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Cerebralbore101 on 04 January 2021
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sales2099 said:
Cerebralbore101 said:

It's easy to pump up monthly active player numbers when a game is free or tied to a subscription service. Just look at Poke'mon Go, with its 1 billion downloads. Now, does that suddenly mean that Poke'mon Go is the best Poke'mon game? Hell no! In fact, Poke'mon Go is a barebones shell of the original games. You'd have a hard time finding anybody listing Poke'mon Go as their favorite Poke'mon game.

Also, keep in mind that how long people play a game is in no way tied to its greatness. A game can sell 10+ million copies and be just a 10 hour single player game. Using monthly active player lists you'd think a game like that isn't very good. On the flipside a game that is manipulative, grindy, and addictive can have a massive playerbase despite being an awful game. All fun games are addictive, but not all addictive games are fun.

What MS really needs to do is man up, release actual sales numbers, and then project how many sales were lost to Gamepass. That would be more honest than what they are doing now. I get it. Gamepass costs them sales. But we are all smart people here. We can all see that if a game sold 7 million copies, lifetime, while launching day 1 on Gamepass, then that is a really damned good sales figure.

On topic, companies releasing numbers for their games isn’t required on a quarterly statement. It’s better off being told to us via tweets. It’s for gamers who are invested, not for investors.

Like the fiscal quarter that covered August MS said that 1st party was driving a lot of engagement and revenue. That’s covering the 4 games Tell Me Why, Flight Sim, Wasteland 3, and Battletoads. That’s all we really need to know. The stats that Flight Sim sold over 1 million on Steam and played by total 2 million players is a nice bonus. 

But regardless it’s no longer a good metric to list sold when you pushing GP. Seems your criteria is solely meant for PS fans to dissect and use as ammo against Xbox fans online. To MS, they don’t care about “losing sales to Game Pass” they care that you play their games as much as possible. The revenue comes in other ways rather then just upfront like you are used to. 

Saying it's driving "A lot of engagement and revenue" isn't a clear objective picture. A lot is a subjective term. We need it put in terms that are objective. Instead of saying we drove "a lot" of engagement and revenue, they should say something like "we made $4,000,000 in profit from Xbox this quarter". But I don't think they want to say that, because they are making less money than Sony/Nintendo is. They don't want that information to be readily available so they hide it as best they can behind marketing.

Well, I own a PC, a Switch, and about 14 other game consoles. It's not that I want ammo to use against MS in Sony's favor. It's simply that I want MS to be held to the same standard that game sales have been held to for the past 30 years. I really don't think Gamepass is profitable in the long run. They need to inject Microtransactions into their games to make up the difference. The problem is that the way Microtransactions are currently priced, they make up for far more than they cost to maintain. They also make games less fun in the long run. A game designed to be played forever, addicting, but not fun, isn't nearly as good as a game designed to be fun and played for a limited time. I think MS is going the way of Ubisoft, and EA. Their games are asking for more and more of your money, while also asking for more of your time via artificial game lengtheners.