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Xbox spends "over a billion dollars a year" on Xbox Game Pass
(www.eurogamer.net)
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this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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What a wonderful multinational corporation, spending all this money out of the goodness of their heart! It's moves like this that let me know I can trust Microsoft™
I agree that they're getting something from this (no way they just bleed money on it without a sound investment plan), but what do you reckon they actually get? Money directly from subscriptions can't be enough to cover everything... is it just to build a walled garden ecosystem so they can "lock" people in and pick the fruits in a year or two? Although if something like a huge price hike happens, they will lose many customers
I think the goal is to eat market share away from Steam, once users are too invested in the platform to switch (and/or steam is no longer relevant) then they start hiking the prices. It has the added effect of reducing the switch to linux momentum that the steamdeck started, but perhaps that is still too small to get MS's attention
I have no cars in this race, but if that's their aim I think it will be impossible to achieve it. Steam already did that years ago, making people too invested in their platform I mean, MS is late. No way enough people will leave Steam to move permanently to Game Pass. They might get some users, but I don't think they'll ever get enough to make a difference for Steam or MS themselves. Buy we'll see. I don't really care either way
Things like buying the console, buying add-on content for games, etc. People have a membership, and want to make more use of it- though MS likely doesn't mind people keeping it to the basics, since they don't make huge bank off of singleplayer gamers anyway. I won't even deny, I've bought small microtransaction items in a few games I only access through Game Pass - but I'm sure other people do far more often than me.