| Johnw1104 said: He's basically saying that trying to squeeze money out of people in a single player game they just paid full price for tends not to go over well, but if you lock the game behind subscription fees and such they aren't surprised to see such extra fees and microtransactions. I suppose I agree with him, but it almost seems like he's in favor of his games being horribly obnoxious and expensive. |
Yeah, I think that's about right.
What this interview is, I think, is Spencer pre-emptively justifying Microsoft moving (further) away from a traditional console model and toward a subscription-based model where the financial losses associated with fewer software releases will be recouped by producing extra, paid content for the few releases that remain.
I guess, in a way, the Xbox ecosystem is a microcosm of the game industry in general. Faced with declining sales, publishers, instead of drawing into the fold new consumers, are relying on current customers to buy premium content: DLC, season passes, micro-transactions, subscriptions, collector's editions, hardware revisions, etc.
In the end, I believe this means fewer games on Xbox but more opportunities to take in revenue from each game. I don't think this can be spun as a positive change for fans, although that hasn't stopped Spencer from trying.
