I've no doubt a lot of people likely only use Game Pass on PC to test a game out first before then buying it on Steam, Lol. You are correct as well, they revealed that when Game Pass had 25.9M subs, the Xbox console accounted for 21.9M of those subs so PC would have been 4M subs. In addition to that, during either the CMA or FTC stuff, they stated that their PC Storefront market share put them at around 8th?

So not only are they behind Steam but also likely behind Origin, Ubisoft Connect, Battle Net, GOG, etc.

But even none of those guys come close to Steam, I think it's a number of factors honestly, it's Microsoft's fault and other companies fault that they are so far behind Steam, compared to Steam so many of these big players storefronts are just way behind in terms of either functionality, features or content. So they need to improve there to be closer.

Steam is so dominant though that I believe that even if other storefronts were just as good as Steam, they'd still be distantly behind. That's just the market deciding though, the consumers have largely chosen Steam and for good reason, they've been with Steam for so long and built up their libraries with Steam that it would be incredibly hard to chip away at that for anyone.

I'm of the opinion that Microsoft needs to put Game Pass on Steam. Every company is slowing coming back to Steam after realising how much money they're throwing away and it's futile to fight against them, if Microsoft wants Game Pass to significantly grow on PC then I believe they need it on Steam. That's not to say Windows Store shouldn't improve, I'm constantly speaking about how Windows Store needs improvements, Lol.

Anyway, Palworld just overtook Cyberpunk 2077, Lol.

#5th now, DOTA 2 is next at 1,295,114. Palworld currently sits at 1,096,234

#1 is boring in the sense that it'll be near impossible for almost any game to beat it. PUBG is at 3,257,248 but the difference between #1 and #2 is 1,438,475 which is quite the gap, Lol. Just doesn't look like anything will beat PUBG anytime soon.

Valve would require it be a separate subscription purchased only through their service like EA Play on Steam is separate from the version for the EA storefront as they will want a cut. So it would have to be a "Gamepass for Steam" sub. I'm also not sure what opinion Valve has of a sub service that includes third party content not owned by the subscription publisher. True they get a cut of the subs generated by the third party content but they may be wary of MS paying third parties to put their game on a sub that will cannibalise steam sales. They might be ok with it, otherwise this "Gamepass for Steam" would have to be MS titles only.

I think that'll be fine Tbh. Microsoft owns half the industry now (Jk ) I think they could get away with doing a Game Pass "Lite" which is 1st party only and costs less than regular Game Pass but on the flip side, Microsoft may love all the sales they get from Steam and may not want to hurt that part of their business, they already said they only expect Game Pass to account for 15% of their overall Content & Services revenue and don't believe it will grow much bigger than that.

Valve ‘More Than Happy’ to Help Microsoft Bring PC Game Pass to Steam - The Verge

Steam would not ask a gamepass cut?

Anyway it is juts a week or two ago that I stated that MS/Xbox should work with Japanese devs and don't care about 'it will not work' mentality.
With Xbox you will also have your game day one on PC and Palworld is one of the biggest Japanese games this generation, how more proof do people need?

Anyway my favourite Pal is Depresso, the fact that he works so slow and is even so depressed that he doesn't fight in a fight and let himself get killed is honestly amazing XD.

They would, even if it was 1st party only, but Valve ain't unreasonable, I think they could make it beneficial to both.

And lets be honest, if Microsoft could get Game Pass on PS/Switch, they absolutely would, so I think there's a way it works for Steam too.

Just don't believe Steam would allow a Game Pass with 3rd party too, that's sales being taken away from Steam.

Well you can already choose to completely cut Steam out of a game purchase and still leech all their bandwidth and features without giving them a penny so maybe they could work something out like we won't take 30% from Gamepass sub but how about you give us a bigger cut of purchases that come from Gamepass sub owners that choose to buy first party games on Steam I think Microsoft would comprise some things like that to get Gamepass going on Steam.

It's also why although Steam my have close to a monopoly on where you play games on PC there is many options to cut out giving them money with hundreds of third party retailers or buying direct from developers/publishers make it a very open platform compared to every other big platform in the industry.

Wonder how a 1st party only Game Pass would look.

There's 37 Bethesda titles on PC Game Pass and around 50 XGS titles (very rough count). Idas speculates the Ubisoft Cloud agreement will basically be the list of Game Pass titles as well, it listed 50 titles. So a 1st party only for PC would be around 137 titles and for Xbox it would be more because of B/C, a lot of X360 exclusives were never ported to PC. ~137 titles + Whatever releases in the year, Xbox has so far 7 confirmed titles for 2024...Well, COD isn't confirmed yet but c'mon, Lol.

Wonder what an acceptable price would be.

Yeah, a bigger cut from purchases from Game Pass owners could be a nice option for both companies. Steam already cut themselves down to a 20% cut from titles which do over $50m revenue so for Microsoft it could be that for certain titles, they're simply returning to the original amount (30%). For ones which aren't $50m, well, can make it 35% or something, Lol.

Another stat, Palworld is the 2nd biggest **paid** game by CCU ever, only beaten by PUBG which is F2P now but was paid when it hit that CCU.

The others above Palworld right now are all F2P and aside from PUBG always were F2P.