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What's this in response to?
Rumors of Microsoft IPs going cross platform
Wouldn't that be a good thing? More access to different titles? Usually the 'see you and hear you' line is used when a company gets caught doing vile shit and wants to pretend they care
The worrying aspect is that they seem to be trying to make non gamepass users pay for the development of gamepass games.
Gamepass is a massive drain on Microsoft, and numbers appear to have flatlined and not enough to pay for all the games made by Bethesda, Id, obsidian, Activision, blizzard and so much more.
So now I think they want to get non gamepass users to pay for the development and have gamepass users get the same deal they always did. Which is imo setting the industry up for some very turbulent times in the future as the cost of gamepass is buried under this, and the Xbox platform is further weakened as it gets deeper into the "no one buys games" pit.
But also less exclusives is good
Gamepass is a massive drain on Microsoft
How so?
Licensing and making games probably costs more than the revenue from subscriptions, would be my guess.
Considering how many subscribers they have and the cost, they are making a heck of a lot. They own many of the titles on there now with the Bethesda takeover. I can't imagine they would agree to any deal that would put them in such a position again (licensing costing more than subs, it would scale), after what they did with the contracts for the original Xbox whereby cost did not decrease on some of the hardware (or something weird like that).
nope. consider this
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they don't have the income from retail games any-more, if you're an Xbox player, you almost certainly have gamepass. which means you aren't paying for a single game they produce. A decade ago a new Halo would come out and that would be 100 million in revenue day one. Now it's nothing.
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They have to pay for the entire cost of development of multiple game studios. I'll highlight the ones for relevance, these are studios they have to pay salaries for hundreds of people for every month, as well as all the other costs of development, and then get no payday. Gamepass has to (but doesn't) pay for all of these: Bethesda Game Studios, ZeniMax Online Studios, id Software, Arkane Studios, Machine Games, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Games, Roundhouse Studios, Blizzard, Treyarch, Infinity Ward, High Moon Studios, Toys for Bob, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, Beenox, Radical Entertainment, Rare, 343 Industries, The Coalition, Mojang. Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Undead Labs, Compulsion Games, Obsidian Entertainment, InXile Entertainment, Double Fine
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Then they have to licence all the other games on gamepass, all the third party stuff on there currently that microsoft does not own. Again, this means that they don't make any money from game sales of those products, and also have to pay for them. Gamepass subscriptions currently probably covers this cost just about
Currently Gamepass can only exist thanks to microsoft azure and office 365. those to microsoft services pay for gamepass game development. This is why no other company does this, only microsoft can front the money from their other businesses.
Gamepass subscriptions currently probably covers this cost just about
Why wouldn't it scale? They're not stupid.
30m last year, over $10 per month on average, $350m+ a month, plus game sales which, contrary to what you've said, still exist. New titles result in more console sales and more subscribers. They haven't shifted to this model to make less money.
They aren't losing money.
I want to be extremely clear about this, game sales functionally do not exist. We are not going to be discussing the validity of if xbox gamers purchasing Xbox games. We know they are not.
New titles are not resulting in more console sales and subscribers, as those have flatlined.
They have indeed shifted to this model to make less money so that they can be the one making money in a decade. It's extremely short-sighted to claim otherwise.
25m.> 30m subscribers is not flatlining. Where is a source about console sales and game sales stopping? "We are not going to be..." Uhh why?
Console sales higher than ever in December. BG3 just came out, which sells alongside COD: https://exputer.com/news/games/baldurs-gate-3-top-selling-xbox/
Update: The LinkedIn profile in question removed the references to the "30 million" milestone. Microsoft reiterated to us in a statement that 25 million remains the last official milestone.
literally from your article.
from another ign article
“We’re seeing slowing adoption of Xbox Game Pass even though Microsoft will claim otherwise thanks to the repositioning of Xbox Live Gold as Xbox Game Pass Core,” McWhirter says. “Our forecast estimates total Xbox Game Pass subscriptions (excluding Core/Live Gold) to be at 33.3 million at the end of 2023, which represents subscriber growth of just 13% - down from 15% in 2022. Piscatella notes too on X/Twitter that subscription services specifically aren’t growing as fast as they used to.
33.3m, higher than I thought, and that's not including Core. 13% is great growth.
If it's part of a shift that includes dropping Xbox hardware, that's very much not a good thing. Less competition doesn't turn out well for consumers.
Oh like not making an Xbox console anymore?
Yeah. Between these rumors and Microsoft not having a next-gen GPU contract yet, it's a possibility.
Hope I'm wrong.
Yeah but the Xbox fanboys are seething and Sony fanboys are whetting their lips at the thought of Starfield on ps5.
Yo of all the games to be hungry for, Starfield ain't one lmao
Yeah, I don’t think anyone is really that excited for Starfield at this point.
I’ve yet to see a single PS person excited about getting Starfield. At most, they’re like, “Oh, that’s nice,” and go back to doing other things.
I was being sarcastic. No one cares about Starfield.
And everyone else just realizes how bad this means things are going for the gaming industry as a whole.
This isn't good news for anyone who likes actually owning their games instead of just having a license, if they own a console.
That ship sailed in PC gaming forever ago, which is honestly fine considering storefronts like GOG exist, but it's still going to be a gut-punch to people who have invested financially heavily in the Xbox ecosystem.
It's going to mean smaller selections of games, more gambling/gacha bullshit, and "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy" will dominate the industry. When licensing runs out for music, they'll just pull a game instead of trying to "fix" it, if it's not profitable enough. We're entering an era where there will be a dead-zone of lost media and history because so much of it is increasingly locked up behind corporate barriers.
It's going to mean smaller selections of games, more gambling/gacha bullshit, and "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy" will dominate the industry. When licensing runs out for music, they'll just pull a game instead of trying to "fix" it, if it's not profitable enough. We're entering an era where there will be a dead-zone of lost media and history because so much of it is increasingly locked up behind corporate barriers.
I have some bad news about the past few years for you...
Of all the games you want, Starfield is not one of them.
Sarcasm, yo.
Well, that's certainly not going to reassure Xbox fans. Just seems like they're waiting for things to die down before confirming the rumors. It will be interesting to see how that goes. If they start treating PlayStation the way Sony treats PC in terms of releases then I could maybe see the Xbox consoles staying afloat as a Gamepass box. I've seen speculation that they'll pull out of the console market entirely, but I just can't see Gamepass coming to the PS5 or Switch especially since Sony has been trying to build up their own answer to Gamepass with their PS plus tiers. Then again stranger things have happened. If they do decide to become the next Sega it's going to be surreal watching Halo and Gears of War show up on PlayStation.
A week?!
The house is going on fire and they wanna take their sweet time finding the most optimal faucet?
That basically confirms every rumor about this. It wouldn't take a week to prepare a statement if it wasn't the tectonic shift it is rumored to be. Damn.
Should be interesting.
I haven't kept the closest eye on this - rumor is they're planning to port more of their games to competing platforms, maybe allow 3rd party Xbox hardware, and phase out most physical Xbox games, right? Or am I way off the mark?
maybe allow 3rd party Xbox hardware
They just started blocking a lot of accessories so I'm not sure about that.
Basically. The main rumor is that Starfield, the new Indiana Jones game, and all of their other first-party exclusives are going to be coming to PS5 and Microsoft is giving up on the idea of console exclusivity. Not sure what that means for Xbox in the long-term, but it is going to be an interesting week.
Are people mad about this? Console exclusivity is asinine and bad for gamers.
And MS doing that may pressure Sony to stop playing the exclusivity game too. Nintendo definitely won't stop that, but maybe Sony will.
Yes, because console wars. A lot of people that bought into the Xbox brand are angry Microsoft is "giving up" and "disgracing" developers by putting their games on PlayStation. It doesn't help that without a clear statement from Microsoft people are free to speculate that Microsoft is going to be the next Sega and Phil Spencer is going to personally come to their house and destroy their Xbox.
More seriously, there is some genuine concern about what will happen to the digital libraries of people who bought into the Xbox eco-system if Xbox stops being a thing. Or what will happen if the AAA game market comes down to Sony and Nintendo. But there are a lot of people angry their favorite mega-corporation "lost" even though we have no idea what Microsoft's actual plans are.
I can partly understand the frustration. If you bought a Series X/S instead of a PS5, you must have put some amount of faith in Xbox exclusives to make it worth missing out on Sony exclusives. Now, after an abysmal half-generation, it seems like Xbox is giving up on exclusives altogether. So what was the point in buying an Xbox? If PS5 gets all Xbox exclusives, then an Xbox retroactively becomes a really dumb purchase.
There's also the rumor they are exiting the console business, which is probably what is making people anxious.
Will be a really long week
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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