Our favourite Nostradamus returns for a feast.
This is what he had to say about the Microsoft-Activision deal:
Microsoft had a vision years ago that I thought was stupid, that they were going to come up with a subscription service, and everybody would pay them for the right to play games. And they just didn't have very many games.
Then they went on a buying spree, and they bought six independent studios, the biggest of which is Obsidian. They're very, very good. But then they bought Bethesda, which is a giant studio, and now they're buying Activision. When they're done, they are the fourth major game publisher in the US. So they're going to be giant, and they're going to be in a position to actually support their Game Pass subscription.
Their future vision is, let's eliminate the console. Let's use the cloud, and let's deliver games to any screen that you have. And that potential market is 3 and 1/2 billion people. So I don't think they'll get that many Game Pass subscribers, but will they go from 25 million to 100 million? Yes.
https://wccftech.com/game-pass-to-reach-100-million-when-activision-games-are-added-says-pachter/
And this is what our favourite Jez has to say about it:
Michael Pachter is right
Pachter's analysis focused on Activision-Blizzard's potential for Xbox Game Pass, but there are various other avenues to growth that could take the userbase even further beyond 100 million.
There are 3 billion gamers in the world right now, and while global infrastructure isn't quite good enough to reliably stream Halo Infinite multiplayer from the cloud for everyone, there are hundreds of games that play extremely well even on modest connections right now. Global internet speeds are constantly creeping up, with Microsoft and its massive Azure cloud well positioned to be at the fore of this brave new gaming world.
Pachter is 100% right about Xbox Game Pass hitting 100 million users in the future, though, considering it's already at around 25-30 million without some of the major pieces in play.
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/could-xbox-game-pass-really-hit-100-million-subscribers
