JRPGfan said:
Machiavellian said:
To be truthful, I always thought that Phil talked to much. Its really not common for a C level exec in his position to make so many interviews. I think of other execs doing the same Musk and how that goes. As a CEO, you never can put anything in stone unless you back yourself into a corner and then have to make a bunch of excuses. This is where we are today. At no time do I ever believe any person on Phil level is a nice guy or someone who isn't going to make the hard choices or even the unpopular ones.
As to your question on if Phil quote is a 180, probably so but then again it doesn't mean he hasn't tried to go that route but it's evident its not working. Are games like Grounded, Hi Fi Rush, Pentiment, Redfall hell even starfield growing GP or gaining any traction to making GP the service of choice. None of those games are driving sells to MS hardware or GP and while Phil may wish to be more like his PR statements in the end he definitely has to be realistic in the state of Xbox and its position in the industry. What is going to drive GP, Xbox to those lofty 100 million subs. It ain't Hi Fi Rush that is for sure or Hi Fi Rush 2. The way I see it MS need hits like Spiderman, GOD of War, Final Fantasy. Games like this or on this level to drive GP and hardware sells for Xbox. MS continue to miss out on such big hits and it shows in the number those smaller games are just not doing it and at MS current state, something needs to change now, not later. |
Those games are hugely expensive to make, and take forever to make too.
Whats to stop people from subscribeing for 1 game (like a big title) and then dropping the subscription afterwards (like for just 1 month).
A person like that (which there will probably be many), would be a huge loss in terms of revenue vs a actual sale.
Then theres the people that are subbed always,.... while you might go, a big title like that is why they stay subbed.
Its not really won revenue, as they are likely just perma subscribbed. Its hard to attribute it to each game, or big ones.
Which again, will have to be split to go to multiple devs/studios.
People look at renvue for gamepass and think "wow thats a big number".
But realistically that big number, is money thats needed to pay off studios, for their losses compaired to normal game sales.
Call of Duty is a game like that. A big title, as you wanted.
We need to see how that does, if its day and date on gamepass.
Does its revenue (call of duty's) drop off? does gamepass revenue spike upwards? How long does the subscription spike last ect.
*edit:
People have started doing the sub for a month, binge watch a tv series, unsub thingy more and more (as prices of subs have gone up).
Supposedly its playing havok on some of these subscription services. If it grows bad enough, it might imact how much they want to spend on each project. Ei. Some tv shows, might be too expensive to make, in a subscription model (if they cant depend on people sticking around).
The same issue, is without a doubt, also a problem for something like gamepass.
Its one of the reasons, MS wants all its game multplayer online GaaS type games.
Gamepass might be affecting the types of games, xbox is willing to make, and how "big" titles (budgets) are. |
Yes, big games are expensive to make and take a while to bring to market if you do not have enough heads. The thing is, those big games is what have driven Sony PS5 to sell well above and beyond what the Xbox is selling and because MS did not have anything of significance during the first few years of release, they could not even come close to keeping up. Now, most gamers default system to get is a PS5 because they still have all those bangers even if they do not have that much new coming while MS is still struggling to get anything of significance out the door.
Think about what you said, people sub for a month play their games then drop. This pattern actually takes a lot of work and I highly doubt most users do this. Instead, most users will continue a subscription as long as there is enough content to keep it but if you only have one big piece to hit the service every 6 months or better than why would anyone keep the service longer than it take to finish your one big game. This is why subs work so well because even during down time, most users are not going to sub one month drop another month then resub again when there is something new. While the real penny pinchers will do that, that is not a normal habit.
MS cannot take another miss on having enough content to one drive sales of their hardware and drive subs to their service. Small stuff just is not doing it especially on the console level but on the console level its all about the hits.
