Currently Online 
| Angelus said: "providing CoD on PS Plus at a commercially unviable price" |
Exactly. CoD is a series that sells over $1b in copies on every single game for a decade, as fast as $1b in 10 days on the record game for the franchise (2022's CoD MW2), and right now more than half of those CoD sales are on PS. Sony can't possibly expect to be allowed to put CoD day one into PS Plus for cheap, day one PS Plus on CoD would likely cost Xbox at least 3m day one $70 CoD sales on PS5, as such day one CoD on PS+ for would likely cost Xbox at least $210m in lost revenue. Sony can't possibly expect Xbox to front that cost on their behalf.
But here is the thing, Sony is whining about how far behind Gamepass/Gamepass Ultimate their PS+ mid tier and high tier subs are, well guess what, day one CoD will bring in at least 3m new subs for those tiers, and probably at least half of those subs will be permanent subs as long as you keep up a semi-regular cadence of strong day one PS Plus deals, paying $100-120 a year from that point onward. Putting your first party games day one onto PS Plus mid tier will also bring in huge numbers of subs. If Sony would actually put in the work they need to grow PS Plus, they would surpass Gamepass subs within a year or two at most, they already have better lineups of older games than Gamepass imo (lots more older AAA and AA 3rd party deals than Xbox makes), but as long as their day one offerings are lacking they will never catch up to Gamepass in sub numbers.
You have to spend money short term to make money long term. Xbox understands this, it's why they're taking losses by putting so many games into Gamepass day one, but they know the investment will pay off in the long term, every 1m new permanent Gamepass/Gamepass Ultimate subs brings in somewhere between $120-160m a year in subscription revenue from that point onward. Eventually, when Gamepass hits the big numbers like 50 or 60m subs as of result of Xbox's short term investments into Gamepass, they'll be bringing in like $6.5-7.8b a year in subscription revenue just from Gamepass/Gamepass Ultimate. And if Xbox has raised the Gamepass sub prices somewhat by the time they hit 50 or 60m subs (and let's be honest, we likely will see an increase in price of at least $20 a year by that point), those yearly sub revenue figures will be even higher.
Sony seems dead set on clinging to the old sales forward model for the industry instead of putting in the work they need to for the future of the industry as subscription forward. It reminds me of the movie/tv studios being resistant to streaming a decade ago, now they all have sub services but they all have like half of subs of Netflix or less because they waited so late to get into the game. Any sub numbers that Xbox can achieve, Sony as the market leader with a much stronger first party, could likely surpass by at least 30% if they would just put in the work instead of whinging about how they can't afford to put in the work.
Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 16 March 2023
