Xbox |OT|

[Ryuu96]

shikamaru317 said:

Ryuu96 said:

The growth is pretty meh but at least they reconfirmed it's profitable and even doubled down on it today, zero changes to Game Pass, it was always pitched as an additional source of revenue anyway, not the main source, 15% of MS Gaming Content and Services revenue IIRC. Porting things to other consoles could also be a way to subsidise Game Pass and continue giving us awesome content for it.

But there's other ways, PC has obviously been a slow growth, I don't know what they can do there other that put Game Pass on Steam but it's still in their back pocket, it can happen at any time, Gabe has said he would be fine with it, Lol. xCloud is more a long term future thing and probably won't have much affect on Game Pass for now. I wonder if part of the reason for the beefy consoles will be to swap Xbox Series xCloud server blades out as well and upgrade them to this really powerful hardware since Xbox Series server blades seem a bit weak compared to the competition.

Yeah, there is definitely still room for growth, even if alot of it won't be on console. I remember back in January 2022 Xbox announced they have 120m monthly active users between console, PC, and cloud. We now know that only 34m are paying for Gamepass Core or above. That is alot of potential room for growth. I do think we will see Gamepass eventually hit 40m and then 50m, it's just going to take longer than Microsoft originally expected, they foolishly thought they had a chance of 110m Gamepass subs by 2030, and I just don't see them getting anywhere close to that this decade. 

My guess would be something like 38-40m later this year on the back of the 2023 1st/2nd/3rd party exclusives, ABK games on Gamepass including CoD 2024 day one. 50m by the end of 2026. Maybe 60m by the end of the decade if they are lucky and cloud grows alot. 

That 110m goal was silly, Imho, I don't believe Game Pass could ever reach 100m+, comparing it that directly to TV streaming services is not sensible Imo, I think the way people consume TV Shows/Films is a lot different to the way people consume Games, I'm not saying Game Pass can't appeal to a casual audience, it can, but I think it won't be able to engulf them in the same way TV/Music subscriptions have, for a few factors, it's a lot easier to binge a TV Show or Film than "binge" a game, whatever that would be, many TV Shows are exclusive to subscription services, Game Pass has no exclusives, there's far more TV Show content, you don't have to put much effort or thought into a TV Show versus a game, some people literally only play a single game so it would be useless to them, etc. But it doesn't matter, it was always positioned as an additional source of revenue and as long as it remains profitable it will be fine. Just don't have the expectations it will get Netflix numbers.

Think the only chance of that is if it is literally everywhere like Netflix, on PlayStation, on Switch, on Steam, on Xbox, on TVs, on Mobiles, etc. You can't expect 100m+ on only Xbox, Windows Store and xCloud and it's a lot easier to stream a TV Show than it is a videogame so xCloud isn't a viable option for many, yet, maybe it will be in the future, that's a long term play. I think Steam could give it millions though, from all the people who don't want to touch Windows Store, Lol.

Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 15 February 2024