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[ToadMan]

You couldn't find a single game out of 500~600 to enjoy for $1? Really? If true then it sounds more like you've fallen out of the hobby entirely and only playing, whichever games you play, to go with the flow and fit-in on neogaf.

Probably right - and yet my Switch, PS and Steam libraries are burgeoning with game purchases from all kinds of genres.

I just don't find the xbox concept of quality games to be appealing and price perception effect confirms that.

The implication of games on GP is that they are cheap games put on the service for cheap people.

Clearly that is unfair based on absolute quality of individual titles and GP has some great ones of course - it's the implied quality of the service itself expressed through pricing, marketing and the zeitgeist around it.

But that's all about individual consumer bias and perception.

It's also clearly not a sustainable solution for this industry and since I like a lot of the products, I'm also happy enough to choose to buy products rather than eat and run today knowing that this leads to studio closures and less games getting made by good developers.

 

[Oppoi]

Who said I'm sad. I, for one, welcome our new Game Pass ovelrords.

But I digress, I am routinely telling people how to get deals and/or rewards to subsidize game pass. It would be hypocritical if I call anyone out for doing that.

My post was in reference to your earlier chiding of Punished Miku about buying games on Steam etc.

It would be nice to know who you really are and what really motivates you to be a constant figure on this forum.

 

[onQ123]

Probably because he was saying the same thing dozens of others here had been saying for quite some time.

Was they? I remember people asking for receipts & some even claimed that It actually helped sales

 

[GHG]

Who said I'm sad. I, for one, welcome our new Game Pass ovelrords.

But I digress, I am routinely telling people how to get deals and/or rewards to subsidize game pass. It would be hypocritical if I call anyone out for doing that.

My post was in reference to your earlier chiding of Punished Miku about buying games on Steam etc.

Well if you think I was "chiding" him about purchasing games on Steam then you've greatly misunderstood.

 

[semiconscious]

game pass allowed me, a first time xbox owner, to experience, on the cheap, just about all of ms's library of exclusives. after a year & a half, once i'd gone through it all, & enjoyed what I'd enjoyed? it no longer really served any purpose at all, other than a cheap way to play the 2 or 3 new exclusives that looked interesting to me. granted, i've been gaming for a while. but when 'hundreds of games!' includes games you've already played, games/genres you have no interest in, & games you check out for a few hours & pass on, 'hundreds' isn't really all that many...

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Correct assessment minus the part about Microsoft needing to dig themselves out of 70B dollar hole.

It doesn't work like that. ABK is an asset not an expenditure.

Is more attention on the business to be profitable? Absolutely, but there is no 70B dollar hole.

There could be a $35B hole if that asset is worth that much less than what it was bought for

Seemed obvious to me at the time that Activision was wildly overvalued

MS should have just paid the termination fee of $3B

Now they are stuck with something they have no clue how to manage and have no real vision.

 

[Oppoi]

So when will we have the discussion about AI accounts and how they disrupt the discourse on gaming discussion forums?

 

[Embearded]

Gamepass is serious business.

It's exactly what had people tripping over themselves to formally write to regulators and even the government during the Activision acquisition process. These people dreamed up this utopia where Microsoft own the whole industry and they hand out all the games on gamepass for "free". Microsoft were the benevolent charitable one and through the power of gamepass everyone would have cheap or "free" access to all the games.

Ain't reality a slap in the face.

I had a few conversations with people that strongly believed that and i'll never understand how the business model made sense to them, or how they believed that MS would allow them to keep upgrading Gold with 1$ for ever.

 

[Topher]

Was they? I remember people asking for receipts & some even claimed that It actually helped sales

You think the idea of Game Pass hurting game sales started with you, huh?

 

[mayham2199]

but when 'hundreds of games!' includes games you've already played, games/genres you have no interest in, & games you check out for a few hours & pass on, 'hundreds' isn't really all that many...

Exactly my issue with sub services. I still subbed to Ps+ extra and I'm not really sure why. I guess the money overall just isn't a big deal to me but if PS announced tomorrow they were getting rid of it and issued refunds I wouldn't even care.

It does let me play a lot of games that I kind of want to try but I'm pretty sure I wont like and I turn out to be right like 80% of the time. I was wrong about Death Stranding so it was nice to get that out of the service at least but by the time I played it I could have bought it for like $10. Then again I wouldn't have even spent that on DS because I was 99% sure I would not like that game.

 

[bitbydeath]

Exactly my issue with sub services. I still subbed to Ps+ extra and I'm not really sure why. I guess the money overall just isn't a big deal to me but if PS announced tomorrow they were getting rid of it and issued refunds I wouldn't even care.

It does let me play a lot of games that I kind of want to try but I'm pretty sure I wont like and I turn out to be right like 80% of the time. I was wrong about Death Stranding so it was nice to get that out of the service at least but by the time I played it I could have bought it for like $10. Then again I wouldn't have even spent that on DS because I was 99% sure I would not like that game.

Honestly, when Xbox folds, I think it’d be a good thing if Sony retired PS+. Let games stand on their own.

 

[semiconscious]

Exactly my issue with sub services. I still subbed to Ps+ extra and I'm not really sure why. I guess the money overall just isn't a big deal to me but if PS announced tomorrow they were getting rid of it and issued refunds I wouldn't even care.

It does let me play a lot of games that I kind of want to try but I'm pretty sure I wont like and I turn out to be right like 80% of the time. I was wrong about Death Stranding so it was nice to get that out of the service at least but by the time I played it I could have bought it for like $10. Then again I wouldn't have even spent that on DS because I was 99% sure I would not like that game.

summarizes a good chunk of my time on game pass (& other streaming services, as well). a .200 batting average is never really gonna be impressive, eh?...

 

[Mibu no ookami]

There could be a $35B hole if that asset is worth that much less than what it was bought for

Seemed obvious to me at the time that Activision was wildly overvalued

MS should have just paid the termination fee of $3B

Now they are stuck with something they have no clue how to manage and have no real vision.

I agree that ABK was overvalued. I mention that if the value of the asset drops it would create a hole.

I think Microsoft had burned too many bridges trying to get ABK to pay the termination fee. They went to war with the UK over it. And they still had bigger plans around ABK than relate to Xbox.

I think the problem now is that their two visions with they had hoped we have synergies are now in direct conflict. The dynamic changed in the time it took for them to close ABK and the time shortly afterwards. Redfall and Starfield bombed, Xbox hardware imploded in Europe, facing worldwide decline, and gamepass subscription growth evaporated.

The larger vision, which is the ABK vision is going to supersede the GamePass Vision. ABK is a lot more important than GamePass and Xbox.

They know what their plan is, it feels like they don't because they aren't being vocal about it.

Ultimately, they want to sell as many Xbox units as they can continue to sell and get as many GamePass subs as they can continue to get, but the reality is they're going 3rd party. They will slow roll the announcement of 3rd party software, but you better believe there is another 2-4 games coming for this year and PS5 is really the only place for Microsoft to make up the losses. 343i already had a job posting for someone who had PlayStation experience. Everything is going to go, it's just a matter of when. You don't want to put all your eggs in the basket for this year because next year you'll be hard pressed to improve revenue and if you release too much at once, you'll erode your sales not only on Xbox but on PS5 as well.

It'll be VERY interesting to see what the next two games are and if the fall under Sony's PS5 Pro mandate given the time in which they'll likely release.

 

[Solidus_T]

At this point, should we just ask to reopen the acquisition thread?

 

[onQ123]

You think the idea of Game Pass hurting game sales started with you, huh?

Did I say that?

 

[KXVXII9X]

lol yeah the rats were getting so defensive against any criticism of this obviously bonkers model, you got the feeling they internally knew how stupid it is.
somehow its best deal for gamers, best deal for devs, best deal for microsoft all at once. nobody loses lol.
standard pyramid scheme bullshit.

Still kind of makes my blood boil. More so because most of the whole media was behind GamePass and they should know better. Reminds me how slimy some people are.

 

[solidus12]

This fanboy tried to kill PlayStation

 

[ProtoByte]

I wonder how much of a shitstorm it would cause if they just discontinued gamepass

The day they discontinue gamepass is when they abandon the games market altogether. Nadella was only sold on keeping Xbox around for this subscription prophecy, before they were spending an industry record on acquisitions and operation. Now, their customers are trained not to buy their games, and even if they had the mentality or people to even try to pivot, they cannot meaningfully change their pipelines to making competitive titles without digging to money hole even deeper. And it would take more than a generation to do.

 

[Majukun]

this theory seems to rely a lot on the people in charge of xbox not knowing what the hell they are doing or how the market operates at all

 

[Topher]

Did I say that?

 

[NEbeast]

But xbox gaf said gamepass was great for smaller games.

 

[Punished Miku]

But xbox gaf said gamepass was great for smaller games.

It is. Now that they're pivoting to focusing on retail, it's the first stuff getting cut.

 

[ShadowkillXNA]

Not really. This proves it is literally the best deal in gaming by far.

"In Your Mind Only" is a great name for a Bond movie.
And what do you know, xbox has an executive named Bond.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

And I don't blame people for wanting to save their money, I do blame Spencer, turning MS into the Netflix of games was his vision and he failed to deliver on it.

A service like GamePass was always doomed to fail.

Something like Netflix won't work for gaming.

 

[Ozzie666]

Gamepass only works in theory if the base game is 'free' with paid DLC and large amounts of mictrotransactions to sustain the game. Gamepass is a great deal for the consumer, but a terrible deal for developers.
It may also provide a last ditch lifeline for old, dead or flops. But day 1 games were a massive mistake and just a not well thought out dream.

 

[CoreyFlawless]

No the reason is, they was hoping to keep growing really fast. 20mil paying 10 bucks a month like 200mil a month/2.4bill a year. That easily was funding there games they was having and paying for whatever games they needed to put in them. The idea was great to own more of the games coming in your own services. But they went way too fast buying two big publishers. Now that 2.4bil is just breaking even for there own games they making cause it hadn’t grown much more. Instead of 10 studios, it’s now like, what 25 studios. That means they needed like 50mil ppl on that services to make what they was making when it started. I love gamepass. Can’t believe M$ really gonna fuck something up. That was really good.

They just went to fast and can’t keep plan and roadmap going for more then 3. Heckjust think back to OG Xbox, to now. You can think like every 3-4 years. They was changing there roadmaps and ideas of stuff all the damn time.

That destroy Xbox and want be long they will destroy gamepass too.

 

[semiconscious]

The larger vision, which is the ABK vision is going to supersede the GamePass Vision. ABK is a lot more important than GamePass and Xbox...

nailed. the game pass 'vision' was ms attempting to fabricate a paradigm ('netflix, but games!'), in which they were instantly #1. abk (mega-3rd-party game publishing) is a position of power within the existing paradigm. a far more straight-forward major 'win'...

 

[T-0800]

Correct assessment minus the part about Microsoft needing to dig themselves out of 70B dollar hole.

It doesn't work like that. ABK is an asset not an expenditure.

Is more attention on the business to be profitable? Absolutely, but there is no 70B dollar hole.

Technically correct but buying Activision for $70B isn't the same as buying a house for $70B. They also acquired thousands of employees they need to pay every week and they also need to successfully manage all those studios.

 

[twilo99]

Correct assessment minus the part about Microsoft needing to dig themselves out of 70B dollar hole.

It doesn't work like that. ABK is an asset not an expenditure.

Is more attention on the business to be profitable? Absolutely, but there is no 70B dollar hole.

Correct.

They are definitely paying more attention to Xbox now tho, and is that a good thing? Time will tell. I liked the situation better when it was a just “rounding error” .. now it’s gonna get a bit, well.. corporate

 

[fallingdove]

The absolute dumb asses that said “Why do I care if GamePass is profitable, as long as I benefit”. There were always going to be ramifications and the Xbox brand is now paying the price.

 

[GHG]

A few interesting replies to the post on LinkedIn in the OP. More former Xbox staff chiming in:

 

[Oppoi]

A few interesting replies to the post on LinkedIn in the OP. More former Xbox staff chiming in:

Game Pass was such a sure thing because everyone was going to get it, especially after MS bought ABK!

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Technically correct but buying Activision for $70B isn't the same as buying a house for $70B. They also acquired thousands of employees they need to pay every week and they also need to successfully manage all those studios.

Which is why they laid off thousands immediately after closing.

Correct.

They are definitely paying more attention to Xbox now tho, and is that a good thing? Time will tell. I liked the situation better when it was a just “rounding error” .. now it’s gonna get a bit, well.. corporate

It's not a good thing or a bad thing. It's just reality. The experiment that was GamePass is over and that was the only thing keeping Xbox alive. It just is what it is at this point.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

Not really. This proves it is literally the best deal in gaming by far. Problem is not enough people signed up for it. And if they didn't want to sign up for it, they could just buy the game, since it's entirely optional. People didn't want to do that either, or buy the console. That's the real issue.

You got a lot of lol reactions to this but it’s exactly right. The 10-15% number Xbox was constantly throwing around was perfectly fine, the problem is that pie they expected that 10-15% to come from is in reality a lot smaller than the pie they expected.

Also agree with your first post in the thread, CoD on day one is not a deal breaker for me. I am excited for CoD to come to GamePass to play through all of the campaigns and I way behind. They’ll come, doesn’t have to be day one.

 

[SkylineRKR]

If you have been following what a massive failure Disney+ has been you'll see Microsoft doing the same thing.

You will never be Netflix because you just don't get it all you saw was market share and profits and came in like fucking Mandingo swinging your cash filled cock around thinking you'll just waltz up and eat everybodys lunch for them. Now the pair of them (Msft, Dis) can't walk it back and are stuck in the sinkhole of their own digging.

Here's how you turn Gamepass around. Back catalogue only, exclusive (timed?) demo of new releases. It really is that easy except you've shot your load with promising day one new games, very fucking loudly.

Yeah I think GP would have the same amount of subs without day one exclusives available on it. Consumers would sign up for online play anyway, and for the drip feeded amount of extra games added on top. With exclusives added day one for a good few years now we haven't witnessed a huge spike in subs vs a service that adds nothing day one. All it does is train your existing audience not to pay up for new games.

During the pandemic this strategy also failed with movies meant for cinema day one.

Ofcourse this is why they are rather silent on Call of Duty. They don't want to put this on GP but they kind of need to considering what they promised in case of first party games. Imagine you are MS. You own Call of Duty now, which means a significant share of every sold copy and MTX go to you. You need to put your game on GP, damaging retail sales for your own system, but also potentially the sales of your biggest userbase. And your subs likely don't significantly skyrocket because of it, because the installed base isn't there to begin with.

 

[Robb]

He’s probably right, although it’s weird to call GamePass a “paradox” and then go on to say that it makes sense.

Of course your product is going to miss equivalent sales goals if you put it day one on a big, relatively cheap, streaming service.

It’s not like this is a new service.. GamePass has been around since 2017(?) and you’re telling me they still can’t adjust their sales goals based on a day 1 release on the service? There has to be loads of data on this by now. Maybe it’s time for MS to re-adjust its estimation models if that is the case… Like, what are you even doing?

 

[DannyDanger]

It's so Crazy how right Jim Ryan was.
Everyone and their mother doubted him

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

Everyone and their mother doubted him

2020, COVID is rampant and gaming companies are blinded by the lockdown boost.

Meanwhile Jim causally dropping unpopular quotes:

"We want to make the games bigger and better, and hopefully at some stage more persistent. So putting those into a subscription model on day one, for us, just doesn't make any sense. For others in a different situation, it might well make sense, but for us it doesn't. We want to expand and grow our existing ecosystem, and putting new games into a subscription model just doesn't sit with that."

2023 after PS+ reshuffling:

"I can say with a very high degree of certainty that Microsoft has tried the first path and it did not work at all. That has driven them to make the large acquisition. I talked to all the publishers, and they unanimously do not like Game Pass because it is value destructive, not only on an individual title-basis, but also or an industry level. The recent number of subscribers that Microsoft announced on January was 25 Million. I am sure everyone has their own views on this, but I personally was expecting a larger number given all the money they have spent. We have close to 50 Million PlayStation Plus subscribers. We believe we have a meaningful subscription service."

It's almost that Jim was in the industry since 1994 and knows a thing or two about making actual profit.

 

[DannyDanger]

2020, COVID is rampant and gaming companies are blinded by the lockdown boost.

Meanwhile Jim causally dropping unpopular quotes:

2023 after PS+ reshuffling:

It's almost that Jim was in the industry since 1994 and knows a thing or two about making actual profit.

That's scariest part. If PlayStation followed Microsoft's strategy, the industry would hurting badly right now. Hell it's already hurting. But I imagine it would be a lot worse. Ppl wouldn't be buying games at all

 

[Robot Carnival]

as someone who's older and mainly game on PC and PS, I will say this. I have the basic PS+ subscription mainly for playing stuff online. and even with only 2 or 3 free games a month, I barely touch any of them. did I claim those free games? sure. did I even install them thou? nope. I mostly only play the games I'm interested in and had done some research on. I'm not going to spend my limited time on something I'm not interested in, even if it's a good game and it's free. Game Pass to me is basically the same thing only on a bigger scale.

 

[BlackTron]

Not really. This proves it is literally the best deal in gaming by far. Problem is not enough people signed up for it. And if they didn't want to sign up for it, they could just buy the game, since it's entirely optional. People didn't want to do that either, or buy the console. That's the real issue.

Maybe if MS had any system seller games, there would be an environment for smaller games to be supported. But you keep trying to pin the blame on customers when MS had massive glaring and obvious holes in their strategy. Nintendo does not put out a bunch of solid B-grade titles then blame prospective clients that they don't sell after they fail to deliver on Mario and Zelda to sell the console.

Nobody is rushing out to buy a Xbox just to play Hi Fi Rush, Pentiment or even Psychonauts. These are filler games for after the main course is served. It amounts to jack shit compared to the PS5 exclusive lineup. But by all means continue to blame customers for MS's lack of direction and stupidity.

 

[Klayzer]

2020, COVID is rampant and gaming companies are blinded by the lockdown boost.

Meanwhile Jim causally dropping unpopular quotes:

2023 after PS+ reshuffling:

It's almost that Jim was in the industry since 1994 and knows a thing or two about making actual profit.

Jim is just sitting back, sipping on some scotch, and laughing his ass off.

 

[Pancakes and Sausage]

Gamepass would be extremely profitable IF it was available on PlayStation, steam, Nintendo.

 

[Humdinger]

A few interesting replies to the post on LinkedIn in the OP. More former Xbox staff chiming in:

I thought LJ Neilsen's comment was interesting. I hadn't thought about that angle before - spending 70 billion dollars on an unproven business model. Why not give it a test run with Bethesda and the other studios first, before jumping in with both feet and 70 billion dollars?

He then goes on to say he cannot believe MS would be foolhardy enough to do this, and so the real explanation must be that they meant for this to happen and just spun PR to fool people.

I am with him on the first part. It seems foolish to invest that much money into a business model you haven't really road tested that well. I don't buy the second part, though. I'm not an insider by any stretch, but from what I know, it seems that they hoped, planned, and projected for GamePass to do much better than it actually did. I agree that they did plenty of PR spin around it, but I think they were disappointed when it ran into a wall. That was not part of the plan.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

There isn't a debt owed for Activision. The problem, I believe, is that without Activision the Xbox segment had a net loss of 5% last quarter. A lot of that is being attributed to Game Pass.

It is unlikely that Xbox has ever made a profit for MS but until they started blowing $70 billion on a single acquisition they flew under the radar because the size of the Xbox division was smaller than a breadbox. Now with Activision Blizzard they are much bigger than a breadbox and the Eye of Sauron demands returns or else

 

[GHG]

I thought LJ Neilsen's comment was interesting. I hadn't thought about that angle before - spending 70 billion dollars on an unproven business model. Why not give it a test run with Bethesda and the other studios first, before jumping in with both feet and 70 billion dollars?

He then goes on to say he cannot believe MS would be foolhardy enough to do this, and so the real explanation must be that they meant for this to happen and just spun PR to fool people.

I am with him on the first part. It seems foolish to invest that much money into a business model you haven't really road tested that well. I don't buy the second part, though. I'm not an insider by any stretch, but from what I know, it seems that they hoped, planned, and projected for GamePass to do much better than it actually did. I agree that they did plenty of PR spin around it, but I think they were disappointed when it ran into a wall. That was not part of the plan.

Well we knew subscription growth started slowing around 2021 (if not earlier):

Axios: Microsoft misses Xbox Game Pass subscriber target for second year

https://www.axios.com/2022/10/27/microsoft-xbox-game-pass-miss This is information based on a new financial filing from Microsoft. Yesterday, at the WSJ conference, Phil Spencer had stated that Game pass was profitable, but that growth was slowing on console. Game Pass achieved 28% growth for...

www.neogaf.com

As a whole that thread is very entertaining to read back through, some insane growth projections were being made for Gamepass by some people here.

Astonishingly, this guy called it before anyone was even thinking that would be a realistic route:

Create a 'First party only' tier, and fully become third party and release all your games on PlayStation and Switch.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

When Phil first pitched this idea to Nadella and the higher ups, the goal was 100m sub users in 10 years, so 2017-2027. However, when this pitch originally happened, Game Pass did not feature day 1 new game releases. It also didn't feature any of the costs they needed to spurn growth, aka, buying out two publishers. So that number simply kept increasing, but they were bolstered by the growth they experienced in 2020 and 2021, the issue being that they weren't attributing it to the pandemic and instead thought it was a result of the buyouts and XSX/S reception.

They also didn't consider that the subscription bubble would burst. People are cutting subscriptions. At $210 per year, Gamepass is NOT a good value to me. I have no plans to renew once my subscription expires this time next year.

 

[AlphaMale]

I subbed for 3 years and buy tons of games. Honestly I still think this is a cop out narrative. Subbing is fine and they get reliable money from it. The issue is really that a lot of console owners had zero interest in Xbox on any level, subbing or buying. They could buy the games just fine if they feel strongly about it but they just wanted to stick with PS, period. It's not sub vs sale. It's one or the other, you choose. People rejected all of it.

A lot of the people on here that endlessly trash Xbox customers for being cheapskates are the same ones that brag about spending $1 to play Hellblade and then cancelling. Like, if you feel strongly about shortchanging devs, then sub for 3 months and play several games. No one is stopping anyone from spending to their comfort level. The cheapskate comments always feel like projection. I spend a ton on this hobby and have all the consoles.

Your narrative has a very strong console fanboy undertone to it. I don't think everyone just went for PS and shit on anything XBox...not at all.
Gamepass is basically Amazon Prime and Netflix. Amazon Prime is a subscription, but you get free shipping in return. To sweeten the deal, they also throw in Prime Video. So Amazon's gamble is to hope for as many subscribers as possible to offset the cost. Worksl great for Amazon since the shipping cost is not usually paid to Amazon anyways, and they can make backroom deals with USPS, FedEx, UPS, etc to get a cheaper deal on mass shipments.
With Netflix, it's all about the movies, so this is more representative of Gamepass. Netflix has to keep on bringing out hits in hopes for new subs and also slowly increasing their subscription price to remain profitable. Are Netflix movies viewed as less valueble than theatre movies? Yeah, I'd say so. If someone really liked a movie on Netflix, and it was offered as a Blu-ray for sale, would they go buy it. I guess they could, but I'd seriusly doubt anyone would. And that's why Gamepass failed.
It's not everybody choosing PS over XB...that argument is decided by the games just plain preference.

 

[ByWatterson]

 

[NickFire]

Also agree with your first post in the thread, CoD on day one is not a deal breaker for me. I am excited for CoD to come to GamePass to play through all of the campaigns and I way behind. They’ll come, doesn’t have to be day one.

If you are already happy with the value proposition then I completely understand why COD day one is not a deal breaker for you. I don't understand how anyone is excited for the old campaigns they skipped while not caring about day one though. Feels off.