It’s almost like raising prices while reducing the offerings is a good way to lower the number of paying customers
But, but… Copilot for Xbox!
let ai play for you, for a small admin charge of 4.99 per attempt
We are not quite there yet but I’m sure there are at least a couple LLM powered vtubers kicking around that can pay a few tokens to while you watch them play games badly.
not there yet, but there are patents https://www.ign.com/articles/playstation-patents-ai-assist-feature-that-can-take-over-if-you-get-stuck
According to business “geniuses”, if you raise the price by 50% and less than 50% of your customers leave then you are still in the clear.
What they don’t stop to think about is that they won’t get any new customers if they keep it going.
That’s why I canceled!
I was getting $60 a year plans and then they started moving features to their “Ultimate” tier while making it four times the price.
Wtf? 4x? I, personally, find 60 already way too much for not owning a single fucking game. Also way too much for some casual gamers who play an hour a day or so at maximum. Which I assume are their target demographic.
I feel like $5 per month to rent a ton of games (if they are games you are interested in) is a damn good deal. Not sustainable, but a damn good deal. Heck we used to rent one game from blockbuster for $4 for like 5 days.
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I actually liked the Game Pass approach initially.
You could pick between PC, Xbox or both.
You had the option for a cheap sub, or a slightly more expensive one, with appropriate feature parity.
The included games - especially the early access for many of them - were a solid mix of AAA titles and indie games that deserved the recognition.
And the funny thing is, Microsoft could’ve reached the target subscriber numbers if they didn’t pricejack tbe service while fucking over the customers AND the plans. I understand the need of capitalising a subscriber base, but doing a “from tomorrow, this shit will cost 3x as much” bullcrap move ain’t it.
The original model was not sustainable. It was designed for a rug pull. They just found out that it was still unsustainable after the rug pull.
Every streamer does the rug pull. I remember when my family was so shocked at the $5.99 ad free Disney+ sub. They fully believed that it was going to remain the best streaming deal forever. I mean this is Disney we’re talking about.
Make this claim about a city’s subway system. Or Market Basket’s rotisserie chicken.
Your numerical claim around profit is irrelevant because it gets people in the door - both new gamers, and new developers. They were making bank not just on game purchases, but DLC, games outside of Game Pass, etc.
Honestly I was never going to get in on gamepass no matter how good a deal it was because I would lose access to games no matter how long I had been paying to play them. In the same respect I don’t like leasing a car, I would rather buy used and accept all the problems that come out of it because eventually I could stop making payments.
I can see why people would enjoy it but it was never for me.
Understandable. I for one dislike owning games I won’t play, so GamePass was a good way to dip my toes, discover games, trial them for days/weeks at my own leisure, and move on.
mind you a the time the ANNUAL price was an AAA title’s price, not 3 months.
There is really only a couple of games I decided would have been better as a buy. If you like to play a game for 2-3 weeks then move on it was good. You could also try stuff that didn’t have demos etc and decide if it was worth your time. After a year I’d seen most of the catalogue I was interested in and it was really only new releases that I kept it for, soon after I stopped it and now play my backlog.
Although you needed the disk space and bandwidth to be able use it like that.
I wouldn’t sign up again, but I got what I wanted.
Same here. I was a subscriber from Xbox to PC but then…
They didn’t understand the only reason people used it was because it was really cheap before they raised the prices. Most aren’t super hardcore and play games over a few months so it became cheaper to just buy games again. It’s stupid because they had no reason to try to make a sub model except that MBAs are morons and value recurring revenue more than just revenue in general
thats right, the average ‘gamer’ is casual. they’ll purchase a couple games per year and maybe a handful more on special.
gaming itself is a leisure activity so when other aspects of life starts getting expensive or free time is reduced then what gets dropped first is an overpriced subscription service.
Yeah they really forgot games are something I would buy on a whim during good times. Now? I’m not going to spend even $60 on a game, or a subscription, until well after any game as released to make sure it’s worth it. I’d much rather replay red dead or mass effect or Skyrim again then spend $60 on some lame boring corporate game
But if you give everyone a free trial you’ll have millions in “recurring revenue”, which you can tell your shareholders and inflate your share price.
It was great for trying out games you weren’t sure about. But I don’t wanna pay $30/month for that.
Yeah, if they made it like $10 per month and you could only rent 1 at a time that would be great. I would love a digital rental service to try out games.
I love that you’d be willing to pay $10/month to try out a game when demos (which I think should be mandatory) are free.
I remember being a kid on PS3 and playing the Just Cause 2 30min demo TO DEATH until I finally got my parents to cave and buy it for like £30 haha. Most recent example of a demo that converted me to a sale was FF7 Remake and I think Selaco would have me buying but I don’t buy early access games out of principle so I’m waiting on that one.
Piracy is the ultimate demo, you just buy it once you’re sold on the game
I grew up with blockbuster, there were many games I liked playing for a couple days and then I would be done with them. I don’t want a demo, I want to play short games or others for a bit and then get something new without paying for each game.
Never even considered it a good deal as I like to own games. Also, I love my steam library
I get where you’re coming from, but I need to make you aware that you don’t own any of the stuff on Steam either.
I prefer to buy from GOG, itch, or anywhere else that offers explicitly DRM-free downloads. That being said, a surprising number of games on Steam are actually DRM-free (or as near as makes no difference). They don’t make it easy; you need to dig through your Steam folders to copy the files out, and sometimes you need to jump through a well-documented hoop or two, but it’s doable.
More info here: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam
DRM-free > Imaginary perpetual ownership > subscription > drink a verification can to start
That’s okay, Microsoft can just have Copilot subscribe 40 million times to pad out the numbers.
Spending 70 billion dollars for gamepass content never seemed like a viable strategy.
There’s also the issue that I don’t think there are enough customers that would trust Microsoft in a pure rental situation.
MS’s other money makers have all turned to complete trash. The only business strategy that MS understands is monopoly.
Spending 70 billion dollars for gamepass content never seemed like a viable strategy.
It wasn’t just for Game Pass. Those games get and got released on other platforms too, and they included lot of high profile single player and high value multiplayer games too. It’s about controlling (Embrace) a big chunk of the market that is part of the strategy. Suddenly Sony and Nintendo have to do deals with Microsoft to get some of the biggest IPs on their system. Remember how much Sony was freaking out about Call of Duty? Such big takeovers are never a short term plan, but planned for generations, including smartphones and streaming on TV in example. It was never just about Game Pass only.
The entire point was gamepass.
The sell was with gamepass all these games are “free” on day one. If they release on other platform, they are full price.
All the other stuff is just temporary drama that would get resolved once the competition dies. The long term plan was for all the Activision Blizzard and Zenimax fans to buy Xboxes and be locked in that ecosystem until the end of time.
The takeover wasn’t just a few games for Game Pass. Those games were planned to be sold on other platforms the entire time. Many live service games would continue pumping money on all platforms, as they did before, such as WoW and Call of Duty. Plus it included way more than that, such as King part of the deal with Candy Crush and the foot on smartphones and mobile gaming.
I liked game pass initially. I don’t care to replay really old games and I didn’t need a huge investment in hardware to run high end games. The library of games to choose from was pretty good.
But once they started increasing prices I bailed which killed the whole platform. I don’t think I’ve turned my Xbox on since then.
But they got RID of Features while RAISING Prices! That’s the EXACT Recipe for Success!
THEY put all thier resources on AI/DATACENTERS, so every other department was NEGLECTED.
Game Pass was a mistake.
I’m not sure it was a mistake. Netflix but games is a pretty compelling offer but the industry has just constantly mistepped over and over with jumping the gun on ending disk based sales and it has poisoned the well a little bit on digital offerings.
Plus the game industry constantly makes ridiculous projections they fail to meet. MS was always going to have to burn money for years to get this off the ground if they even manage it.
To their credit at least they didn’t Google it up like Stadia.
You can’t compare it to Google Stadia or Netflix in the sense of, that these companies don’t have anything else to sell as games. So they didn’t hurt their existing business. In example Netflix did hurt traditional business, they just didn’t have one themselves. Like Game Pass hurt traditional business, and XBOX has a traditional business. And Stadia itself wasn’t actually like Game Pass, because one had to buy the games and it was streaming only. So totally different category here.
I think that Game Pass wasn’t healthy for the XBOX structure, because there was less incentive to buy games. And Game Pass wouldn’t make much sense with low profile and indie games only, so they had to include blockbusters. And Game Pass needs a quick stream of games from first party. But blockbuster games are also extremely expensive and take a long time to make. So they had to be sold enough to be profitable, because including them in Game Pass alone is not enough (Call of Duty is the proof).
Respectfully disagree. If one company has to offer this type of service, I still think Microsoft has the biggest portfolio to do that.
I had gamepass for awhile because of some glitch where I could get 3 years for the price of 1, and even at the heavily discounted price I didn’t feel it was worth renewing once it expired.
Ha ha!
So many filler games I have no interest in playing! I still have it since I only game casually these days but really it’s holding on by the day 1 releases and that’s about it for me.
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Why? As if steam and co aren’t bad enough in the sense of renting-not-owning. This is literal renting.
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No mods
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Microsoft is so untrustworthy. Why subscribe to something that is probably gone tomorrow. They half-assed or killed so many projects…
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Pressure…when will the game vanish that I just installed?
Look I know it’s cool to hate on Microslop, but c’mon.
- People are largely fine with renting when they can rent a shit ton of stuff at the same time. This is Netflix for video games, and it’s actually done well (compared to whatever the fuck PS tries to do).
- Mods are niche. The type of person who buys a console already knows they aren’t going to get mods.
- Game Pass has a strong track record of giving plenty of advance notice for both additions and removals from service. And they offer discounts on all games that are about to go away.
- See #3. This is a made up strawman issue.
Microsoft is fucked from a business perspective, but Game Pass was a great idea and a great offering right up until they fucked themselves from a business perspective by buying Activision for an ocean of money.
There are also mods in some games on console, they just can’t use script extenders like PC modding often can.
- I fail to see how renting games would be fine. It was OK in the 80s-90s, but nowadays? You rent everything, own nothing, and be happy…the whole life is getting subscription-based and we just take it.
- It might not be mainstream, but surely not niche. It basically made games like skyrim into what they are. But yes, consoleros know this and accept it. But gamepass is also for PC
- So I could buy a vanishing game I rented for months before? On a platform that cannot be trusted to still exist in 10yrs? Great deal.
- That surely depends on the person. I take my time with games, sometimes not playing for months to come back. To me it would just be pressure to not do that. And buying? See 3…
This wasn’t microslop-hate. Just knowing how many things they just ended and how inherently sucky renting is. I regularly get gifted passes and never felt compelled to even try it.
“Rent everything, own nothing” is a complete non sequitor. Ori and the Will of the Wisps came out. I could buy it, in which case I own it forever on my Microsoft account, or if it’s a game I have less confidence in, I could play it on Game Pass. And if I only have mild interest, then at some point if/when it’s removed or I unsubscribe, I don’t care.
I get so fucking irate at these doomfantasizers that claim because a rental method exists, games are being “stolen” from them and the purchase option is being killed. This is why no analyst worth their salt listens to gamers.
Ensuring games we buy still run after 10 years is mostly a technical challenge, which we should still try to push devs to finish by legislation. It is not a war game makers are actively fighting against (Xbox even put HUGE amounts of effort into helping you emulate your old x360 games). I’m all for preservation, but so often picturing it as a battle against a corporate boogeyman really exaggerates their role.
“Rent everything, own nothing” is a complete non sequitor.
No it’s not. If it were up to devs or gaming-platforms or whomever, this would be the future, like it will be with nearly everything. People rent homes, cars, features IN CARS, games, movies, series…and nvidia would love if everyone would switch to geforce-now (and the others that tried). The best model to profit off a thing, is letting you rent the thing. Not letting you buy it.
Ensuring games we buy still run after 10 years is mostly a technical challenge,
…and beyond the point. Despite it being true.
I’m all for preservation
the point wasn’t about preservation (yeah it’s fucking important too), but the future of - in this very special case - games if more games will be rented than bought. Rising prices and lowered incomes really help well to drive this.
I’m not sure if I’m understanding this correctly but I get the impression that you’re applying game pass to every game you want to play. If that’s the case yea, it doesn’t make sense to get game pass. But for most people, we’re getting game pass for games that we wouldn’t have bought anyways or it’s for a game we’re fairly positive we can finish within the month and don’t plan to play after. I think there’s reasons why, it’s just not a reason that can be applied to every game or person.
It never made sense, hence i never used it, despite getting keys for it gifted regularly. But, what made me wonder in your comment, why do you want to play a game you wouldn’t have bought? Too shitty to buy, good enough to play? Or is it “too expensive for my interests to buy, but interesting enough to play a while for some lil bucks”?
More of the latter. A triple A costs 70-80 USD now on release and it’s hard to justify that cost when game pass let’s me play that plus a bunch of other stuff for a month for a fraction of that price. Even if I take 3 months to finish it, I’m still spending less than I would’ve from buying it out right. Plus if I do lose interest past the first month, I can just stop right there.
And if you play it over the course of 2 months and reaalllllyyyy like it and wanna buy, then you paid even more?
I rarely buy AAA on release. If they aren’t crap they’re unoptimized. I usually just wait a year or longer and buy when it’s fixed or don’t if they didn’t care. Been burnt too many times 😁
And if you play it over the course of 2 months and reaalllllyyyy like it and wanna buy, then you paid even more?
Well if I go with this method, these are usually singleplayer games that I’m fairly confident I can finish within a few months and won’t really play more than that so it hasn’t ever reached that point for me at least.
Microsoft have already erased everyone’s library once before when they shut down the original Games for Windows store. They already have a track record of showing they’re perfectly willing to yank everyone’s licenses and shut everything down until they decide they actually they do want to be in the games space again.
Game Pass is already their second attempt at this, and there are a lot of people who don’t trust them not to rug pull again.
What rug pull? You pay a subscription and know exactly when they’re going to revoke your licenses.
Games on Game Pass can be modded. Granted, it’s not as easy as something from Steam for the older games but saying they can’t is blatently false. Older games still require to take ownership of files but newer games give you full access. There’s a number of Forza Horizon 6 mods already and the Game Pass version is modded the exact same way as the Steam version, just open the folder and change the files.
Fair point. I just remembered the countless “how does this work on gamepads”-comments on nexus.
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