected cod to drop on gamepass following the acquisition eventually, It's doubtful that the needle will move now. If subscriber numbers didn't surge and Xbox consoles didn't start flying off the shelves en masse that day and the 7 months preceding that date, it won't move now.

Those who bought the game on playstation, will just continue to do so and playstation users won't all of a sudden start mass migrating to Xbox due to cod. If it didn't happen already, it's probably not ever happening. Maybe they'll gain around 500k to 1 million gamepass subs(and that's an optimistic number).
 
Last edited:
COD about to lose a TON of revenue.

It's a bit of a dangerous game for MS at this point. If they do this, and the revenue takes a heavy hit, AND Game Pass doesn't see a huge sustained surge in subscription revenue, it can have some big implications.

Even aside from Game Pass specifically, I'm talking more in terms of that situation working against Microsoft in ever acquiring another major gaming publisher. Regulators could look at that drop in COD revenue, combined with the continued drop in Xbox revenue (M&A revenue removed from figures), and the closure of several acquired studios etc., as evidence of Microsoft's acquisitions hurting the market. As in, hurting the market's revenue stability, growth prospects, and job security for employees, specifically within the console gaming segment.

And that would basically work against them hard in ever buying another major gaming publisher (at least in the console segment of the market, but potentially others) for a very long time. Why would regulators continue enabling M&As that could be argued are shrinking a portion of the market in real revenue? Plus keep in mind, investors & shareholders would be thinking the same thing, so even among them there'd be increased resistance in MS buying more big publishers (especially if those investors have shares in those publishers as well).

PC Game Pass was the fastest grower at one time, but I think it stagnated along with the rest of Game Pass. But yeah......the question as to how this impacts PC Game Pass is the real question here. I expect if COD does well on GP then MS will announce "growth" but not numbers.

If that happens it will have to be frustrating to some folks. I mean it's COD, it's not some two-bit no-name indie. If any game would be expected to boost GP subs enough so MS could confidently report numbers with the growth, it would be COD.

The peaks & valleys Xbox sees in Game Pass based on key software launches is not like what other subscriptions have with new content launches, is their core issue. Whether or not they can solve for this long-term is the question.

Only way they could is if they actually realized that "one AAA game a quarter" dream Phil was gushing about years ago. But do MS have any strategy to manifest that? Maybe yes, maybe no.

I mean they shut down studios like Tango who could've helped with variety & AA content; OTOH they apparently did that to move up development of games like Fallout 5, which is AAA and would be a big mover especially given the show's been well-received.

That type of cadence would be the only way to truly solve the issue around retention rates and sustaining high sub numbers the whole year. It's also the only way something like Game Pass could in theory actually start pulling away users from platforms like PlayStation, which don't do Day 1 in PS+ for their big AAA releases and (so far) don't have other options for accessing new games a bit cheaper.

"Bit" is the key word there; I don't think MS ever intended GP to be for the super-frugal, super price-conscious casual and mainstream gamers. They probably want a healthily-sized block of core gamers who want to maximize their spending, but otherwise want to do a lot of spending. MS just wants a good chunk of that spending to shift towards a model where they get a bigger cut of the profits, hence Game Pass. Long as they have that block of core subscribers, they wouldn't care so much about frugal spenders at the low-end tiers who might be more willing to drop in & out (heavy churn rates).

However right now MS don't have that block of core subs which is big enough, because a lot of those would-be subscribers are probably on stacked GP subs they got for very cheap years ago. Meanwhile the current month-to-month model option is too broad and covers too many tiers (preferably would want to remove that for the higher tiers and go for locked-in multi-month/year subs as their options).

So how long does it take them to actually get that required cadence? A year? Two? Five? Ten? Never? Their release cadence and consistency so far doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, they'll have to work overtime to change that.
 

RickMasters

Member
No mention of new CoD specific tier either, here we go.


I strain think they are working some next higher tier, that will include battle passes for all their games. Maybe throw in WoW while they are at it and make a sub to that game part of this new sub…. Which may aswell include ubi+.


Could you imagine a tier that included subs and battle passes for everything from COD to Elder scrolls online, fallout76, overeatch sea of theives, etc? MS have a lot of live service games, why not make a sub that I ntegrates osses for all of them at a higher price. That would make GPU the middle tier.
 

RickMasters

Member
My friends are gonna be so pumped to hear this. Had to share the article on my Facebook earlier today.


Can just spend the money on battle passes and maybe a few skins….. I’d really like a GI Joe cross over. I can’t lie, I’d love a cobra commander skin for my character in COD. 😅


Will be nice to dip into some of them older CODs too when they wind up on gamepass. I skipped a few of them.
 

j0hnnix

Member
Unsure if you guys do not know but I got an alert that Blops6 is day one on Game pass. Day 2 on PSNow :p source: Phil Spencers Pug.
 

Sanepar

Member
They are indeed all-in on Game Pass, moreso than ever. I'm still sort of waiting for the big moment where their Game Pass plan pays off for them and becomes industry standard. It just seems like that's never really happened for them, and they've struggled to keep subscribers sticky. Like many others, I subscribe for something big, then unsub a month later. Sometimes the gap is more than a year. If anything it seems like they are just desperate for it to work, and if CoD doesn't validate investing so much in Game Pass, what will? The answer I think is probably 'nothing'. So then the question becomes, a few years from now, do they keep Game Pass around, but eventually cede defeat and walk back the whole Day One thing for all first-party games.
I hope this never happens but MS is all full force to enforce subscription as the standard way for consumers. Thx god gamers never embraced this. Cod is their last hope.
Ms pipe dream is to offer only rent by cloud in the future.
 

CuNi

Member
Weird that they just drop this instead of first porting all the older CODs.
Care more about the old ones than BLOPS6.
 

NickFire

Member
Right on Xbox.com:
6e3DYQs.jpeg
I'm guessing everyone can stop speculating over a possible new tier for COD. I don't think they'd be advertising it with a join button if they were making any big changes before it comes out. A simple price increase could be in the cards still, but I'm guessing they are going all in and keeping things stable throughout the year. Sticking with the fastball and going all in.
 

nordique

Member
They're at 6 now? Man I feel old. Don't people just play Warzone for free now? Do people still care about regular CoD?

I admit I’m still a single player sucker so i tend to get them almost annually and then sell them after beating the short campaigns

This year I can just game pass it which is sweet for me and others. Who knows if it’s sweet for Microsoft
 


Of course there's nothing stopping them from going back on their promise; the EC and even CMA both said partial foreclosure on console was perfectly fine by them.

Free Game Pass perks (though without going Day 1 for the full game itself into the service) should've been a no-brainer though. Sony need to start doing that for their own GAAS titles on PS consoles via PS+ considering PC players get online for free. Maybe this is what will push them into doing that.

Probably good numbers from Brad here, but that's also assuming what Microsoft's expectations are. They could see it as a loss leader to get a certain about of subs. We'll never know their true numbers. I wonder how many PC subs this creates. That's probably the best value assuming it stay at $10 a month.

Not unless they leak in another email 😉😁
 
Last edited:

cormack12

Gold Member
I thought the whole point of the lawsuit was that MS couldn't put it on Gamepass? And then the my ended up selling off streaming rights or summat
 
Top Bottom