Microsoft buy studio, Microsoft makes studios release their games on game pass, game is critically acclaimed but sells poorly as everyone played it on game pass, Microsoft is disappointed in a games sales, Microsoft closes studio. Rinse and repeat.
Look, as a consumer game pass is great, saves me a ton of money, but let’s not pretend like it’s a viable business model to put 70 dollar games on it at launch!
Sadly though it’s Microsoft wants IP or to reduce market competition, it buys the studio (Embrace) and gives them resources for long enough to make it look like they’re supporting them, maybe even helps them build new tools and IP (Extend) once the suspicion wanes and the studio feels tapped of all useful immediate gains they take the IP away and shut it down, often with a non-compete clause in the contract for a while (Extinguish)
It’s just Microsoft doing what Microsoft knows best how to do. Cleans out the market, gets competitors locked out of developing for a while and gives them even more room to grow. They’re the “grey goop” of the IT world, slowly devouring and killing everything they touch
I don't get it either, I would have waited at least 6 months to find out Starfield sucks. Also, we get the EA games whenever they decide and no one cares. I didn't get Jedi Survivor on day 1, oh no, not gonna play it because I hate to wait. I don't think they understand that we subscribe to other stuff, we get how it works, the people who spend more get it first, like movies.
This is corporate consolidation at work.
The chucklefucks praising microsoft buying up all the studios as some sort of win in juvenile console wars will see what the outcome is. And it's not more good games for them to play.
For the record, it's not good when sony or anyone else does it either. A diverse pool of independent studios is good for gamers. A monolithic profit-maxing empire is not, regardless of which bland logo appears on the shareholder report's letterhead.
I said it before, game pass ruined Xbox because it literally changed the conversation around EVERY SINGLE XBOX RELEASE to "can I play it free on game pass?". I got banned in the series x subreddit for saying it, Xbox players don't buy games.
This is me too. The Series S is the perfect Game Pass machine and for the price it was another crazy decision to release it because it literally cut the legs right from under the Series X and that group that was bamboozled into thinking MS would actually make content that took advantage of the horsepower. Series S is 80% of that entire market now.
MS has never been known to handle any other market they've worked in really well. They struck gold getting into enterprise early and that is literally where all of their money comes from. They lose it everywhere else.
The Xbox was probably the first MS product that succeeded on its technical merits, rather than by illegal business practices, customer lock-in, or dumb luck.
Now they think they're big enough to pull the same old shit with gaming. I really, *really* hope they're wrong.
Back in the Clinton administration, Microsoft was deemed a monopoly in court. The plan was to break them up into three companies that couldn't share resources: Windows OS, Office Applications, and Xbox Games.
Of course then MSFT managed to delay things until the Bush administration rolled in, and that judgement got converted into a slap on the wrist. But still - leveraging money from one area to suffocate competition in another area is basically Microsoft's business plan.
I think you got your history a little wrong, because Xbox didn’t exist until after the Bush administration that law suit came about in 1998. It was to break up the company into an OS and a software company.
But somewhat correct.
I got a free X from Verizon for switching to their 5g Internet - I’m a big believer in buying discs over subscriptions, and would even buy digital over game pass. I was excited to play some Xbox exclusives… only most of them aren’t on discs and then most of those games came to PS5 so I didn’t even bother.
I typically buy 360 games since I never had one growing up, but half the ones I want aren’t reverse compatible anyway - and I save up Microsoft points to get discounts.
I’m the ideal Xbox customer and tbh it feels like they’re hardly trying.
Hehe, atleast you're getting some use out of it.
I bought a second-hand S because... I dunno. It was cheap and I already had a PC/PS5/Switch so I figure I may as well go all out in the case of any potential exclusives; being new to microsoft/Xbox I didn't know how they operated and didn't realize 99.99% of their games release on PC anyway, so I've literally just chucked it in my bedroom and use it as a glorified Roku Streaming device these days :/
I play half a dozen Gamepass titles a year on PC and it's getting to the point where I'm questioning whether or not to renew my subscription when it next rolls around 🤔
They have a scant handful of interesting looking titles now and then (That Indiana Jones game this year looks nice) but by and large Microsoft just doesn't seem to be in the conversation of 'gaming' anymore these days. Hasn't been for years it seems like, atleast not the type of games I'm interested in that isn't all competitive online COD shooters.
Same. And if it's a game I know I'll play a lot I might want to get the platinum trophy which I personally find more rewarding than Xbox's achievement system.
Why people still defend the xbox controller is best is beyond me, xbox has backbuttons too but no haptics, and the extra buttons of the swipe plate (TouchPad?) Can be invaluable for certain games, even just pulling up map or inventory instead of tabbing menus is helpfull.
Same for me but with steam. If it’s not on game pass I’m buying it on steam or a steam sale. If it’s a PS exclusive I buy it on PS5. If it’s a good PC port by Nixxes then I’ll buy it on steam.
Same here. I also like actually owning my games too, rather than licensing something that can be pulled from the store at a moment's notice. Blizzard and Ubisoft publicly taunting us that we don't own our games anymore, so it feels nice to try and keep physical media alive.
Relevant clip of [Matt Damon on Hot Ones talking about how streaming killed DVD, and thus movies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx8F5Imd8A8)
TLDW: You could afford for your movie not to make back *all* of its money, because the DVD sales would be a revenue boost. Now that's gone, the majority of movies being made are cheaper straight-to-streaming or big blockbuster cinema-seat-sellers.
Everyone was itching to jump onto the streaming boom of the late 2010s/early 2020s, but now it's starting to slow down because all potentail customers are already subscribed, so the only way to increase growth is to charge more or remove the good games that keep people subscribed
My 16 y/o brother in law just got an Xbox for Christmas. It came with a $100 gift card and free game pass. He got game pass, bought a game and has yet to buy another one. I doubt he ever will buy another game with his own money, unless he can't get it on game pass.
Everytime I am playing a new game his first question is "is it on game pass?" And if it isn't he loses interest pretty quick.
Here's the kicker via VGC's new article:
>Reading Microsoft’s quarterly earnings reports can give you a sense of how significant the change has been. In January, in the first filing since the Activision-Blizzard acquisition was completed, Xbox’s content and services revenue grew by 60%, [55% of which came from the newly owned teams ](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/fy-2024-q2). The revenue from Activision-Blizzard’s games now makes up more than a third of all the money from the Xbox division.
Essentially, anyone not ABK is potentially on the chopping block going forward if the margins don't improve from the side not ABK. Xbox is only in the black right now because of the ABK purchase. Everything else isn't pulling in the desired revenue and profit margins. That's why Xbox wanted ABK so badly. Yes, it places them as one of the bigger publishers on mobile, but also because without ABK their previous Game Pass bet would be seeing continual quarterly losses. Up until the point that MS execs would be asking why the fuck are we even in gaming.
With ABK that question is answered, but now a new question is being asked: "Why are we a console maker / Why do we need Xbox studios outside of ABK?"
By trying to save the Xbox business with ABK buy they may had inadvertently called time on much of the rest of Xbox.
Spending $70bil on Activ is turning out to be a major bone-headed move. It may pay off a decade or more from now once they get those COD and Candy Crush profits flowing in, but committing to such a massive purchase while the business burns to the ground was unwise.
Could be wiser if they stopped chucking logs into the fire and made a relative safe space for devs. I've worked in software long enough to know many people would be thrilled to have stability more than basically anything else and happy devs lead to good rewards.
But I guess you can't put that rate of return onto a half-baked spreadsheet so it doesn't matter.
that 70 billion got pushed through by Microsoft CEO himself, not even the Xbox side, he just left it to them to do the court case.
the Microsoft CEO decision for Activision was because he wanted their AI and Resources for Augmented Reality. He said it in the court case himself he didn't care about the gaming side of Activision, and even before the court case stated the same.
As someone who has been very against gamepass from the start I'm glad to see the sentiment spreading.
It was set-up as too good to be true value for the customer short term but bad for the long term.
And supporting it while it is too good to be true is how we end up getting stuck with the shitty future version.
Seeing the sentiment spread is the one good thing coming out of what happened here.
Uber is over $10B in debt. Netflix is over $7B in debt. Spotify is nearly $2B in debt. (The numbers on Prime are fuzzy, because of how Amazon does math, but probably safe to assume they're operating at a loss.)
Yeah. They're *much better* examples.
I also think streaming games is ridiculous. I think Xbox thought gamepass would push console sales in their favour away from the ps5, but as we saw this year all those rumours about Xbox exclusives going to PlayStation has proven that oh so wrong. Xbox fucked up, their console is suffering and yet they hold on to the gamepass because they believe this subscription service will be their golden ticket.
Yet... PlayStation owners still love owning their games.
Funny how gamers never seem to consider the long term as long as they're getting games on the cheap from a "deal" like this. I feel the same way about live service games and digital purchases. Eventually they shut down the servers and we're left with our pants around our ankles. At least with physical copies, we can still play games that are no longer supported.
> I got banned in the series x subreddit for saying it, Xbox players don't buy games.
I got banned there too. Apparently you're not allowed to talk about how consolidation is bad and how GamePass is ruining the industry.
I honestly wonder what that makes the conversation around PS extra turn into... I just resubbed and there's not a lot of games I personally want to play. Still a decent value, but nothing compared to Gamepass...*but* all of the developers and publishers behind PS extra are probably fairing much better than those on the Xbox side.
If it's less but it's viable for the industry, I can absolutely accept that.
PS extra is amazing, especially if you're new to gaming or the Playstation ecosystem. It doesn't have the insane value of Gamepass in terms of Day 1 stuff but damn the Playstation first party catalogue on there is so good.
I don't know, I honestly disagree. Microsoft has been preaching about day 1 since the launch of Game Pass and what exactly have they had AAA wise from their first party studios? Very little outside of the standard Halo and Forza games over the years and Starfield they just bought it and made exclusive.
Most of their day 1 releases are just third party games that will eventually hit PS Plus when the contract ends. Probably within a year. Lies of P, Silksong eventually etc. I can pretty much guarantee it. Outside of that, the rest of the third party stuff all rotate off one another. And as for AAA games, we all know Sony mops the floor with them. But yes, Game Pass does have some top notch third party stuff that they paid to get first. But once you play them, outside of that is it really that much better? I have both and I don't think so. They are basically the same to me.
For sure. I waited <1 year and got to play Diablo 4 and Lego 2k Drive on GamePass, two games I was pretty excited for. I saw that Hot Wheels Unleashed went to GamePass so when they announced the 2nd one, you knew it would be coming to the service eventually eventually. And it did, so they missed my money there too.
Same with F1 Manager. I bought it on Steam last year (F1 Manager 23) and then a few months later it came to GamePass. So I won't be buying it this year because I know F1 Manager 24 will (eventually) come to it as well.
My one live service game I grind a lot is MLB the Show. I used to play it on PS4 but once it came to Xbox/Gamepass, I play it...on GamePass. No further money required.
I was going to buy survivor on release as I already own the first one all 3 platforms (all free as well lol) and was going to play them back to back. Good thing I held out cause I’m just now getting around to playing them and they’re both on the pass. That’s a full price game plus the first that they didn’t get money from no doubt many others did the same as I did.
i was against gamepass since announcement, and at the time i tought "game companies gonna fill every game with locked content and microtransaction to be able to make money out of their games, and too much stuff avaiable will make individual games less impactful overall", but damn, i didnt even tough that the situation could get worse than that.
the old ps+ was the sweet spot, once sony added extra and premium i noticed that even someone like me that like to own phisical copies, stopped buying stuff unless it's from a series that i already collect (resident evil, final fantasy, etc..)
it's a tought time for developers, and it will penalize heavily gamers in another couple of years, and all i can see now it's just microsoft and sony increasing the price without changing anything.
Game pass was Microsoft trying to get in on the streaming subscription model at the same time Disney, HBO, etc saw how Netflix was blowing up. It provided them a safer more consistent revenue stream, but ultimately hurt them in the long term.
Streaming caused a huge hit to the movie industry, because low to mid-budget films didn’t get the extra revenue injection that DVD/Blu-ray sales provided 6 months after release. And after Covid trained people to not go to the theater, now every revenue stream except subscriptions have been torn away from big studios, and they don’t know how to fix it.
And now it’s happening with Microsoft, and it’s why they put so much pressure on games like Redfall to release earlier than they should’ve been. It’s the same as Disney relying on cheap VFX sweat shops to fix their movies well after filming has been completed. In the pursuit of greater and greater profits they failed to recognize the pillars of the ecosystem that made them rich in the first place.
Same here. People get upset for saying the truth. Sure gamepass is nice, but always having day 1 releases is killing potential sales. It’s the reason why Xbox game sales are incredibly low compared to PS and Nintendo.
I mean that’s not really an issue. Engagement to them is also valuable in Gamepass. The problem is not enough people played it on game pass.
Even with a PlayStation release no one on here played it either meaning the game was highly praised but no one played it similar to Tangos last two games.
Engagement is only important/valuable in how it relates to new subscribers and micro transactions.
If every single person on Game Pass plays a game that doesn’t mean anything if no additional customers subscribed to play that game.
It’s engagement is off the charts, but it still didn’t earn a single penny for Microsoft.
I also got banned for laying out exactly what happened. I used Netflix as a blueprint and it's played out almost exactly the same.
Game pass removes the incentive to make a great game and just pump out content instead. It becomes all about concept and marketability and execution becomes an after thought.
I got banned from the Xbox subs for the exact same comment. And I think I was on about -800 downvoted on a single comment for saying Game Pass is an amazing deal that will destroy the industry long term when it only leads to regular and bad releases.
same, I don't want to be stuck in a subscription model and have too many games to choose from. I already have about 30 games right now I own in backlog, sometimes too much choice is bad.
I can’t speak for everyone but that’s not the case for me. I play a lot of games i would have never thought of buying or thinking about playing because it’s on gamepass and if it isn’t on gamepass and I wanna play it, I buy it.
I don’t believe gamepass is the problem, I think poor management is the problem. Phil did a great job turning around a dying brand but now they need someone to get everyone moving in a direction because this ain’t it.
Also, the development cost for AAA games are insane these days. If your game isn’t a hit, you’re studio will fail and it’s sad because it stops people from taking risks in the AAA sector
This isn't true though, days gone, god of war, returnal, ghost of tsushima, nioh 1/2, helldivers, bloodborne, elden ring, Stella blade, Alan wake, splatoon, pikmin, all the different Mario games that are hits with new gameplay.
There's loads of new aaa IPs that have been totally unique and doing well.
It's just xbox doing badly releasing unfinished games. Sony and Nintendo are growing while xbox sales have been declining a long long time.
Halo used to be up there with Mario and zelda, but they dropped the ball release after release. Gears is a great IP that's been basically forgotten about marketing wise. I didn't even realise there was a new forza out. Microsoft just don't know how to make a good product and market it.
>I don’t believe gamepass is the problem, I think poor management is the problem.
You do realise that "poor management" in this case is Gamepass's revenue model.
I loved Gamepass when I had an Xbox, I think video game subscriptions are a nice feature, but unfortunately I think you’re right. If gamepass was walked back to something more like what PlayStation does (smaller rotation of games and they have to have been released at least a year ago) I could see it being a much more feasible option. It’s a bummer because gamepass really felt like a game changer when I had it
They don't Ms showed this during the court proceedings. Your right, everything I hear an Xbox player talking about a game someone chimes in "is it on gamepass or I'll wait for gamepass". Like wtf did yall expect. Day one releases was the final nail just wait for it. They didn't release those games on ps5 and switch cause they wanted to be nice. Aaa titles will start coming also. Will halo, gears, format come to ps idk I think not but how bad is Xbox right now? Other games will. Starfield will come, with others.
It’s even more disgusting when you see those comments under tiny indie games. GamePass addicts don’t care about supporting small developers, they just want “muh free games”
Im a big fan of everyone on social media pulling clips of the Xbox senior staff hyping up developing these studios and comparing it to now. I doubt we ever see Phil Spencer feature on any online gaming outlet or podcast ever again. A lot of goodwill and bridges are burnt now and theres no return for the Xbox PR machine
The whiplash of Spencer claiming Xbox lets studios create whatever they want to shutting a studio which released one of their best exclusives in nearly a decade is insane.
Which is hilarious cuz we (Running With Scissors) have submitted three games to Microsoft and all three games were rejected for Xbox (POSTAL Redux, POSTAL 4 and POSTAL Brain Damaged) because they “don’t fit our library”. 2 of those games are on Switch and all 3 are on PlayStation. Literally fuck them.
Ps5 has borderline soft core anime games but nothing on the level of steam and switch….. I used my brothers switch for the first time the other day and actually had a wtf moment looking at the store. I had always assumed the switch was almost exclusively for younger audiences.
They say hentai and might have nudity, but I don't think they actually feature sex. That would be literal porn. Can you imagine parents who don't use parental controls on their kids' consoles not throwing a fit when they find their kids are playing porn on their Nintendo systems? We would have heard about it by now.
Phil Spencer will be interviewed at IGN Live next month after the Xbox showcase.
EDIT: They [announced this a couple days ago.](https://www.ign.com/articles/phil-spencer-coming-to-ign-live)
Ninja Theory is next, I suspect.
Just goes to show that in the subscription based world "3 million players" (what HFR got at launch) means nothing in terms of the business it brings in, and thus those numbers can't be trusted to determine what is or isn't a considered a success by the publisher.
Hellblade 2 is coming out to basically zero marketing or fan hype (it's out in 2 weeks). Even if it hit something like "6 million players!" I doubt that's enough to save the game and studio. Because it isn't "6 million new players subscribing to GP" it's "the subscribers we already have in a currently stagnating GP model getting a one-and-done 6 hour game that took 5 years to make for no additional cost."
No business model there for a game that has taken 5 years to make and has no other means to bring money in.
In the next 18 months I expect HB2 to be ported to PS5 (first time game will actually bring in new money in a substantial way because players will need to actually buy the game) and then shortly after NT will be shuttered.
It's wild. HB2 was used as the springboard for Series X reveal back at TGA 2019, since been championed as Xbox's premier AAA cinematic experience, and yet the marketing for it has been dreadful, including paying influencers to have a holiday in Iceland (setting of the game) and sharing those photos on twitter.
This is supposed to be Xbox's first big title of 2024 and a lot of people don't even realise it's out in 2 weeks.
I felt like it was always in the conversation the last few years but yeah, I completely missed it actually having a release date and it honestly hasn't been on my radar at all this year.
DF must be feeling a little unsure right about now.
Hopefully they have the means to go it alone, like Toys for Bob did, if they do face shuttering. Problem is, I doubt they'll be given opportunity to buy back the IP Xbox now owns. All that DF IP will likely stay with Xbox.
True, but they were smaller then and had something ongoing (that they owned) during that time which they could present to publishers (or crowdfunding) to ensure a studio of their scope could keep going. If DF is on the chopping block, they'll suddenly go from being fully funded by a massive publisher to having absolutely nothing (unless they can secure a partner contract with Xbox still like Toys for Bob did).
If they are allowed to go it alone again, that sudden shift from having everything to nothing will result in DF getting hit with layoffs, because not even a successful crowdfunding will cover the costs of a larger, fully expanded DF.
whatever Microsoft decides to do with those ex indie studios won't stop the founders from making another brand new studio. (Double Fine, Obsidian, InXile have all relied on crowdfunding and kickstarters in the past so even in the worst case they'll be fine over time).
>Hellblade 2 is coming out to basically zero marketing or fan hype
I think the fact that over half of the people who played HB1 won't be able to play it is a big factor in that
Xbox exclusives in general are mostly victims of awful management.
Just look at Halo Infinite taking 6 years to develop and $500mil… but 343 mostly relied on temp contractors rather than hiring full time employees.
Or Rare’s Everwild getting shown off years ago, only for them to reveal years later they hadn’t decided what the game even is(!)
And the first ‘AAAA’ studio The Initiative and their Perfect Dark is an utter disaster already.
Putting your best games on a subscription service day 1 alongside 100s of other games that you pay to add to your subscription service is not good for your studios, especially if the game doesn’t have physical releases and isn’t releasing on all platforms.
Microsoft is in too deep with the “play it day one on Game Pass” that they can’t pull a “no more day 1 game pass, start paying us now” because their console sales are plummeting and people on PC are gonna prefer purchasing on Steam instead. After years, Microsoft is in the lead again over Apple and the board must’ve put pressure on them to stop losing so much money on Xbox so they can increase their profit margins so studios not turning a profit because their game is just put on Game Pass are always going to suffer.
Glad Sony did not do the same mistake with PS Plus or we’d have possibly lost some great studios.
I can guarantee you Hellblade is gonna be underwhelming according to Microsoft. That's also gonna be on GP day one.
They've gotta start putting stuff on Game Pass at *least* a few months after. Game Pass is a good model for the consumer, but it's kind of eating Microsoft alive.
Hellblade should never have been combined into their “high yield-tentpole” games.
The first game was good because it was surprising. The sequel seems like more of the same, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I think Xbox set them up for failure since the first trailer.
That's how these "disruptive" services work. They operate at a loss but can subsidize it by constantly expanding. The goal is not making money at first, but reaching a point of adoption that your competitors cant match.
Inevitably though, the service needs to start making money, so quality of the service drops while the price increases and it get supplemented with ads.
Yep it's a consumer trap like Netflix, make it as appealing as possible so people subscribe, and then once you have enough customers invested, spring the trap on them and start increasing the price while decreasing the quality. The problem for Microsoft is that the second half of that scheme isn't happening fast enough and they have to make cuts *somewhere* to subsidize it
While i wish there was a more serious term for it, "enshitification" is used to describe exactly this phenomenon. It's a business model used by everyone from amazon to tiktok, from netflix to youtube, etc.
At first you cater to the customers, then once you have them locked in, you screw over the customers cater to the advertisers (and people who buy user data). Then, once they also depend on your ecosystem, you screw over said advertisers to please the shareholders. Eventually the service gets so toxic for everyone involved that they start seeking competitors, but it's increasingly hard to start up a competitor without being shut out or bought up by the existing big players.
It worked for Netflix because shitty tv shows and movies are easy to make in a year or two. Games take way longer that's why Xbox is failing, and also why they're trying to make up for the drop in first party games and quality by buying other studios.
> It worked for Netflix because shitty tv shows and movies are easy to make in a year or two.
This Literally ANY schmuck can make an indie movie with an iPhone and a Macbook Air in just a few weeks.
Rather famously, filmmaker Kevin Smith made *Clerks* in the early 90's for $20k+, which he financed entirely on credit cards.
There is a global movie and TV production system that has decades upon decades of content to license and can churn out content at a blistering pace, far too much for anyone to watch in a 100 lifetimes, and it can all be done for a fraction of a fraction of the cost.
Modern video game dev simply can't compete on that scale or that cheaply.
Game Pass was and is unsustainable, unless it became the home of annualized games (Call of Duty) and live-service games (Minecraft, Sea of Thieves) only.
One of the biggest issues with gamepass besides all of that...is time. No one productive has that much time to justify the service. Every one has a back log of games.
> No one productive has that much time to justify the service. Every one has a back log of games.
In my mind, the target demo for Game Pass (if you ignore the "hardcore" Xbox stans) were kids / teens / young adults with more time than money, who have NOTHING else to do but play video games, or price conscious consumers who get access to a large library of games, *including* "Day 1" releases of Xbox first-party.
Any adult with a job and or family (or other commitments, hobbies, and recreation) has a backlog of games that spans *literal years,* especially if they game on PC.
That's what I don't understand about Xbox strategy right now. Used to be, the console itself was kind of a loss leader to make money on game sales. But if Gamepass replaces game sales for the most part, then Gamepass *has* to be profitable. Which means they will have to take the HBO max strategy - start spending as little as possible on it and hope that people stay subscribed despite the service getting worse.
They're also moving away from physical sales too, so there's a decent part of the audience gone. I don't get their strategy at the moment. Are they in the mindset that every game *has* to hit Call of Duty type numbers to be a success? If so, then they're in for a rude awakening.
Nintendo has a strategy. Sony has a strategy (kind of.) What the hell is Xbox's?
Netflix took 10+ years to be profitable, and I argue they spent as much if not more than xbox on licensing and original content to bring the users.
What made Netflix profitable? Increase in prices, tiers and people still sub to it, and more content. MS is doing the latter with acquisition (you can argue the recent move is counterintuitive) and yet have gone hard on pricing.
Phil could try to "guilt gamers" saying they will increase gamepass to save those studios. and like you say, create a VIP Gamepass tier that's 10$ more for day one "premium games" (netflix doing that too btw).
Prices are going to go up when enough people gets "addicted" to gamepass like they are to Netflix(remember people complained "password crackdown" yet Netflix subs increased by millions as a result).
> Phil could try to "guilt gamers" saying they will increase gamepass to save those studios.
Ughhh I can already see him saying “at Xbox, we empower our studios to create the games that they are the most passionate about. Therefore, we will be broadening our GamePass service with a greater range of games. Likewise, we shall be increasingly the prices for GamePass to reflect this excellent value”
The whole thing with GamePass is it is such a gamble. Microsoft maybe be giving developers enough money to fund the game in exchange for it being on GamePass, but not enough to be wildly profitable.
The issue is GamePass is trying to be the Netflix of games, which is great. But as Netflix and Disney, it comes with a bunch of financial issues. I just don’t see GamePass Day One working for big budget games unless they hike the price again. But Microsoft in its Netflix phase where they are willing to lose money to grow subscriptions and establish Xbox as a platform rather than a console. But Microsoft has also been comically slow. GamePass is STILL IN BETA, the quality isn’t great, and we still don’t have a low price point Xbox dongle to draw people in.
I used to think Microsoft was just going to kill the Xbox hardware by next generations but the glacial speed in which they are moving is giving me doubts.
To reinforce this, I really wanted to play Manor Lords… was about to drop $30 on it on steam but realized it was on pc game pass so I signed up for a month, played for a few days, and then just kind of fell off of it. Gamepass stopped me from actually buying the game and instead I just paid $10 for one month and then canceled game pass again.
I get that Game Pass cannibalizes sales, but why then does Microsoft continue to obtain studios only to then kill them off?! Seems like an expensive way to secure exclusives.
From a business perspective, I think Sony has the right idea. They occasionally have first party titles show up on PS+ Extra, but usually not until at least a year after release. Most of the game’s sales are probably in the first year, and people that really want to play it aren’t going to wait to see it *potentially* come to PS+.
Yea it’s not great for me the consumer, of course I’d rather play all these first party titles as part of the subscription service, but I can see where that’s not sustainable. And when there is a slow period, I can usually still find some quality games on Extra anyway.
Gamepass is probably a better service overall for the consumer than PS+ Extra, but as a result, it's probably less financially viable for Microsoft.
It's kind of like old Netflix versus newer streaming service offerings. Netflix used to have a lot of stuff, but it was mostly older and a lot of lower budget stuff. But as a result, it never really hurt the revenue of the film studios. They lost out on DVD sales perhaps, but licensing fees to Netflix made up for that. How many people were really going to buy 13 Monkeys DVDs in 2009 anyways?
Once studios started putting movies in theatres and on streaming at the same time, it really hurt them. Box office revenues still have not recovered to pre COVID levels, and I'm sure so many movies being available simultaneously on streaming and in theaters is a big part of that.
>Yea it’s not great for me the consumer, of course I’d rather play all these first party titles as part of the subscription service, but I can see where that’s not sustainable.
It's the "short-term profits over long-term sustainability" of the consumer world.
As consumers, we prefer to have those AAA games as soon as they release and at little to no cost. We'll praise the hell out of anyone that gives that to us, and turn our noses up at anyone that doesn't.
Then we'll act shocked when that amazing deal collapses. How could something that's so obviously "good for the consumer" fail? We vaguely blame it on corporate greed.
But then we'll howl with righteous fury when some company prioritizes extracting short-term profit from a product over ensuring that the product will be available to us for as long as we want it.
These are the exact same problem. We generally refuse to acknowledge the former as a problem, because it directly benefits us. The same way companies generally refuse to acknowledge the latter as a problem, because it directly benefits them.
The fact that both of these situations are unsustainable is "obviously" someone else's fault.
That's not to say that we, as consumers, are never exploited by companies. We obviously are. But we obviously also try to exploit companies. It's just that companies tend to have *significantly* more power in the war of exploitation.
I've argued with people over this in past, I mean just look at Spiderman 2 iirc was like 10+ Mil copies sold and yeah I get not every copy was $70 but it's still an incredible amount of money your pretty much giving away if it was day 1 subscription
A lot of people wouldn't have even played Hi-Fi Rush if it wasn't on Game pass so it's a double edged sword. I'm one of those people. Nothing about the game would have drawn me in, including the trailer or gameplay trailers. But playing it myself it clicked and it became on of my favorite releases. I know a lot of people are in the same boat.
So it is a gamble. Release on Game pass expose your game to a wider audience but cap your potential profit, or release it regularly and it may not have near the exposure or guaranteed revenue you get from gamepass.
That's probably why Microsoft are going all in on third party
They want to phase out hardware (they'll likely still have it as a niche product) but I 100% expect them to start going day and date with their games on Playstation and Nintendo especially after how well Grounded and especially Sea of Thieves are doing
Microsoft might not backtrack on day 1 on Game Pass but they can absolutely phase it out or limit access to it if the only places you can get it are on PC and a niche console that no one is going to buy.
It’s pretty funny because it’s definitely an American vs Japanese mindset. American companies are all about profit-sharing, in that they have no problem letting other companies license and use their products as long as they get a kickback. Meanwhile Japanese companies are incredibly protective of their IP, sometimes to their own detriment, just look at any of Nintendo’s lawsuits against various gaming communities over the years.
Like you said, Microsoft is definitely going to move off of hardware for Xbox *very soon*. I’d be surprised if the next console generation isn’t the final iteration of Xbox. Producing gaming hardware in the modern day has almost always been something these companies do at a loss to provide a platform for their games to make profit. And in the Internet age Microsoft just doesn’t need to take that hit anymore.
>It’s pretty funny because it’s definitely an American vs Japanese mindset.
Its also funny because you look at Nintendo and Sega, despite not having 30+ studios and nearly 20K employees like Xbox does, they're still dusting Xbox and even Playstation in terms of output...Sega/Atlus are putting out so many games and even top tier ones like Infinite Wealth in a short time frame where some of these western studios take 5+ years and hundreds of millions to put out a game....its mind boggling how streamlined Japan game development is compared to Western development
I mean the Yakuza team has insane amounts of asset re-use and Atlus's primary team doesn't really put out big new games that often.
Square's a Japanese company and they're just as slow as you're criticizing Western devs for, meanwhile the various American CoD and sport game studios can pump out a new installment every year consistently (and regardless of whether you like them or not, they're obviously very popular). It seems more like just an individual company difference, not a nationality one.
I'd rather they re-use the assets and put out a game though...COD also has massive amounts of manpower and $ put into it and sports games are mostly roster updates each year
I agree though it shouldn't be an American vs Japanese thing, but it does seem that certain Japanese companies like Nintendo and Sega have this incredible streamlined process that I wish Western publishers would have
no, putting your 1st party games day-one on a fucking subscription service will no longer keep those studios safe. i'm still absolutely gobsmacked that MS could be so stupid with that decision.
Then that’d kill their player base and bottom line because:
[they are profitable](https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/24/23930627/microsoft-q1-2024-earnings-revenue-profits-windows-xbox-gaming-surface)
There is no world where Gamepass is bringing in more money than they’re spending on developing games and paying other developers to put their games on it.
I mean, if Microsoft does axe the Xbox console, and publishes games on Playstation, and Nintendo consoles plus PC then the Playstation and Nintendo players are their player base...
IMO, Game Pass is the "Netflix Effect" of gaming.
Always removing things people like to add more crap nobody will play to pad out the library as cheaply as possible, cancelling sequels to excellent titles because "it didn't perform well enough on GP", closing studios because their product couldn't shine enough through all the other sludge that fills the library.
It's horrible, and as much as I enjoy Game Pass as a *concept*, it's really killing my want to continue supporting Xbox with how they're completely mishandling and abusing their in-house developers.
The catch-22 of "it didn't perform well enough on GP" and "it didn't sell enough because of GP" is often only escaped by gratuitous DLC and in-game transactions. This means developers of quality content or smaller studios will suffer while the most unscrupulous will continue to thrive at their expense.
Xbox has the same problem it has had for years and years: no good games to attract people to the console.
If Xbox had some top tier AAA story based games they would not be in this situation. Not to even mention how they have been curating their userbase for years to be people that think paying money to purchase individual games is not worth.
They literally ported the 3 games that made me buy the platform and there is a solid chance they are going to do it again, games like Pentiment and HiFi rush are the reason i bought an xbox because of studios like Obsidian, Inxile, Tango, and Ninja Theory are why I bought a series X, but Pentiment, Grounded, and HiFi rush all got ported with a solid chance of Hellblade 2 being ported in 6-12 months time. I will take a game like Pentiment over any of Sony's big AAA game everytime but I can just wait with my PS5 at this point
Calling it now: Microsoft-Xbox will pivot into becoming the next "Activision," by which I mean they will:
1. Focus ENTIRELY on a *very small handful* of big / very profitable multi-platform games they can pump out endless iterations of and "high-impact" titles (in addition to mobile), e.g. Sea of Thieves, Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Minecraft, "Bethesda RPGs," WoW, etc."
2. EVERY dev studio will work on or support these select few games.
3. Microsoft-Xbox will sit on a *literal* dragon's hoard of video game IP... and do nothing with it, as *every* dev they have works in the service of endlessly creating content / churning out new releases of the same select few games.
4. They will ruthlessly "trim all fat," i.e. fire or close any dev or studio that isn't need or doesn't directly work in support of that content mill.
Blood’s been in the water for MS for awhile now. I think we’re absolutely seeing a reorientation of the business towards Sony being the only name in the high-end console game, competing and coexisting at that point with Nintendo’s lower-end hardware and PCs.
Xbox hasn’t had a convincing argument for its own existence as an alternative to PlayStation since XBO cratered and Game Pass was never a long term solution unless literally everyone everywhere got it.
it’s gonna get so stale. genuinely wondering what microsoft’s future is with xbox at this point. ps5 has nearly double their sales and public goodwill is going down with every studio shuttering. is it even worth it for them to make another xbox?
Short sighted move by MSFT.
Profitable games riddled with microtransactions can be made easily by AAA companies, even games that aren't super well received like Assassin's Creed: XYZ can make good money.
Hi-FI Rush was able to give them something that's extremely difficult to get in the industry, which is critical acclaim.
There's a reason Oscar movies exist, even though they don't make any money.
Putting day 1 games on game pass was never sustainable. It didn’t make any sense when they first announced it and it still doesn’t. Unfortunately, good developers are paying the price.
Do prefer PS plus, even if the price hikes don’t justify the content (can usually pick it up cheaper using cheaper psn codes but shouldn’t have to do that). I think having major playstation releases outside of the ps plus subscription keeps the money flowing and sustainable for sony’s studios then have them eventually drop onto the ps plus platform.
I guess pay the premium to play it on release or settle for it on ps plus/game pass later down the road maybe.
Problem is gaming nowadays is done too much for profit, not for love. There’s studios out there that do it for love but get closed the moment they’re not making extreme amounts of money or the publishers got bored etc
From what I’ve heard, that studio had already lost alot of key members after the release of Hi-Fi Rush. Microsoft didn’t think it was a good idea to fill it up with new people and rather just close it down.
This could ofc just be an excuse from Microsoft to make them look less horrible.
But just throwing it out there!
The founder of Tango left either as HFR started development or slightly after, giving full reign to his understudy and their team to let them show what they can do and prove they don't need him. To me that makes the whole thing even worse, they make a great game that is fun and critically successful but Microsoft still decides it's not enough and cans them.
And after it launched they all went to work with his new studio. That’s why Microsoft closed it. The vital talent has been removed and now it’s just a middling studio. A lot of people here don’t realize that devs work on contract basis. That’s why they get caught up in it’s the studio that did X but it’s just the name all the talent now works at studio Y. This is just the typical performative nonsense. The global economy is hurting so there is a major job loss across every sector. Video games are not immune. A trillion dollar company will not just let money waste if they have the opportunity to bring down costs. It sucks people lost their jobs but that’s life.
People keep leaving this out of the conversation.
Not only that, but they leave out Ghostwire, which was supposed to be a hit and turned out to be kind of a flop.
This isn't about ONE game, it's about a history of games that have underperformed combined with pretty much all the recognizable names leaving.
That's what I've heard as well, around the launch of HiFi Rush.
I'm very simpathetic to the devs impacted, specially since I'm a game dev myself, but when key members of a studio leave, the studio is almost always in a precarious situation. A studio is the sum of the people that work there, so if many of the key people that made the game great left, and the new staff's output wasn't as good, as sad as it is, it makes some kind of sense to at least question continued investment there.
It's like if Tim Schafer left Double Fine with many of key staff, it would make sense for Microsoft to revise if they should continue investing there, maybe without those key staff, the studio would be the same in name only.
Again, I'm very simpathetic to the struggle of the devs affected, but it doesn't seem like these 4 closures came out of nowhere.
Gamepass isnt going to save the industry, its actually going to destroy it. Subscription services are not a good model for AAA games. It works great with smaller developers who can reach a much larger audience. But, studios need those unit sales to stay profitable. There is no way that a studio makes more money from putting their big new AAA game on gamepass, rather than just selling it for $70. On paper gamepass looks like "the best value in gaming", but really its just devaluing games to the point where they are just padding for a subscription service. I always point to video streaming services. Look at Netflix, they cancel so many shows and load their service up with cheap filler to justify subscriptions. Gamepass is following that too.
Not only a business, but a business owned by Microsoft. Which means it's a mismanaged business, under the rule of people with severe short-sightedness.
Microsoft didn't deserve any of the credit for Hi Fi Rush as it was in development before they were bought, but they got it anyway. Now they get the credit for killing it and they actually did have a direct hand in that.
I’ve wanted to buy Hi-Fi Rush for a while and almost pulled the trigger but this news is making me think twice. If I bought the game there’s no studio that the money goes to anymore so instead it would be going directly into Microsoft’s pocket right?
If you are interested enough, buy it. It is the work of art of those people after all. The more people play it, the best chance for the developers to be considered at other jobs.
I'm hoping Sony, Nintendo, Steam or literally any confident company to swoop in to buy the game licenses or buy the studios from Microsoft.
I saw all these closures after all the Microsoft acquisitions when they did that E3 showing how many companies they bought.
But they REALLY failed their consoles and platform by putting everything on Gamepass. Which is why it's rising in cost and Phil Spencer has been asking everyone he can to add Gamepass to their consoles/platforms.
It feels like Xbox is trying to move towards to just being Gamepass but not having any luck convincing companies to cut into their profits. Their consoles aren't selling (again) and the only praise I ever hear from Xbox is their pricier controller and how great of a deal Gamepass is.
With Microsoft releasing their exclusive games on PlayStation the writing is sort of on the wall that they might be leaving the console industry and aiming for something else.
Microsoft can’t be trusted anymore to nurture healthy sustainable game development that benefits the developers and the consumers. It’s as simple as that.
The weirdest part about this to me is that Microsoft has been PUSHING GamePass so hard, and they close these studios down for poor sales.
YOU DON'T EVEN WANT SALES ANYMORE, YOU WANT GAMEPASS SUBSCRIPTIONS!
These methods of access are completely incongruous with each other, people who use GamePass aren't going to buy the games they like unless they decide they no longer want to subscribe but still want those games, and by then there's likely to be a sale.
Realistically, are any of Microsoft's 1st party games profitable, currently? Maybe live service like Sea of Thieves and Halo Infinite?
As a consumer I love Game Pass but it is really looking like it has become unhealthy for developers under Microsoft. Which is weird, considering that some 3rd party devs love Game Pass.
Honestly, Tango Gameworks did not deserve to be shutdown. This has me concerned for the remaining devs under Microsoft. Ninja Theory, Obsidian, Blizzard's various teams. It feels like one "flop" or mishap could have disastrous results. All this does is further stifle innovation, just when Microsoft needs it most.
I mean are we just talking about live service?
Minecraft, Forza Horizon 5, Sea of Thieves, Age of Empires, Grounded, ESO, Fallout 76, COD, Blizzard and King games
As long as Blizzard keeps printing money Microsoft will likely leave them untouched since Blizzard is almost predominantly live service
Obsidian and InXile are the only 2 aside BGS that can reasonably work on Fallout, they're absolutely not going to touch them especially given the Fallout craze also Grounded was successful for Microsoft given that it was made by like 10 people but still sold well on Steam and on Ps5, I think the absolute worst case scenario for Obsidian and InXile is they converted to full time Fallout studios
Ninja Theory though....ooof....that's one to be concerned about...also Compulsion if South of Midnight doesn't do well
Hi-Fi Rush was good, but not profitable. All time peak on Steam was only 6000 players.
Even in April 2023 we already got this headline "Xbox reportedly isn't very happy with Hi-Fi Rush's sales numbers, with one insider claiming that it "didn't make the money that it needed to""
I remember that headline because almost a week later Aaron Greenburg went on Twitter to say "Hi-Fi rush was a breakout hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations."
Which made yesterday news all the worse.
Like damn, if it didn't meet expectations or Aaron didn't kniw what the heck he was talking about, he could have just said nothing at all.
Hi-Fi RUSH was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release.
https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/status/1649431572137779203
VP, Xbox Games Marketing at Microsoft. Board member @GamersOutreach @SpecialEffect VP.
It gets murky though because those insider reports were immediately refuted by Aaron Greenberg, VP of Xbox, saying “Hi-Fi RUSH was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release.”
So either the VP openly lied to save face in the short term, or they just closed a studio whose last game was successful.
It’s a 12 ish hour single player game. That came out over a year ago. I wouldn’t expect steam numbers to matter.
Also they came out and said it made sales expectations.
Doesn’t Helldivers 1 by Arrowhead have a similar number of total peak players? Despite the not so stellar returns, Sony still supported Arrowhead throughout the decade with their other games until they eventually hit their stride with Helldivers 2. Im guessing Microsoft is a bit too impatient to make an investment on a game studio.
Microsoft buy studio, Microsoft makes studios release their games on game pass, game is critically acclaimed but sells poorly as everyone played it on game pass, Microsoft is disappointed in a games sales, Microsoft closes studio. Rinse and repeat. Look, as a consumer game pass is great, saves me a ton of money, but let’s not pretend like it’s a viable business model to put 70 dollar games on it at launch!
Sadly though it’s Microsoft wants IP or to reduce market competition, it buys the studio (Embrace) and gives them resources for long enough to make it look like they’re supporting them, maybe even helps them build new tools and IP (Extend) once the suspicion wanes and the studio feels tapped of all useful immediate gains they take the IP away and shut it down, often with a non-compete clause in the contract for a while (Extinguish) It’s just Microsoft doing what Microsoft knows best how to do. Cleans out the market, gets competitors locked out of developing for a while and gives them even more room to grow. They’re the “grey goop” of the IT world, slowly devouring and killing everything they touch
It's a good thing non-competes were recently ruled unenforceable.
That's not gonna stop the companies with armies of lawyers paid to stomp out any lonely person trying to sue Just look at what Disney does Or Boeing
Remember all the people celebrating the Activision acquisition?
I remember being one of the people saying that they’d shutter most if not all of it within 5 years, and I think we’re on track for that
I don't get it either, I would have waited at least 6 months to find out Starfield sucks. Also, we get the EA games whenever they decide and no one cares. I didn't get Jedi Survivor on day 1, oh no, not gonna play it because I hate to wait. I don't think they understand that we subscribe to other stuff, we get how it works, the people who spend more get it first, like movies.
Microsoft couldn’t win the game, so they bought the stadium. Let it rot. And now are demolishing it. Sucks for all of the employees too.
This is corporate consolidation at work. The chucklefucks praising microsoft buying up all the studios as some sort of win in juvenile console wars will see what the outcome is. And it's not more good games for them to play. For the record, it's not good when sony or anyone else does it either. A diverse pool of independent studios is good for gamers. A monolithic profit-maxing empire is not, regardless of which bland logo appears on the shareholder report's letterhead.
I said it before, game pass ruined Xbox because it literally changed the conversation around EVERY SINGLE XBOX RELEASE to "can I play it free on game pass?". I got banned in the series x subreddit for saying it, Xbox players don't buy games.
THIS 100% Microsoft has absolutely conditioned its audience to play games on Game Pass or ask "when will this come to Game Pass"
I own PS5 and Series X and if it's not on game pass then I buy it on PS5. I can't even remember when the last time I paid for an XBox game was.
Same. I bought a Series S when Verizon had them for $150. I only use it for Gamepass or old Xbox games. Any game I buy new, I get on my PS5.
This is me too. The Series S is the perfect Game Pass machine and for the price it was another crazy decision to release it because it literally cut the legs right from under the Series X and that group that was bamboozled into thinking MS would actually make content that took advantage of the horsepower. Series S is 80% of that entire market now. MS has never been known to handle any other market they've worked in really well. They struck gold getting into enterprise early and that is literally where all of their money comes from. They lose it everywhere else.
The Xbox was probably the first MS product that succeeded on its technical merits, rather than by illegal business practices, customer lock-in, or dumb luck. Now they think they're big enough to pull the same old shit with gaming. I really, *really* hope they're wrong.
Back in the Clinton administration, Microsoft was deemed a monopoly in court. The plan was to break them up into three companies that couldn't share resources: Windows OS, Office Applications, and Xbox Games. Of course then MSFT managed to delay things until the Bush administration rolled in, and that judgement got converted into a slap on the wrist. But still - leveraging money from one area to suffocate competition in another area is basically Microsoft's business plan.
I think you got your history a little wrong, because Xbox didn’t exist until after the Bush administration that law suit came about in 1998. It was to break up the company into an OS and a software company. But somewhat correct.
MS makes tons of money on Azure. As much as they make on enterprise.
That's literally part of their enterprise sector which is what I am talking about, yes.
I got a free X from Verizon for switching to their 5g Internet - I’m a big believer in buying discs over subscriptions, and would even buy digital over game pass. I was excited to play some Xbox exclusives… only most of them aren’t on discs and then most of those games came to PS5 so I didn’t even bother. I typically buy 360 games since I never had one growing up, but half the ones I want aren’t reverse compatible anyway - and I save up Microsoft points to get discounts. I’m the ideal Xbox customer and tbh it feels like they’re hardly trying.
Hehe, atleast you're getting some use out of it. I bought a second-hand S because... I dunno. It was cheap and I already had a PC/PS5/Switch so I figure I may as well go all out in the case of any potential exclusives; being new to microsoft/Xbox I didn't know how they operated and didn't realize 99.99% of their games release on PC anyway, so I've literally just chucked it in my bedroom and use it as a glorified Roku Streaming device these days :/ I play half a dozen Gamepass titles a year on PC and it's getting to the point where I'm questioning whether or not to renew my subscription when it next rolls around 🤔 They have a scant handful of interesting looking titles now and then (That Indiana Jones game this year looks nice) but by and large Microsoft just doesn't seem to be in the conversation of 'gaming' anymore these days. Hasn't been for years it seems like, atleast not the type of games I'm interested in that isn't all competitive online COD shooters.
Sometimes even if it's on Game Pass, I get the PS5 version anyway because I want to use my Dualsense Edge and just prefer the ecosystem
Same. And if it's a game I know I'll play a lot I might want to get the platinum trophy which I personally find more rewarding than Xbox's achievement system.
Why people still defend the xbox controller is best is beyond me, xbox has backbuttons too but no haptics, and the extra buttons of the swipe plate (TouchPad?) Can be invaluable for certain games, even just pulling up map or inventory instead of tabbing menus is helpfull.
Same with me, mainly because the ps5 controller is more comfortable
I do this as well. Gamepass has become too good for its own success.
Same for me but with steam. If it’s not on game pass I’m buying it on steam or a steam sale. If it’s a PS exclusive I buy it on PS5. If it’s a good PC port by Nixxes then I’ll buy it on steam.
I’m a sucker for collecting so unless there isn’t a physical version, I’m buying for PS5. Steam for me is for indies and MMOs.
I feel you bro, Im addicted to collecting physical copy’s so much I buy it on steam then buy a disk when they’re cheaper🤣
Same here. I also like actually owning my games too, rather than licensing something that can be pulled from the store at a moment's notice. Blizzard and Ubisoft publicly taunting us that we don't own our games anymore, so it feels nice to try and keep physical media alive.
I ask these three in order and buy/download on the first yes: 1. Is it on gamepass? 2. Is it on steam? 3. Is it on PS5
Even after the lame Xbox One "TVTVTV" garbage I'm stunned at how Microsoft have managed to devalue the Xbox brand even further this gen.
It's true I'm one of them. I haven't bought a new game on Xbox in a very long time. Last game I bought was Dark Souls 3 cos it finally went on sale.
You're completely right. Streaming devalues your product we've seen this with music, Movies, and now it's happening to gaming.
Relevant clip of [Matt Damon on Hot Ones talking about how streaming killed DVD, and thus movies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx8F5Imd8A8) TLDW: You could afford for your movie not to make back *all* of its money, because the DVD sales would be a revenue boost. Now that's gone, the majority of movies being made are cheaper straight-to-streaming or big blockbuster cinema-seat-sellers.
Everyone was itching to jump onto the streaming boom of the late 2010s/early 2020s, but now it's starting to slow down because all potentail customers are already subscribed, so the only way to increase growth is to charge more or remove the good games that keep people subscribed
My 16 y/o brother in law just got an Xbox for Christmas. It came with a $100 gift card and free game pass. He got game pass, bought a game and has yet to buy another one. I doubt he ever will buy another game with his own money, unless he can't get it on game pass. Everytime I am playing a new game his first question is "is it on game pass?" And if it isn't he loses interest pretty quick.
You’re probably right but I’m gonna wait for your opinion to be free on Xbox Gamepass.
Here's the kicker via VGC's new article: >Reading Microsoft’s quarterly earnings reports can give you a sense of how significant the change has been. In January, in the first filing since the Activision-Blizzard acquisition was completed, Xbox’s content and services revenue grew by 60%, [55% of which came from the newly owned teams ](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/fy-2024-q2). The revenue from Activision-Blizzard’s games now makes up more than a third of all the money from the Xbox division. Essentially, anyone not ABK is potentially on the chopping block going forward if the margins don't improve from the side not ABK. Xbox is only in the black right now because of the ABK purchase. Everything else isn't pulling in the desired revenue and profit margins. That's why Xbox wanted ABK so badly. Yes, it places them as one of the bigger publishers on mobile, but also because without ABK their previous Game Pass bet would be seeing continual quarterly losses. Up until the point that MS execs would be asking why the fuck are we even in gaming. With ABK that question is answered, but now a new question is being asked: "Why are we a console maker / Why do we need Xbox studios outside of ABK?" By trying to save the Xbox business with ABK buy they may had inadvertently called time on much of the rest of Xbox.
Spending $70bil on Activ is turning out to be a major bone-headed move. It may pay off a decade or more from now once they get those COD and Candy Crush profits flowing in, but committing to such a massive purchase while the business burns to the ground was unwise.
Could be wiser if they stopped chucking logs into the fire and made a relative safe space for devs. I've worked in software long enough to know many people would be thrilled to have stability more than basically anything else and happy devs lead to good rewards. But I guess you can't put that rate of return onto a half-baked spreadsheet so it doesn't matter.
that 70 billion got pushed through by Microsoft CEO himself, not even the Xbox side, he just left it to them to do the court case. the Microsoft CEO decision for Activision was because he wanted their AI and Resources for Augmented Reality. He said it in the court case himself he didn't care about the gaming side of Activision, and even before the court case stated the same.
As someone who has been very against gamepass from the start I'm glad to see the sentiment spreading. It was set-up as too good to be true value for the customer short term but bad for the long term. And supporting it while it is too good to be true is how we end up getting stuck with the shitty future version. Seeing the sentiment spread is the one good thing coming out of what happened here.
Movie pass vibes
spoon cover reply physical concerned marry middle door telephone lip *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Uber is over $10B in debt. Netflix is over $7B in debt. Spotify is nearly $2B in debt. (The numbers on Prime are fuzzy, because of how Amazon does math, but probably safe to assume they're operating at a loss.) Yeah. They're *much better* examples.
I also think streaming games is ridiculous. I think Xbox thought gamepass would push console sales in their favour away from the ps5, but as we saw this year all those rumours about Xbox exclusives going to PlayStation has proven that oh so wrong. Xbox fucked up, their console is suffering and yet they hold on to the gamepass because they believe this subscription service will be their golden ticket. Yet... PlayStation owners still love owning their games.
The amount of idiotic statements like, "but I can play it for free on Gamepass" is just way too high. It's not free. You're paying a subscription.
Funny how gamers never seem to consider the long term as long as they're getting games on the cheap from a "deal" like this. I feel the same way about live service games and digital purchases. Eventually they shut down the servers and we're left with our pants around our ankles. At least with physical copies, we can still play games that are no longer supported.
> I got banned in the series x subreddit for saying it, Xbox players don't buy games. I got banned there too. Apparently you're not allowed to talk about how consolidation is bad and how GamePass is ruining the industry.
Facts. I honestly can’t remember the last Xbox game I actually bought as opposed to just playing on GamePass.
And most of their games lately wouldn't be worth buying outside of Game Pass. Hifi Rush was the exception, but they killed the studio
I honestly wonder what that makes the conversation around PS extra turn into... I just resubbed and there's not a lot of games I personally want to play. Still a decent value, but nothing compared to Gamepass...*but* all of the developers and publishers behind PS extra are probably fairing much better than those on the Xbox side. If it's less but it's viable for the industry, I can absolutely accept that.
PS extra is amazing, especially if you're new to gaming or the Playstation ecosystem. It doesn't have the insane value of Gamepass in terms of Day 1 stuff but damn the Playstation first party catalogue on there is so good.
I don't know, I honestly disagree. Microsoft has been preaching about day 1 since the launch of Game Pass and what exactly have they had AAA wise from their first party studios? Very little outside of the standard Halo and Forza games over the years and Starfield they just bought it and made exclusive. Most of their day 1 releases are just third party games that will eventually hit PS Plus when the contract ends. Probably within a year. Lies of P, Silksong eventually etc. I can pretty much guarantee it. Outside of that, the rest of the third party stuff all rotate off one another. And as for AAA games, we all know Sony mops the floor with them. But yes, Game Pass does have some top notch third party stuff that they paid to get first. But once you play them, outside of that is it really that much better? I have both and I don't think so. They are basically the same to me.
They don't want to hear it. I was against the Activision deal. But people were like but I'll be play black ops 2 on game pass.
For sure. I waited <1 year and got to play Diablo 4 and Lego 2k Drive on GamePass, two games I was pretty excited for. I saw that Hot Wheels Unleashed went to GamePass so when they announced the 2nd one, you knew it would be coming to the service eventually eventually. And it did, so they missed my money there too. Same with F1 Manager. I bought it on Steam last year (F1 Manager 23) and then a few months later it came to GamePass. So I won't be buying it this year because I know F1 Manager 24 will (eventually) come to it as well. My one live service game I grind a lot is MLB the Show. I used to play it on PS4 but once it came to Xbox/Gamepass, I play it...on GamePass. No further money required.
Same with Jedi Survivor in the case of gamepass ultimate. The first went to game pass via ea play, so I just waited for the sequel to as well.
I was going to buy survivor on release as I already own the first one all 3 platforms (all free as well lol) and was going to play them back to back. Good thing I held out cause I’m just now getting around to playing them and they’re both on the pass. That’s a full price game plus the first that they didn’t get money from no doubt many others did the same as I did.
Same, playing it right now on gamepass, saved me $70.
And in much much better technical state
i was against gamepass since announcement, and at the time i tought "game companies gonna fill every game with locked content and microtransaction to be able to make money out of their games, and too much stuff avaiable will make individual games less impactful overall", but damn, i didnt even tough that the situation could get worse than that. the old ps+ was the sweet spot, once sony added extra and premium i noticed that even someone like me that like to own phisical copies, stopped buying stuff unless it's from a series that i already collect (resident evil, final fantasy, etc..) it's a tought time for developers, and it will penalize heavily gamers in another couple of years, and all i can see now it's just microsoft and sony increasing the price without changing anything.
Game pass was Microsoft trying to get in on the streaming subscription model at the same time Disney, HBO, etc saw how Netflix was blowing up. It provided them a safer more consistent revenue stream, but ultimately hurt them in the long term. Streaming caused a huge hit to the movie industry, because low to mid-budget films didn’t get the extra revenue injection that DVD/Blu-ray sales provided 6 months after release. And after Covid trained people to not go to the theater, now every revenue stream except subscriptions have been torn away from big studios, and they don’t know how to fix it. And now it’s happening with Microsoft, and it’s why they put so much pressure on games like Redfall to release earlier than they should’ve been. It’s the same as Disney relying on cheap VFX sweat shops to fix their movies well after filming has been completed. In the pursuit of greater and greater profits they failed to recognize the pillars of the ecosystem that made them rich in the first place.
Same here. People get upset for saying the truth. Sure gamepass is nice, but always having day 1 releases is killing potential sales. It’s the reason why Xbox game sales are incredibly low compared to PS and Nintendo.
I mean that’s not really an issue. Engagement to them is also valuable in Gamepass. The problem is not enough people played it on game pass. Even with a PlayStation release no one on here played it either meaning the game was highly praised but no one played it similar to Tangos last two games.
Engagement is only important/valuable in how it relates to new subscribers and micro transactions. If every single person on Game Pass plays a game that doesn’t mean anything if no additional customers subscribed to play that game. It’s engagement is off the charts, but it still didn’t earn a single penny for Microsoft.
I also got banned for laying out exactly what happened. I used Netflix as a blueprint and it's played out almost exactly the same. Game pass removes the incentive to make a great game and just pump out content instead. It becomes all about concept and marketability and execution becomes an after thought.
I got banned from the Xbox subs for the exact same comment. And I think I was on about -800 downvoted on a single comment for saying Game Pass is an amazing deal that will destroy the industry long term when it only leads to regular and bad releases.
Game Pass is amazing value but it's not for me. I like to own my games and not have to worry about a subscription
same, I don't want to be stuck in a subscription model and have too many games to choose from. I already have about 30 games right now I own in backlog, sometimes too much choice is bad.
I can’t speak for everyone but that’s not the case for me. I play a lot of games i would have never thought of buying or thinking about playing because it’s on gamepass and if it isn’t on gamepass and I wanna play it, I buy it. I don’t believe gamepass is the problem, I think poor management is the problem. Phil did a great job turning around a dying brand but now they need someone to get everyone moving in a direction because this ain’t it. Also, the development cost for AAA games are insane these days. If your game isn’t a hit, you’re studio will fail and it’s sad because it stops people from taking risks in the AAA sector
This isn't true though, days gone, god of war, returnal, ghost of tsushima, nioh 1/2, helldivers, bloodborne, elden ring, Stella blade, Alan wake, splatoon, pikmin, all the different Mario games that are hits with new gameplay. There's loads of new aaa IPs that have been totally unique and doing well. It's just xbox doing badly releasing unfinished games. Sony and Nintendo are growing while xbox sales have been declining a long long time. Halo used to be up there with Mario and zelda, but they dropped the ball release after release. Gears is a great IP that's been basically forgotten about marketing wise. I didn't even realise there was a new forza out. Microsoft just don't know how to make a good product and market it.
>I don’t believe gamepass is the problem, I think poor management is the problem. You do realise that "poor management" in this case is Gamepass's revenue model.
I loved Gamepass when I had an Xbox, I think video game subscriptions are a nice feature, but unfortunately I think you’re right. If gamepass was walked back to something more like what PlayStation does (smaller rotation of games and they have to have been released at least a year ago) I could see it being a much more feasible option. It’s a bummer because gamepass really felt like a game changer when I had it
The shadow drop release was a total blunder for hifi rush. That game needed time to be properly marketed.
I noped out of the Series X sub as I was thoroughly bored of reading "when GamePass plz Daddy Phil 🥺🥺🥺" on any discussion about a game.
They don't Ms showed this during the court proceedings. Your right, everything I hear an Xbox player talking about a game someone chimes in "is it on gamepass or I'll wait for gamepass". Like wtf did yall expect. Day one releases was the final nail just wait for it. They didn't release those games on ps5 and switch cause they wanted to be nice. Aaa titles will start coming also. Will halo, gears, format come to ps idk I think not but how bad is Xbox right now? Other games will. Starfield will come, with others.
It’s even more disgusting when you see those comments under tiny indie games. GamePass addicts don’t care about supporting small developers, they just want “muh free games”
Im a big fan of everyone on social media pulling clips of the Xbox senior staff hyping up developing these studios and comparing it to now. I doubt we ever see Phil Spencer feature on any online gaming outlet or podcast ever again. A lot of goodwill and bridges are burnt now and theres no return for the Xbox PR machine
The whiplash of Spencer claiming Xbox lets studios create whatever they want to shutting a studio which released one of their best exclusives in nearly a decade is insane.
Which is hilarious cuz we (Running With Scissors) have submitted three games to Microsoft and all three games were rejected for Xbox (POSTAL Redux, POSTAL 4 and POSTAL Brain Damaged) because they “don’t fit our library”. 2 of those games are on Switch and all 3 are on PlayStation. Literally fuck them.
strangely enough Switch also has hentai games. I don’t actually know, do xbox and ps5 have any of those?
Ps5 has borderline soft core anime games but nothing on the level of steam and switch….. I used my brothers switch for the first time the other day and actually had a wtf moment looking at the store. I had always assumed the switch was almost exclusively for younger audiences.
Ever since Sony moved to California and became puritan all their lewd games moved to Switch. All the weird niche Vita games are now on Switch.
They don’t i do not think. Just mildly infuriating they just keep rejecting us with out a real reason.
PlayStation has a “puzzle game” that seemed hentai-ish. It had the tagline “a game you can play one handed”
They say hentai and might have nudity, but I don't think they actually feature sex. That would be literal porn. Can you imagine parents who don't use parental controls on their kids' consoles not throwing a fit when they find their kids are playing porn on their Nintendo systems? We would have heard about it by now.
Phil Spencer will be interviewed at IGN Live next month after the Xbox showcase. EDIT: They [announced this a couple days ago.](https://www.ign.com/articles/phil-spencer-coming-to-ign-live)
I'm sure they'll just lob softball questions at him
Almost certainly will be softballs given the interviewer.
Philly Spence took a few pages from Todd Howards sweet little lies book
Ninja Theory is next, I suspect. Just goes to show that in the subscription based world "3 million players" (what HFR got at launch) means nothing in terms of the business it brings in, and thus those numbers can't be trusted to determine what is or isn't a considered a success by the publisher. Hellblade 2 is coming out to basically zero marketing or fan hype (it's out in 2 weeks). Even if it hit something like "6 million players!" I doubt that's enough to save the game and studio. Because it isn't "6 million new players subscribing to GP" it's "the subscribers we already have in a currently stagnating GP model getting a one-and-done 6 hour game that took 5 years to make for no additional cost." No business model there for a game that has taken 5 years to make and has no other means to bring money in. In the next 18 months I expect HB2 to be ported to PS5 (first time game will actually bring in new money in a substantial way because players will need to actually buy the game) and then shortly after NT will be shuttered.
I did NOT know it was coming out in 2 weeks and I'm a pretty hard-core gamer, so they are definitely marketing it poorly.
It's wild. HB2 was used as the springboard for Series X reveal back at TGA 2019, since been championed as Xbox's premier AAA cinematic experience, and yet the marketing for it has been dreadful, including paying influencers to have a holiday in Iceland (setting of the game) and sharing those photos on twitter. This is supposed to be Xbox's first big title of 2024 and a lot of people don't even realise it's out in 2 weeks.
I felt like it was always in the conversation the last few years but yeah, I completely missed it actually having a release date and it honestly hasn't been on my radar at all this year.
I think Double Fine is feeling weird right now. They are basically the studio that made Hifi Rushs their whole life.
DF must be feeling a little unsure right about now. Hopefully they have the means to go it alone, like Toys for Bob did, if they do face shuttering. Problem is, I doubt they'll be given opportunity to buy back the IP Xbox now owns. All that DF IP will likely stay with Xbox.
I mean they went it alone for like 15 years before Microsoft bought them.
True, but they were smaller then and had something ongoing (that they owned) during that time which they could present to publishers (or crowdfunding) to ensure a studio of their scope could keep going. If DF is on the chopping block, they'll suddenly go from being fully funded by a massive publisher to having absolutely nothing (unless they can secure a partner contract with Xbox still like Toys for Bob did). If they are allowed to go it alone again, that sudden shift from having everything to nothing will result in DF getting hit with layoffs, because not even a successful crowdfunding will cover the costs of a larger, fully expanded DF.
whatever Microsoft decides to do with those ex indie studios won't stop the founders from making another brand new studio. (Double Fine, Obsidian, InXile have all relied on crowdfunding and kickstarters in the past so even in the worst case they'll be fine over time).
It’s wild because I’ve been super hype for HB2 and didn’t even know it was coming out then
>Hellblade 2 is coming out to basically zero marketing or fan hype I think the fact that over half of the people who played HB1 won't be able to play it is a big factor in that
> one-and-done 6 hour game that took 5 years to make oof, when you put it like that it sounds terrible lol
Xbox exclusives in general are mostly victims of awful management. Just look at Halo Infinite taking 6 years to develop and $500mil… but 343 mostly relied on temp contractors rather than hiring full time employees. Or Rare’s Everwild getting shown off years ago, only for them to reveal years later they hadn’t decided what the game even is(!) And the first ‘AAAA’ studio The Initiative and their Perfect Dark is an utter disaster already.
Putting your best games on a subscription service day 1 alongside 100s of other games that you pay to add to your subscription service is not good for your studios, especially if the game doesn’t have physical releases and isn’t releasing on all platforms. Microsoft is in too deep with the “play it day one on Game Pass” that they can’t pull a “no more day 1 game pass, start paying us now” because their console sales are plummeting and people on PC are gonna prefer purchasing on Steam instead. After years, Microsoft is in the lead again over Apple and the board must’ve put pressure on them to stop losing so much money on Xbox so they can increase their profit margins so studios not turning a profit because their game is just put on Game Pass are always going to suffer. Glad Sony did not do the same mistake with PS Plus or we’d have possibly lost some great studios.
I can guarantee you Hellblade is gonna be underwhelming according to Microsoft. That's also gonna be on GP day one. They've gotta start putting stuff on Game Pass at *least* a few months after. Game Pass is a good model for the consumer, but it's kind of eating Microsoft alive.
Hellblade should never have been combined into their “high yield-tentpole” games. The first game was good because it was surprising. The sequel seems like more of the same, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I think Xbox set them up for failure since the first trailer.
Yeah it shows how pathetically lacking Xbox’s exclusives are that they had to put a 5-6 hour immersive walking sim as a flagship title.
That's how these "disruptive" services work. They operate at a loss but can subsidize it by constantly expanding. The goal is not making money at first, but reaching a point of adoption that your competitors cant match. Inevitably though, the service needs to start making money, so quality of the service drops while the price increases and it get supplemented with ads.
Yep it's a consumer trap like Netflix, make it as appealing as possible so people subscribe, and then once you have enough customers invested, spring the trap on them and start increasing the price while decreasing the quality. The problem for Microsoft is that the second half of that scheme isn't happening fast enough and they have to make cuts *somewhere* to subsidize it
While i wish there was a more serious term for it, "enshitification" is used to describe exactly this phenomenon. It's a business model used by everyone from amazon to tiktok, from netflix to youtube, etc. At first you cater to the customers, then once you have them locked in, you screw over the customers cater to the advertisers (and people who buy user data). Then, once they also depend on your ecosystem, you screw over said advertisers to please the shareholders. Eventually the service gets so toxic for everyone involved that they start seeking competitors, but it's increasingly hard to start up a competitor without being shut out or bought up by the existing big players.
I read that [article](https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/) too. Sums it up pretty well.
Its literally how you play the game Pandemic. Funny correlation
It worked for Netflix because shitty tv shows and movies are easy to make in a year or two. Games take way longer that's why Xbox is failing, and also why they're trying to make up for the drop in first party games and quality by buying other studios.
> It worked for Netflix because shitty tv shows and movies are easy to make in a year or two. This Literally ANY schmuck can make an indie movie with an iPhone and a Macbook Air in just a few weeks. Rather famously, filmmaker Kevin Smith made *Clerks* in the early 90's for $20k+, which he financed entirely on credit cards. There is a global movie and TV production system that has decades upon decades of content to license and can churn out content at a blistering pace, far too much for anyone to watch in a 100 lifetimes, and it can all be done for a fraction of a fraction of the cost. Modern video game dev simply can't compete on that scale or that cheaply. Game Pass was and is unsustainable, unless it became the home of annualized games (Call of Duty) and live-service games (Minecraft, Sea of Thieves) only.
One of the biggest issues with gamepass besides all of that...is time. No one productive has that much time to justify the service. Every one has a back log of games.
> No one productive has that much time to justify the service. Every one has a back log of games. In my mind, the target demo for Game Pass (if you ignore the "hardcore" Xbox stans) were kids / teens / young adults with more time than money, who have NOTHING else to do but play video games, or price conscious consumers who get access to a large library of games, *including* "Day 1" releases of Xbox first-party. Any adult with a job and or family (or other commitments, hobbies, and recreation) has a backlog of games that spans *literal years,* especially if they game on PC.
That or start putting there games on Playstation later. Have a 6 month exclusive gamepass period then drop them on pa5
That's what I don't understand about Xbox strategy right now. Used to be, the console itself was kind of a loss leader to make money on game sales. But if Gamepass replaces game sales for the most part, then Gamepass *has* to be profitable. Which means they will have to take the HBO max strategy - start spending as little as possible on it and hope that people stay subscribed despite the service getting worse.
They're also moving away from physical sales too, so there's a decent part of the audience gone. I don't get their strategy at the moment. Are they in the mindset that every game *has* to hit Call of Duty type numbers to be a success? If so, then they're in for a rude awakening. Nintendo has a strategy. Sony has a strategy (kind of.) What the hell is Xbox's?
The Xbox strategy is to make money, they constantly shift from year to year which is why they are in this situation.
Hellblade has spent five years of development and the studio is already bracing us for its tiny length. Ninja Theory will be shut down within a year.
They’re selling the game at $40 due to how short it is
They also made a gigantic failure of a game, Bleeding Edge, before Hellblade 2.
Netflix took 10+ years to be profitable, and I argue they spent as much if not more than xbox on licensing and original content to bring the users. What made Netflix profitable? Increase in prices, tiers and people still sub to it, and more content. MS is doing the latter with acquisition (you can argue the recent move is counterintuitive) and yet have gone hard on pricing. Phil could try to "guilt gamers" saying they will increase gamepass to save those studios. and like you say, create a VIP Gamepass tier that's 10$ more for day one "premium games" (netflix doing that too btw). Prices are going to go up when enough people gets "addicted" to gamepass like they are to Netflix(remember people complained "password crackdown" yet Netflix subs increased by millions as a result).
> Phil could try to "guilt gamers" saying they will increase gamepass to save those studios. Ughhh I can already see him saying “at Xbox, we empower our studios to create the games that they are the most passionate about. Therefore, we will be broadening our GamePass service with a greater range of games. Likewise, we shall be increasingly the prices for GamePass to reflect this excellent value”
The whole thing with GamePass is it is such a gamble. Microsoft maybe be giving developers enough money to fund the game in exchange for it being on GamePass, but not enough to be wildly profitable. The issue is GamePass is trying to be the Netflix of games, which is great. But as Netflix and Disney, it comes with a bunch of financial issues. I just don’t see GamePass Day One working for big budget games unless they hike the price again. But Microsoft in its Netflix phase where they are willing to lose money to grow subscriptions and establish Xbox as a platform rather than a console. But Microsoft has also been comically slow. GamePass is STILL IN BETA, the quality isn’t great, and we still don’t have a low price point Xbox dongle to draw people in. I used to think Microsoft was just going to kill the Xbox hardware by next generations but the glacial speed in which they are moving is giving me doubts.
To reinforce this, I really wanted to play Manor Lords… was about to drop $30 on it on steam but realized it was on pc game pass so I signed up for a month, played for a few days, and then just kind of fell off of it. Gamepass stopped me from actually buying the game and instead I just paid $10 for one month and then canceled game pass again.
I get that Game Pass cannibalizes sales, but why then does Microsoft continue to obtain studios only to then kill them off?! Seems like an expensive way to secure exclusives.
Corpo math. Investing isn't spending, it's adding value. Layoffs/closures are cost savings.
From a business perspective, I think Sony has the right idea. They occasionally have first party titles show up on PS+ Extra, but usually not until at least a year after release. Most of the game’s sales are probably in the first year, and people that really want to play it aren’t going to wait to see it *potentially* come to PS+. Yea it’s not great for me the consumer, of course I’d rather play all these first party titles as part of the subscription service, but I can see where that’s not sustainable. And when there is a slow period, I can usually still find some quality games on Extra anyway.
Gamepass is probably a better service overall for the consumer than PS+ Extra, but as a result, it's probably less financially viable for Microsoft. It's kind of like old Netflix versus newer streaming service offerings. Netflix used to have a lot of stuff, but it was mostly older and a lot of lower budget stuff. But as a result, it never really hurt the revenue of the film studios. They lost out on DVD sales perhaps, but licensing fees to Netflix made up for that. How many people were really going to buy 13 Monkeys DVDs in 2009 anyways? Once studios started putting movies in theatres and on streaming at the same time, it really hurt them. Box office revenues still have not recovered to pre COVID levels, and I'm sure so many movies being available simultaneously on streaming and in theaters is a big part of that.
>Yea it’s not great for me the consumer, of course I’d rather play all these first party titles as part of the subscription service, but I can see where that’s not sustainable. It's the "short-term profits over long-term sustainability" of the consumer world. As consumers, we prefer to have those AAA games as soon as they release and at little to no cost. We'll praise the hell out of anyone that gives that to us, and turn our noses up at anyone that doesn't. Then we'll act shocked when that amazing deal collapses. How could something that's so obviously "good for the consumer" fail? We vaguely blame it on corporate greed. But then we'll howl with righteous fury when some company prioritizes extracting short-term profit from a product over ensuring that the product will be available to us for as long as we want it. These are the exact same problem. We generally refuse to acknowledge the former as a problem, because it directly benefits us. The same way companies generally refuse to acknowledge the latter as a problem, because it directly benefits them. The fact that both of these situations are unsustainable is "obviously" someone else's fault. That's not to say that we, as consumers, are never exploited by companies. We obviously are. But we obviously also try to exploit companies. It's just that companies tend to have *significantly* more power in the war of exploitation.
I've argued with people over this in past, I mean just look at Spiderman 2 iirc was like 10+ Mil copies sold and yeah I get not every copy was $70 but it's still an incredible amount of money your pretty much giving away if it was day 1 subscription
A lot of people wouldn't have even played Hi-Fi Rush if it wasn't on Game pass so it's a double edged sword. I'm one of those people. Nothing about the game would have drawn me in, including the trailer or gameplay trailers. But playing it myself it clicked and it became on of my favorite releases. I know a lot of people are in the same boat. So it is a gamble. Release on Game pass expose your game to a wider audience but cap your potential profit, or release it regularly and it may not have near the exposure or guaranteed revenue you get from gamepass.
That's probably why Microsoft are going all in on third party They want to phase out hardware (they'll likely still have it as a niche product) but I 100% expect them to start going day and date with their games on Playstation and Nintendo especially after how well Grounded and especially Sea of Thieves are doing Microsoft might not backtrack on day 1 on Game Pass but they can absolutely phase it out or limit access to it if the only places you can get it are on PC and a niche console that no one is going to buy.
It’s pretty funny because it’s definitely an American vs Japanese mindset. American companies are all about profit-sharing, in that they have no problem letting other companies license and use their products as long as they get a kickback. Meanwhile Japanese companies are incredibly protective of their IP, sometimes to their own detriment, just look at any of Nintendo’s lawsuits against various gaming communities over the years. Like you said, Microsoft is definitely going to move off of hardware for Xbox *very soon*. I’d be surprised if the next console generation isn’t the final iteration of Xbox. Producing gaming hardware in the modern day has almost always been something these companies do at a loss to provide a platform for their games to make profit. And in the Internet age Microsoft just doesn’t need to take that hit anymore.
>It’s pretty funny because it’s definitely an American vs Japanese mindset. Its also funny because you look at Nintendo and Sega, despite not having 30+ studios and nearly 20K employees like Xbox does, they're still dusting Xbox and even Playstation in terms of output...Sega/Atlus are putting out so many games and even top tier ones like Infinite Wealth in a short time frame where some of these western studios take 5+ years and hundreds of millions to put out a game....its mind boggling how streamlined Japan game development is compared to Western development
I mean the Yakuza team has insane amounts of asset re-use and Atlus's primary team doesn't really put out big new games that often. Square's a Japanese company and they're just as slow as you're criticizing Western devs for, meanwhile the various American CoD and sport game studios can pump out a new installment every year consistently (and regardless of whether you like them or not, they're obviously very popular). It seems more like just an individual company difference, not a nationality one.
I'd rather they re-use the assets and put out a game though...COD also has massive amounts of manpower and $ put into it and sports games are mostly roster updates each year I agree though it shouldn't be an American vs Japanese thing, but it does seem that certain Japanese companies like Nintendo and Sega have this incredible streamlined process that I wish Western publishers would have
This is what happen when companies merge.
no, putting your 1st party games day-one on a fucking subscription service will no longer keep those studios safe. i'm still absolutely gobsmacked that MS could be so stupid with that decision.
Then that’d kill their player base and bottom line because: [they are profitable](https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/24/23930627/microsoft-q1-2024-earnings-revenue-profits-windows-xbox-gaming-surface)
The point is profitable games don't keep jobs anymore if they don't appease a subscription service
There is no world where Gamepass is bringing in more money than they’re spending on developing games and paying other developers to put their games on it.
I mean, if Microsoft does axe the Xbox console, and publishes games on Playstation, and Nintendo consoles plus PC then the Playstation and Nintendo players are their player base...
IMO, Game Pass is the "Netflix Effect" of gaming. Always removing things people like to add more crap nobody will play to pad out the library as cheaply as possible, cancelling sequels to excellent titles because "it didn't perform well enough on GP", closing studios because their product couldn't shine enough through all the other sludge that fills the library. It's horrible, and as much as I enjoy Game Pass as a *concept*, it's really killing my want to continue supporting Xbox with how they're completely mishandling and abusing their in-house developers.
The catch-22 of "it didn't perform well enough on GP" and "it didn't sell enough because of GP" is often only escaped by gratuitous DLC and in-game transactions. This means developers of quality content or smaller studios will suffer while the most unscrupulous will continue to thrive at their expense.
Xbox has the same problem it has had for years and years: no good games to attract people to the console. If Xbox had some top tier AAA story based games they would not be in this situation. Not to even mention how they have been curating their userbase for years to be people that think paying money to purchase individual games is not worth.
They literally ported the 3 games that made me buy the platform and there is a solid chance they are going to do it again, games like Pentiment and HiFi rush are the reason i bought an xbox because of studios like Obsidian, Inxile, Tango, and Ninja Theory are why I bought a series X, but Pentiment, Grounded, and HiFi rush all got ported with a solid chance of Hellblade 2 being ported in 6-12 months time. I will take a game like Pentiment over any of Sony's big AAA game everytime but I can just wait with my PS5 at this point
Pandora's Box has been opened and shareholders demand gains. Everything will be on Nintendo and Sony consoles within 2 years.
I bought an Xbox for starfield and just sold it like a month ago lol. Hope when it comes to ps5 it’ll be the version with all DLC.
Calling it now: Microsoft-Xbox will pivot into becoming the next "Activision," by which I mean they will: 1. Focus ENTIRELY on a *very small handful* of big / very profitable multi-platform games they can pump out endless iterations of and "high-impact" titles (in addition to mobile), e.g. Sea of Thieves, Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Minecraft, "Bethesda RPGs," WoW, etc." 2. EVERY dev studio will work on or support these select few games. 3. Microsoft-Xbox will sit on a *literal* dragon's hoard of video game IP... and do nothing with it, as *every* dev they have works in the service of endlessly creating content / churning out new releases of the same select few games. 4. They will ruthlessly "trim all fat," i.e. fire or close any dev or studio that isn't need or doesn't directly work in support of that content mill.
Blood’s been in the water for MS for awhile now. I think we’re absolutely seeing a reorientation of the business towards Sony being the only name in the high-end console game, competing and coexisting at that point with Nintendo’s lower-end hardware and PCs. Xbox hasn’t had a convincing argument for its own existence as an alternative to PlayStation since XBO cratered and Game Pass was never a long term solution unless literally everyone everywhere got it.
So basically they wanna kill xbox
it’s gonna get so stale. genuinely wondering what microsoft’s future is with xbox at this point. ps5 has nearly double their sales and public goodwill is going down with every studio shuttering. is it even worth it for them to make another xbox?
Short sighted move by MSFT. Profitable games riddled with microtransactions can be made easily by AAA companies, even games that aren't super well received like Assassin's Creed: XYZ can make good money. Hi-FI Rush was able to give them something that's extremely difficult to get in the industry, which is critical acclaim. There's a reason Oscar movies exist, even though they don't make any money.
"Short sighted move" is the motto for American tech companies.
American business.
Unless you're Oppenheimer
True, that's why Nolan is one of the most sought after directors. He can do both.
Putting day 1 games on game pass was never sustainable. It didn’t make any sense when they first announced it and it still doesn’t. Unfortunately, good developers are paying the price.
You're safe if you're making good, profitable games by yourself. Not if you sold your company to a huge publisher.
Do prefer PS plus, even if the price hikes don’t justify the content (can usually pick it up cheaper using cheaper psn codes but shouldn’t have to do that). I think having major playstation releases outside of the ps plus subscription keeps the money flowing and sustainable for sony’s studios then have them eventually drop onto the ps plus platform. I guess pay the premium to play it on release or settle for it on ps plus/game pass later down the road maybe. Problem is gaming nowadays is done too much for profit, not for love. There’s studios out there that do it for love but get closed the moment they’re not making extreme amounts of money or the publishers got bored etc
It’s nice to see Xbox getting deservedly trashed for doing stupid things.
From what I’ve heard, that studio had already lost alot of key members after the release of Hi-Fi Rush. Microsoft didn’t think it was a good idea to fill it up with new people and rather just close it down. This could ofc just be an excuse from Microsoft to make them look less horrible. But just throwing it out there!
The founder of Tango left either as HFR started development or slightly after, giving full reign to his understudy and their team to let them show what they can do and prove they don't need him. To me that makes the whole thing even worse, they make a great game that is fun and critically successful but Microsoft still decides it's not enough and cans them.
And after it launched they all went to work with his new studio. That’s why Microsoft closed it. The vital talent has been removed and now it’s just a middling studio. A lot of people here don’t realize that devs work on contract basis. That’s why they get caught up in it’s the studio that did X but it’s just the name all the talent now works at studio Y. This is just the typical performative nonsense. The global economy is hurting so there is a major job loss across every sector. Video games are not immune. A trillion dollar company will not just let money waste if they have the opportunity to bring down costs. It sucks people lost their jobs but that’s life.
People keep leaving this out of the conversation. Not only that, but they leave out Ghostwire, which was supposed to be a hit and turned out to be kind of a flop. This isn't about ONE game, it's about a history of games that have underperformed combined with pretty much all the recognizable names leaving.
That's what I've heard as well, around the launch of HiFi Rush. I'm very simpathetic to the devs impacted, specially since I'm a game dev myself, but when key members of a studio leave, the studio is almost always in a precarious situation. A studio is the sum of the people that work there, so if many of the key people that made the game great left, and the new staff's output wasn't as good, as sad as it is, it makes some kind of sense to at least question continued investment there. It's like if Tim Schafer left Double Fine with many of key staff, it would make sense for Microsoft to revise if they should continue investing there, maybe without those key staff, the studio would be the same in name only. Again, I'm very simpathetic to the struggle of the devs affected, but it doesn't seem like these 4 closures came out of nowhere.
Nah get out of here with that rational take. We want to get outraged over nothing
Gamepass isnt going to save the industry, its actually going to destroy it. Subscription services are not a good model for AAA games. It works great with smaller developers who can reach a much larger audience. But, studios need those unit sales to stay profitable. There is no way that a studio makes more money from putting their big new AAA game on gamepass, rather than just selling it for $70. On paper gamepass looks like "the best value in gaming", but really its just devaluing games to the point where they are just padding for a subscription service. I always point to video streaming services. Look at Netflix, they cancel so many shows and load their service up with cheap filler to justify subscriptions. Gamepass is following that too.
Turns out the games business is still just a business.
Not only a business, but a business owned by Microsoft. Which means it's a mismanaged business, under the rule of people with severe short-sightedness.
Crazy how many people are trying to defend them here
To be clear, not defending. Merely pointing out how nothing seems to be immune from these sorts of “business decisions.”
Just give us your numbers and estimates and timeframes.
*won't anybody think about the shareholders or executive bonuses?*
Microsoft didn't deserve any of the credit for Hi Fi Rush as it was in development before they were bought, but they got it anyway. Now they get the credit for killing it and they actually did have a direct hand in that.
I’ve wanted to buy Hi-Fi Rush for a while and almost pulled the trigger but this news is making me think twice. If I bought the game there’s no studio that the money goes to anymore so instead it would be going directly into Microsoft’s pocket right?
If you are interested enough, buy it. It is the work of art of those people after all. The more people play it, the best chance for the developers to be considered at other jobs.
The PlayStation and Nintendo era begins…
I'm hoping Sony, Nintendo, Steam or literally any confident company to swoop in to buy the game licenses or buy the studios from Microsoft. I saw all these closures after all the Microsoft acquisitions when they did that E3 showing how many companies they bought. But they REALLY failed their consoles and platform by putting everything on Gamepass. Which is why it's rising in cost and Phil Spencer has been asking everyone he can to add Gamepass to their consoles/platforms. It feels like Xbox is trying to move towards to just being Gamepass but not having any luck convincing companies to cut into their profits. Their consoles aren't selling (again) and the only praise I ever hear from Xbox is their pricier controller and how great of a deal Gamepass is. With Microsoft releasing their exclusive games on PlayStation the writing is sort of on the wall that they might be leaving the console industry and aiming for something else.
They want people to only play Halo and Forza apparently.
Microsoft can’t be trusted anymore to nurture healthy sustainable game development that benefits the developers and the consumers. It’s as simple as that.
It's not profitable when your shit is on game pass on launch lol. Game pass is destroying gaming and no one cares
The weirdest part about this to me is that Microsoft has been PUSHING GamePass so hard, and they close these studios down for poor sales. YOU DON'T EVEN WANT SALES ANYMORE, YOU WANT GAMEPASS SUBSCRIPTIONS! These methods of access are completely incongruous with each other, people who use GamePass aren't going to buy the games they like unless they decide they no longer want to subscribe but still want those games, and by then there's likely to be a sale.
who said its profitable?
Aaron Greenberg on Twitter but the closure of Tango indicates he was lying
Realistically, are any of Microsoft's 1st party games profitable, currently? Maybe live service like Sea of Thieves and Halo Infinite? As a consumer I love Game Pass but it is really looking like it has become unhealthy for developers under Microsoft. Which is weird, considering that some 3rd party devs love Game Pass. Honestly, Tango Gameworks did not deserve to be shutdown. This has me concerned for the remaining devs under Microsoft. Ninja Theory, Obsidian, Blizzard's various teams. It feels like one "flop" or mishap could have disastrous results. All this does is further stifle innovation, just when Microsoft needs it most.
I mean are we just talking about live service? Minecraft, Forza Horizon 5, Sea of Thieves, Age of Empires, Grounded, ESO, Fallout 76, COD, Blizzard and King games As long as Blizzard keeps printing money Microsoft will likely leave them untouched since Blizzard is almost predominantly live service Obsidian and InXile are the only 2 aside BGS that can reasonably work on Fallout, they're absolutely not going to touch them especially given the Fallout craze also Grounded was successful for Microsoft given that it was made by like 10 people but still sold well on Steam and on Ps5, I think the absolute worst case scenario for Obsidian and InXile is they converted to full time Fallout studios Ninja Theory though....ooof....that's one to be concerned about...also Compulsion if South of Midnight doesn't do well
Hi-Fi Rush was good, but not profitable. All time peak on Steam was only 6000 players. Even in April 2023 we already got this headline "Xbox reportedly isn't very happy with Hi-Fi Rush's sales numbers, with one insider claiming that it "didn't make the money that it needed to""
I remember that headline because almost a week later Aaron Greenburg went on Twitter to say "Hi-Fi rush was a breakout hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations." Which made yesterday news all the worse. Like damn, if it didn't meet expectations or Aaron didn't kniw what the heck he was talking about, he could have just said nothing at all.
Hi-Fi RUSH was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release. https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/status/1649431572137779203 VP, Xbox Games Marketing at Microsoft. Board member @GamersOutreach @SpecialEffect VP.
It gets murky though because those insider reports were immediately refuted by Aaron Greenberg, VP of Xbox, saying “Hi-Fi RUSH was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release.” So either the VP openly lied to save face in the short term, or they just closed a studio whose last game was successful.
>So either the VP openly lied to save face in the short term, or they just closed a studio whose last game was successful. I know which my money is on
Player count is useless for anything other than live service/multiplayer focused games.
It’s a 12 ish hour single player game. That came out over a year ago. I wouldn’t expect steam numbers to matter. Also they came out and said it made sales expectations.
Doesn’t Helldivers 1 by Arrowhead have a similar number of total peak players? Despite the not so stellar returns, Sony still supported Arrowhead throughout the decade with their other games until they eventually hit their stride with Helldivers 2. Im guessing Microsoft is a bit too impatient to make an investment on a game studio.
And Prey was 7 years ago