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trunkswd 1 hour ago
JRPGfan said:
trunkswd said:

Microsoft was clearly hoping Game Pass would keep growing to like 100 million subscribers, which is unrealistic. We don't know how many subs there are, but after the last increase they lost millions of subs. I had Ultimate tier maxed out at 3 years before the last increase thanks to MS Rewards. That is now down to 2 years and a few months. Once it runs out I will probably switch to PC Game Pass. 

I could see them investing less in third-parties to help lower costs as they now have a steady stream of first-party games. 

At one point they reached like ~34m game pass subscriptions right? before the price hike. 
I wonder how many they lost due to the price increase.

JRPGfan said:
trunkswd said:

From Jason Schreier:

"Seeing a lot of misunderstanding about this. Profit margin is the percentage of revenue that is kept as profit. A 3% margin means that for every $100 you make, you're spending $97 and keeping $3. Margins don't reflect how much money you're making; they reflect how efficient the business is.

"A business with 3% margins could be making millions of dollars and doing totally fine. But if you're part of a company like Microsoft, which has divisions with 40%+ margins, then it's much harder to convince the bean-counters to keep making big investments in your biz"

Post by @jasonschreier.bsky.social — Bluesky

But that is a profit margin.....   She never says that, she said a "accountability margin".
I think there has to be a reason for that word use, instead of profit margin, or net profit or some such.

Game Pass topped 34 million in early 2024. That was before the first Call of Duty game was day and date on the service. It most likely grew more from that point, but I am thinking it never hit 40 million as I am sure they would have announced that number. 34 million was the last time we got an actual number. So who knows where it stands now. The positive is there is growth once again now that they lowered the price for the Ultimate and PC tiers. 

Oh yes you are right that he is talking profit margin. My bad on that. I am not sure the difference between that and accountability margin. 



VGChartz Sales Analyst and Writer - William D'Angelo - I stream on Twitch and have my own YouTube channel discussing gaming sales and news, as well as posting random gaming content. Follow me on Bluesky.

I post and adjust the VGChartz hardware estimates, with help from Machina.

Writer of the Sales Comparison | Monthly Hardware Breakdown | Monthly Sales Analysis | Marketshare Features, as well as daily news on the Video Game Industry.

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G2ThaUNiT 1 hour ago

Yeah, you'd think Xbox going multiplat with all their first party releases would've been raking in money. It's been anything but.



You called down the thunder, now reap the whirlwind

konnichiwa 1 hour ago

'This is an Xbox' => Cool we don't need an Xbox anymore, so I can buy that xbox game on a competitor's platform => Only once $$$ for Xbox.

While that cometitor's platform gets initially > Smaller cut of the $$$ but will keep getting $$$ from online subscription; other games; accessoires etc.

Anyway not just Xbox should also be more active in their own catalog sales, 80% of Capcom games sold last year were old(er) catalog games...it is basically free money.






Zippy6 1 hour ago
G2ThaUNiT said:

Yeah, you'd think Xbox going multiplat with all their first party releases would've been raking in money. It's been anything but.

Well Bethesda/Acti ports have always been on PS5 anyway so there's not going to be a revenue change there.

They've mainly only done late ports and the stuff that came day one like Outerworlds 2 underperformed everywhere. They've had a lot of software misses in general with Avowed/Hellblade 2 also performing poorly.

FH5 managed to reportedly sell over 5m copies on PS5 despite coming to the system over 3 years late though, probably made more on PS5 than all other XGS PS5 releases combined.



JRPGfan 58 minutes ago
G2ThaUNiT said:

Yeah, you'd think Xbox going multiplat with all their first party releases would've been raking in money. It's been anything but.

The issue is the amount of studios they have.... game development is expensive.
This is development costs vs Game-pass effects.

Multi platform was like a band-aid that helped the bleeding.

The solution is obvious..... timed exclusives return.
Day and Date dies (gamepass games are offered after like 4-6months only, even xbox 1st party ones).

All the issues goes away.... if you grow your console hardware user base, and get them back to buying games.

(However we're mid a ram/storage crisis... its costly to grow a user base atm. Which again, points back to why Phil was going the other direction)



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Leynos 10 minutes ago

Fuck yes! After a 2 years wait Hi-Fi Xbox physical is finally shipping!



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!