For annualized game released gamepass fits the perfect model for them. And especially for annualized games, who have accurate numbers of consistent players and game purchases for each platform, they can much more easily go to Xbox and give a dollar to land on Gamepass. And it’s also what they want. Selling games is not the business model for them as much as selling micro transactions and dlc. And people buying the game is their biggest bottle neck. Buy selling to gamepass they solve there profit margins for game sales and they are introduced to an ever expanding growing market.
EA I’m sure saw that there EA play members spend more money on there games then the average player and saw the biggest hurdle was developing enough new content to bring more people into the service, while maintaining there current money makers. And now with gamepass as an option they just passed the bill to Microsoft.
These next two years will me massive and not just cause of momentum but also from a money standpoint Microsoft as a money needs to spend a lot more of its cash. Many Lange companies have been hoarding cash because inflations levels were near 0 but as companies reopen inflations levels are about to spike (atleast in the short term) and having $130B in cash is going to look bad to investors. Especially with interest levels still at all time lows. People will want that cash spend and paying publishers for whole libraries of games (previous and future) can spend a lot of those billions for growth.
You know what… I too will say it is possible, especially with Game Pass always growing and potentially very good results for the third party games launching Day One in the service.
I don’t think you’re wrong. Maybe a bit longer. 4.5 years.
But yeah, MS started with indies like Streets of Rage 4 and After Party and worked their way up to Outriders and MLB.
They will work their way up to Elden Ring and and Tekken 8. Assassins Creed and Gotham Knights. Madden. Fifa. Call of Duty
Ya. We already saw TakeTwo start to work with gamepass when NBA21 landing on Gamepass after a couple month. I could even see Activision do that. Early 2022 we get a huge Activision dump of games, including the new Call of Duty couple months after launch.
Activision is still selling their cod legacy titles at full price. Why do we think they will take the risk of devaluating their brand when they are already dominating the mp shooter market?
I think Call of Duty has already reach the “maximum” number of players they can get. If you are into mp shooters, most likely you are already buying cod or playing cod warzone (which is their entry-level offering, and the marketing funnel into their premium product).
Unless there is a change in customer behavior (any f2p mp shooter with enough marketing behind to dethrone cod?), I don’t think they will get into game pass.
I agree but I think it will be a different tier of Game Pass. I expect EA Play Premium and Ubisoft+ to be introduced with day 1 releases later this year (I’d expect it to get announced at Gamescom) but on a $20/month Game Pass tier which also includes DLC for all games included.
Hmm, I don’t know about this. Call of Duty doesn’t need to be on Game Pass when they ALWAYS top the sales charts. If they know they will sell insanely well regardless, why would they need to put their games on the service? Don’t see it happening.
I can see Ubisoft’s games launching day one on Game Pass. Watch Dogs Legion and Immortals Fenyx Rising already cost 20 dollars only a few months after launch, their sales from now on will make very little money. Games which value decreases rapidly benefit a lot from Game Pass’ model.
Also Sony always make huge deal with Acitivision. Like pointless modes and maps exclusive to PS for many many years.
And I rather MS put more money into different genres than just throw money at established AAA franchises.
MLB is a good move because its the first licensed baseball game in decades on xbox and Outriders is a new IP. Next up some more RPG’s and maybe high profile Japanese games.
I could see Battlefield Day One in Game Pass Ultimate. However, to be honest, I think deals are being done with games like MLB and Outriders now because XGS has nothing to release and Bethesda’s busy fulfilling their contracts. It’s like how Netflix made splashy deals early on but now rely more on exclusive, in-house content.
As others have alluded to, with Sony marketing deals I don’t think it’s at all possible. Battlefield doesn’t make sense either, unless it launched on EA Play day and date, which I don’t see happening.
The biggest franchises in the world don’t need Game Pass to top the NPD and that’s why I think it’s a pipe dream.
I’m not sure the calculus here revolves around if the game needs the exposure to sell. The pubs get the cash either way be it from sales or from MS essentially covering those sales on their end upfront or based on dl’s or whatever approach they take. I could maybe see a scenario where Activision sees GP as a way to get moneyhatted from both sides (marketing deals with Sony and GP with MS).
Not even sure this would prevent a GP day 1 release tbh. See: MLB.
Not sure why you’d presume that would prevent a GP launch. The marketing stuff typically agreed to tends to land in the area of showing off the game itself and cross promotion via bundles. Xbox isn’t marketing MLB at all (whereas Sony is) and yet we see what happened there. I think Sony/Activision could agree to only show the PS5 version of the games at various trade shows and whatnot w/o that affecting a GP launch.
It’ll probably require Microsoft to pay a ton for Activision putting Call of Duty day one due to just how much it sells, but at the same time they’d likely see quite a large increase in subscriptions by doing so. So far, we haven’t seen a single Activision game hit Game Pass if I’m remembering correctly. So, Xbox should start by trying to convince Activision to put some of their older games on the service first (Crash or Spyro would be a good fit) because right now, it doesn’t seem like they’re in on the service just yet. From then, we’ll see.
Maybe not COD because Activision are just plain awful but I was thinking of another game. One that’s as big as COD, maybe even bigger in Europe.
How about FIFA 22 ? Day 1 on gamepass. Could that happen ? That’s not only, by and far, the biggest sports game…it’s as big as any other game selling nearly 20m copies a year. That’s an absurd number for a yearly release title.
I feel like sports games benefit the most from a gamepass addition. Since most of their profit comes from microtransactions and not the game copy itself. And EA with EA play has the same vision as MS in regards to subscription services. If they’re selling nearly 20m copies a year that’s what around 600m revenue on average at most (considering a decent amount of that 20m doesn’t come from day 1 or full price) ? FIFA makes A LOT, A LOT more from just microtransactions. That’s where the real money is for EA. And by the time Fifa 22 comes out Gamepass could have around 30m subscribers at this rate. So essentially you can appeal to 30m customers day 1. Tell me that’s not insanely appealing to EA. And this would be a massive W for Xbox as well. This would gain them a lot of traction in Europe in a single strike. This would also bring over a lot of Fifa players that mainly play Fifa on PS. And once their in, chances are, they’ll stay for a long while.
The day gamepass hits around 40+m subscribers, MS won’t have to pay as much to 3P developers to put their game on gamepass the way they have to do now. I feel. Especially for developers/publishers with games that have microtransactions in them.
