| Angelus said: My understanding of GP is that MS keeps all the money from subscriptions, yes. They do obviously make deals with various parties to get their games on the service, in exchange for a lump payment, and depending on the dev/game, there are likely provisions in the deal that sees said people getting bonuses if their game meets certain milestones on the service. Are those real expenses? Of course, but they wouldn't continue to be made if they weren't profitable. |
Then your understanding is wrong. MS doesn't directly keep all the money they make from gamepads subscription, as that money is used to keep the service running and und deals for new content. And to be specific, this isn't even MS... its Xbox division.
| Angelus said: There are a lot of factors you're not taking into account. First off, nobody ever said anything about MS making deals to get all the biggest third party games in the world on their service day one. Obviously, that wouldn't be good business. Naturally, that's why it's important for MS to make strides in providing more top tier titles from their in house studios. Now on to the benefits you're ignoring.... |
Good you said this. If that is the case, then it means the physical approach would always be better as that is where the biggest games (basically the games everyone wants to play) are released to first. That also means that by the time those games make their way to gamepass, say after 12-18 months, you can have them on deals with the physical releases. Basically, the way a service like gamepass grows is if its ubiquitous with regards to software. Not if its complimentary.
| Angelus said: 1) Yes, offering up big games day 1, without a full purchase entry is a short term loss on a person by person basis on the face of things. However, you are potentially reaching more players through the service than you would have gotten otherwise. |
And whose problems this? Do you think these companies are doing a charity? You make a game. You sell that game, it only sells 10M copies. You make an average profit of $35 per game. You make a total of $350M in profit for your game. So in this utopian world of yours, you believe that the publisher would rather take a payout of $100M from MS instead because they want 40M people to have access to their game instead of the 10M people getting it up front?
| Angelus said: 3) The service provides something of a shield for smaller, and more experimental titles. The big games may draw the crowds, but they'll try some random stuff because hey...they can, and they might find that they enjoy these titles a great deal. Every game onto itself doesn't have to justify itself to some corporate overlord as a system selling property. It encourages more freedom on the part of developers. |
And how much money does these smaller games make from the service? Like you are just throwing out a lot of theories but not actually crunching the numbers or looking at the details. Games aren't like movies or tV shows that typically have other revenue streams. Games primary revenue stream is from actual sales.
| Angelus said:
4) Even the people that don't start out paying full value on the service, because they got access to it initially through various deals, are ultimately going to be very likely to stick around, even at full price, if you show them that there's continued value to be had in the service. Even if they scoop up long periods of membership on discount, that at least means you're locking them into your ecosystem for said period, which is incredibly valuable on it's own. I could go on, but I'll leave it at that. At any rate, I'll just say again, if you think Sony won't move in the same direction here soon enough, you're vastly mistaken in my opinion. I'll just leave it at that. |
They may get in by deals, but if they are going to stick around, it would only be for actual content. And if you are removing all major AAA releases from the equation as day 1 releases, what reason would they have to stick around?
I could go on too, but you are simply not looking at the whole picture. What you are doing is just pure confirmation bias. Massaging everything to fit a narrative. I have not said and never said that sony wouldn't do something like any of this.. hell they started it didn't they? I am just saying it would never become the primary means of doing business in gaming. And there is no edge or advantage here. These games would also eventually make their way to PS now, and i addition to the third party games sony would also have their first-party stuff that may even be deemed as more valuable to some.
All I said at the start of this, was if MS were selling 10M copies of their first party games an had an install base of over 80M... you wouldn't be hearing all this game pas stuff. You, on the other hand, are trying to paint this picture that a subscription service for gaming is more viable and ultimately more profitable.That just isn't the case at all.
And think about if both sony and MS has the exact same third-party games available on such a streaming service, then the only thing that would differentiate them are the exclusives. And what stops EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, Stadia, Amazon, Activision, Steam, Epic...from making their own subscription services? Mehn... people ought to be careful what they wish for.
Look at what's happening to Netflix, bleeding content left and right and every one and their dog starting their own streaming service instead. What went from a pay $10 a month and get all you could wanthas become a, if you want to watch everything pay $40 a month to subscribe to 4 different services.
