What is your opinion on gaming subscription services?

[Fei-Hung]

Had to click other, so I thought I'll explain. I like the idea of done right, but I'm worried we are digging our own graves like we did with MTs and loot boxes.

Gamepass is amazing value for money, but we don't know enough about it since the real cost to us and MS isn't known yet. Meaning, right now we get a discounted Gamepass, but one day this will go up and we will have to pay what it really costs to keep gamepass financially sustainable. MS still haven't picked up the actual costs of Gamepass yet since they haven't revealed much in terms of AAA first party. The year they release a Forza, Gears, and one or two other first party games for free and then do something similar in the second year to match Sony's 1st party output, MS will know the actual cost of Gamepass.

This can only lead to one of two things: increased cost to recoup money / downgrade in game development investment. Gamers won't like either unless they keep Xbox as a third party backlog device. At this point, we may even lose day one releases to some of not all 1st party Xbox games.

I know people use Netflix as a comparison, but it's a bad comparison in my eyes. Netflix didn't have to speak to a board and convince them they are making billions each year and to risk losing billions they make, by losing billions every year until they hit larger enough numbers.

Xbox is essentially eating into its own profits. They would have still made money from MTs even without day one and other stuff. They would have made more money from physical sales and gamepass had the game launches on gamepass 3-6 months later.

The more AAA games they release, the more money they need to make back to recoup costs.

Someone looked at Epics costs and thought the games are cheap, not realising those are not all day one games, most are indy and old, and were only free for a very short window. They offer and cost therefore are mostly likely world's apart.

So going back to my answer, I like the Gamepass and PSNow, but I want day one off it and I want it at a cost that helps the service be sustainable. I don't want gaming to go to shit due to the hedonistic times we live in where we only worry about today be forsaking tomorrow.