Gamepass Numbers

[Machiavellian]

SvennoJ said:

Machiavellian said:

What I wonder is how do you come by your numbers.  In other words you say its not sustainable but where are you getting the numbers to back it up.  Do you believe that all these companies going to sub models are just doing it for the fun of it.  Its not like MS does not know about the sub model, how it works and the profit margins since they sell multiple sub models with their products.  When gamers say they do not see how something will work is more to the point that they have no clue about the business and then rely on bias to front their opinion.  I have worked in multiple big business that do sub models and I can tell you that MS as a company would not put the whole company behind GP if the model was not sustainable.  

What do you think a sustainable price is subscription wise? Considering Microsoft 365 starts at 9.99 per user per month for just a couple web app versions.

The worries are that the continued undervaluing of games, in order to acquire more subs, will hurt the industry in the long run. It's a race to the bottom which is never good.

Either the sub price goes up, or the service grows to hundreds of millions of people. There is still a big cost to running xCloud, yet the higher the user base, the more optimized it can be. And there will be plenty 'low cost' people that run all on their own hardware.

However if it grows that huge, the next worry is, how will it change gaming. Just like retaining users to a subscription service, games will want to retain their players to get a bigger piece of the subscription money pie. Which might mean more grinding and/or pay to win which ftp games are plagued with. Plus if it grows that huge, competition will want a piece of the pie as well with the risk games get locked behind different subscription services just as what happened to tv.

Yes, the model can be sustainable. Atm, the way it is laid out at the current pricing, it is not. So what is needed subscription number vs price wise to get to a healthy sustainable model that puts out regular new content.

I do not know what the price is because I do not have the numbers that MS has.  Why would I make a incomplete assessment like I see most people doing when we have absolutely no ideal on the numbers.  Even now you are making an assumption based on nothing because you have no clue the internal structure of GP.  You are looking at the surface and trying to come to some type of conclusion but in reality its all just guessing.  A guess on limited information is not an educated guess, its just an opinion thrown out in to the wild.

Here is what I do know because I work in software development and have worked for MS and IBM at points in my career.  MS has business analyst who's job it is to crunch the numbers.  MS is a software company that changed their business to a subscription service when their new CEO came on board.  At the end of the day, MS knows exactly what they need to do to sustain the GP service.  There are all kinds of sub models that they can employ and cost to the consumer will only go up depending on what the market can take.  The key is that MS must continue to provide the games that keep the subs going which is the primary issue in any sub or retention rates will drop.

As for the fears you have, I actually believe its not realistic.  A service must have a diversity of games.  Diversity is what get you to big numbers and retain customers not just providing to one segment of users.  So no, I do not believe it means more grinding games or pay to win, I believe it will do the absolute opposite. The thing is, the gaming scene has already changed.  Your fears is a day late and a dollar short because subscription services just like TV and movie content subscription services are here to stay.

At the moment you still have no clue if GP is sustainable at its current price because you do not know how much it generate compared to how much is used to sustain the service.  You do not know the gameplan of MS and what their aim is as far as GP is now and what they want to reach in subs.  You do not know how long MS is willing to wait to reach a certain level of subs or what MS views as positive growth in the service.  Really, none of us have a clue what MS plan is with GP besides that they want to make it the game service of choice. Why make a conclusion when you really have no clue on the numbers.

Last edited by Machiavellian - on 13 October 2021