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Netflix Spotify Disney and Amazon proved that price hikes are effective at increasing profits even despite the loss of subscribers. Capitalism baby.
I think the only time collective cancellations actually hurt one of these companies was that time Jimmy Kimmel made fun of the president and it took an estimated 1.7M ex-Disney Plus subscribers.
Maybe, but in the Kimmel case there could have been other reasons too. Like Hollywood people not wanting to make business with a company that would just cancel contacts when they have opinions on public. Disney needs those people, arguable more than subscribers.
IMO, consumer boycotts don't really work in general, here it might have worked, but it is also possible it worked for other reasons.
Consumer boycotts are pretty much the only strategy guaranteed to work, the only exceptions being Facebook and Google, as they’re the only businesses I can think of that are both primarily B2B, and can operate on speculative liquidity
It's honestly cheaper to just buy games than pay this subscription per year.
Plus, you get to keep the games.
It's even cheaper to torrent them.
And you actually get to keep them.
Honestly, I've kinda gone back to buying physical media.
I bought DK Bananza on cart, and guess what? After I finished it, I gave it to my brother. Imagine that! Sharing a game you own? Madness.
I'm eager to pick up Ghost of Yotei from the store this afternoon, as well.
You never needed physical media in order to share games with others.
You still don't, and you can share with more people digitally.
For PC games that's impossible, at most you can find a disc-shaped steam redeem code
Family Share works really well in my experience. It worked better when I could change the users more frequently but this model is still works pretty well.
Is there a way to share a single game and use your library still?
I share my library with my son and when he’s using a game my whole library is unavailable to me, unless something has changed (or I’m old and ignorant … also likely)
And the huge drawback that if the kid finds some "easy trick to win matches" on YouTube and gets vac banned, the parent also gets vac banned
That would be grounds for a 64th trimester abortion IMO
Yeah they (if we’re talking about Steam here) changed their whole family stuff. You can keep playing, as long it’s not the same title.
That part changed. You only share what game is in use now.
That’s why I don’t really use Steam to buy games anymore, too.
At least maybe use GoG if possible to get a DRM free version.
I've never gone away from buying physical media, but I could understand exactly why you would want to return to it.
Knowing Microsoft, I'd like to thing that it went down like this:
Pardon me, your department isn't achieving the expected 20% annual revenue increase.
But we're just selling subscriptions to games that cost us nearly nothing. It's free money.
And you need to make more money from it, increase your subscriber count or your costs, or we'll cut your staff.
Then they cut staff anyways, because why leave free money on the table?
I haven't subbed to gamepads for years because I knew this would eventually happen. Gamepass was designed to get people used to not purchasing games and instead letting them come to them. Subscribers now have to chose between paying even more each month or losing access to the library of games available to them.
Gamepass only ever made sense to people who had time to play or dabble in a sufficiently large amount of games per year and felt the need to play some new titles soon or immediately instead of waiting. Otherwise, eventually your total subscription costs would outpace the total cost to purchase what you played, especially if purchased on sale at a later date. And the value gets worse if you ever replayed a game (s).
I'll never really understand the excitement about this service. It was always a Trojan horse.
Gamepass only made sense if you're an idiot.
Everyone who isn't stupid knew that they were renting access to something they could be getting for free. The business can raise fees whenever it wants, and you're stuck either paying the higher rates or cutting your losses and having nothing to show for the money you wasted.
Renting is a scam and only morons think otherwise. Hopefully some of them grow up after seeing this, but I doubt it.
Gamepass only ever made sense to people who had time to play or dabble in a sufficiently large amount of games per year
Exactly. I only played two games before unsubscribing. You have to have so many free time to make the gamepass worth your while and money.
I learned after a few months of game pass that most of the games that looked interesting actually weren't. It's no big loss, and it's cheaper to just buy the few games I actually want anymore. Doubly true now.
I work in the IT software licensing industry, it's a fucking cancer I can't wait to fail so bad that when we have the first extended internet outage failure so bad that it shows the world that subscriptions are a liability that shouldn't exist
Pro financial tip: Be a patient gamer. Get the games you are interested in during sales. Fuck FOMO, subscription models and pre-orders.
Be a smart consumer. Don't pay for things you could be getting for free just so the business can have a nicer campus.
If it's a major release, wait until the game is finished and then torrent it.
I always preferred waiting a year for AAA games. Patches, mods, guides and sales.
Even better when GOTY editions or bundles with all the DLC on sale.
Lately, I've only been buying indie games. I can't justify dropping $70-$80 on one game and even when those games go on sale they're usually $40-$50.
If you read reviews and do a little research you'll find that there are actually a lot of really cool indie games and you can get multiple games for just a fraction of the cost of double or triple A games.
Word. Just give me a completed game that is mostly bug free and has all features that are alleged to be part of the game on release.
Buying isn't owning, but it has to be better than this...
It can be if you buy from stores, such as GOG and Itch, that provide DRM-free downloads of games. Even Steam, depending on the game.
Never would I ever subscribe to a game service. That's just me.
I justified it as a games rental. I mean I easily paid $5 to rent a game for the weekend in the 90s. Paying 12 bucks to rent games all month long wasn't bad (for PC).
But the price they're charging now, I may as well buy the games I do play, rather than paying for the subscription. The problem for Microsoft is that money is gonna be going to steam instead of them.
Your justification is exemplary of how useful idiots operate.
You know, fundamentally, I don't hate Gamepass as a concept. "Netflix, but for videogames" is an idea I can get behind, as it widens the audience for something I love by lowering the bar of entry. There are plenty of people out there that benefit from being able to play a few games here and there without needing to commit hundreds of hours to $100 purchases.
But Netflix has overstepped with price hikes and ads, and I've cancelled my service with them. That Microsoft thinks it can charge some ~$40CAD a month is pure hubris. I hope they learn quickly that, at that price point, the enthusiast market will happily cancel and just buy their games outright, and the casual market will decide it's an expense they don't need.
The thing about this shit is...
Microsoft, like Google, is now a user-data driven company and they have already made loss/profit ratio analysis on this long before they released the price increase. They're absolutely banking on people cancelling but making up the difference and then some from the people who stay.
For a thought experiment let's consider how many subscribers they were reported to have in Feburary: 34 million. Let's assume that everyone is paying for the highest tier to make the math easier. So current income would be 34 million user x $20 a month and thats $680 million a month. New income of 34 million users x $30 a month is $1.02 billion. The difference is $340 million a month. Let's divide that by $30 a month. That gets us about 11,333,333 users. So they can hemorrhage over 11 million users and still break even. To make sure, let's subtract 11 million users. That gives us 23 million users. 23 million users x $30 a month is $690 million a month, a cool $10 million a month above current profits.
For final context, 11 million users is roughly 32% of their entire subscriber count. They can afford to lose a third of the people subscribing and still make money.
The math doesn't bode well for us who vote with our wallets.
I just bought 12 month of Ultimate on eBay. I always did this in the past, because it's cheaper than buying directly from Microsoft. So far, I made good experience with it.
The way it usually works is, that you get a few codes you need to redeem. I got three codes for 36 month of EA Play and then one code for Ultimate that is supposed to transform the EA Play subscription to 12 month Ultimate. But due to the the price hike, the subscription transformation changed as well and I did not get the 12 month.
I'm now in contact with the seller and he tries to find a solution. I want to have my 12 month Ultimate that he offered for the price. But it also sucks for the seller. Seems like we both didn't know. He basically sold it to cheap. I paid 150€ for 12 month Ultimate and he just now increased the price to 200€.
The new prices are insane! 150€ a year is already my upper limit. I'm not gonna pay 200€ or even more a year. I think, if my new subscription is over, I will not extend it. I like the idea of Game Pass, but that's to much money.
The thing is I really like Game Consoles. I want to play in front of my TV. I wish, Steam would make another Steam Machine with Steam OS. I do want an all in one solution. The last thing I want is a gaming PC. I hope, alternatives to Xbox Consoles and Playstation come up.
I know, I could also use the XBox without GamePass, but I do play online something and it would be nice to get away from subscriptions completly.
I wish, Steam would make another steam machine with steamOS
The last thing I want is a gaming PC
The steam machine program was where OEMs could partner with Valve to make a gaming PC that shipped with a steam controller and Steam OS. That's it.
You stated you wanted a steam machine, but also say you don't want a gaming PC, but... That's what a steam machine is
I wish Steam would make another Steam Machine with Steam OS.
It's rumored they're working on one codenamed Fremont.