xboxgreen said:
Mummelmann said:
Without delving too much into the discussion overall, I just wanted to point out that your examples of successful streaming services are highly flawed. Disney Plus - and by extension; Hulu, who are part of Disney's DTC effort, is hemorrhaging money since the beginning. It's considered to be among the company's least financially successful ventures since Disney was formed. Apple TV is in the red by at least one billion dollars annually, and is floating simply due to Apple at large choosing for it to do so. There is nothing in the model itself that makes Apple money.
Netflix are more or less the only streaming service that have consistently been in the black, but even they have faced struggles and continue to do so (mostly revolving around royalties and residuals due to increased competition in the space, The Office is the foremost example of a production growing beyond measure in fees to own the rights to). Even if Netflix were constantly doing great, this would only raise new concerns as long as competitors lose money (namely monopolies, which are bad news), as this is a likely signal that there's no room for more actors in the space.
Spotify is widely hated by artists and creators, but loved by shareholders. The truth is that subscription-based entertainment in any form is unproven as a concept, or at any breadth. The equation is hard to solve, and I don't see Gamepass doing it either.Â
https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/apple-tv-plus-streaming-losses-1-billion-per-year-1236344052/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinereid/2025/02/08/disneys-streaming-unit-loses-three-times-more-money-than-disneyland-paris/
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Let me keep it simple for you. Game pass is profitable even when you include xbox first party costs.
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/465165/game-pass-is-reportedly-profitable-even-when-you-factor-in-lost-revenue-from-first-party-games/
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The article you linked seems to suggest the opposite, in case you missed that. With 34 million subscribers and a whole lot of titles to pay for, there's no way developers or Xbox division will come out on top financially compared to earning on a units-sold basis. Look at something like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, for instance, if that was exclusive on GP, they would have missed at least 180-200 million dollars on sales (based on around 3.5 million sold, and it's still selling), I very much doubt that the pay from GP would be even in that ballpark. Having more and more focus on GP is bad for individual developers, and by extension, bad for gamers like you and I. Smaller studios can be enticed to take an upfront payment to launch on GP instead of taking risks on the traditional channels. This way, they will remain small even in the future, as the grounds for income is a lot smaller overall - big releases will always take bigger parts of the pie. The recent push for AA titles beating AAA titles we're seeing right now would never be possible in an industry dominated by a subscription service like GP, and would likely incentivize bigger studios to keep mismanaging and deploying anti-consumer antics. It's just an all-round loss for us.
Besides all that, you have yet to show me how large-scale subscription models are sustainable for all parties involved, and you failed to address the point made about your examples (streaming services bleeding money). Any subscription service is dependent on a few things; a growing customer base, price-hikes, or cost-cutting, this is even truer for companies with itchy shareholders and boards populated by people with little interest in what they peddle. Infinite growth isn't really a thing, price-hikes are detrimental to people like you and I and can also drive away customers, cost-cutting is unlikely since production costs keep rising. The issue with the last point is that it hangs on a few key take-away aspects; one being that implementing the use of AI will be cost-cutting in game development, which causes an issue for anyone claiming that recent layoff rounds have nothing to do with GP and the business model in and on itself. Another is that the eventual rise of competing services would lead to a similar situation as in the TV/Movie-streaming space (a sellers market for creators), namely the rapid increase of royalty and residuals cost - which causes a host of issues tied to cost and growth, or leads to my previous point about Netflix and their sole position as profitable in their space and the risk of monopolies (which are harmful). For another, similar example, look at how much Epic Games Store is losing every year trying to buy their way into relevance as a client (please don't bring up Steam and monopolies - they have no shareholders to appease and this has proven to be a stroke of genius from the beginning).
There's really no way to spin GP or similar services into a net-positive for anyone besides the owner of the platform and service, most other parties will get a significantly shorter end of the proverbial stick in the vast majority of cases and examples. A great many short sticks have been handed out to a great many people in the past 1-2 years, the writing on the wall is missed only by those who forgot their reading-glasses. Even the examples you provide or link to refute your own claims, there's not much ground left to stand on.
