Mr. Spencer said that scrutiny of the deal is warranted, and that he remains confident that the deal will be approved in the U.S. and overseas. He said Microsoft plans to offer “Call of Duty” on PlayStation “as long as that makes sense.”
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Anyway around the signup or paywall?
I do think its clever pointing the finger at apple and google. I feel like google specifically gets sued in the EU every week?
Now seems like a good time to re-read Microsoft’s statement on “a principled approach to app stores” from back in February.
It’s a real interesting strategy, positioning themselves to be completely ready should any jurisdiction ever rule that Apple and/or Google need to allow competing app stores to easily be installed on their devices. Or hell, even come pre-installed. Wouldn’t that be something.
Hopefully it pays off for them.
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while I don’t necessarily buy into the rampant fear mongering regarding reports of Microsoft not hitting it’s gamepass subscription goals, and really just think it has a lot to do with a pretty lackluster year for 1st year, assuming there’s any truth to them, I think between that and Gamepass only making up 15% of revenue, I think these are strong enough arguments against any notion of gamepass being utilized in a way to foreclose Microsoft’s competitors.
I agree with it being due to a lackluster 1st party year and delays in general. When they assigned those goals this year was supposed to rollout a massive generational type game in Starfield and Halo Infinite was supposed to be rolling with content and a huge new game mode by Certain Affinity. Even the 3rd party was supposed to have a couple popular games that drive growth with Ark 2 and STALKER 2.
Console Game Pass could have reached the point where its growth is gonna be limited by the growth of the console user base itself.
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someone quickly send this to CMA 
nothing competes with COD huh.
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Time to shut down steam for having CS GO.
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Time sure does fly.
It is a good reminder, and it certainly raised my eyebrows when they came out with this. I thought at the time, but Microsoft senses where the regulatory winds are blowing and is setting the business ready to captalise on it.
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The goal was for the fiscal year from July 2021-June 2022. They had literally the best lineup any publisher has ever had (critically speaking) in that timeframe (back half 2021). FH5 and Halo, both huge titles for them, landed in that timeframe.
We also dunno if they missed their internal target. The 73% target was just a threshold for handing out exec bonuses. That is entirely unrelated to internal targets. I’d say 28% growth is super high still and pretty decent given stock issues limiting ecosystem take-up. 2023 should help with that given the lineup of next gen proper titles from 1P teams.
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The argument regarding Game Pass and foreclosure does not make and did not make sense from the very beginning. Imagine cassette makers complaining that CD might foreclosure cassettes and thus the regulators should prevent CDs from growing 
Any type of foreclosure in the deal did not make sense as the third place cannot foreclose the market leader with 2x+ times bigger market share while being third. Not to mention Game Pass is a growing service and you cannot predict what can happen in the future.
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Right, because it’s not Microsoft’s fault they’re the ones heavily pushing the tired and tested subscription service model and investing to support their plans long-term including securing big IP ownership that’s crucial to the model.
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I really wonder if the overall strategy now changes from game pass to free2play. Until this point I always believed Game Pass is their big play, but this sounds like they believe to have reached a ceiling.
That’s… not at at all what the financial results implied. Also, I keep seeing the same responses and articles saying “GP missed targets” when it’s actually the executive bonus target; the subscription is still growing - considerably on PC and while it’s slowed on console, it’s still growing just not at the same rate and it’s important to note that console GP is directly tied to availability. So don’t be surprised when that growth shifts when availability normalizes and next year’s releases hit the stores.
I think, in general, people are too focused on binary thinking - it’s not F2P vs. GP, they’re supplementary to each other, just like the justifications for the ABK deal (it’s not just mobile, it’s a combination of that with the consistent playerbase of CoD, Diablo, WoW, etc. to grow GP, and plenty of other factors).
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They’re just saying that Game Pass will not be the only thing they focus on. They’re never gonna be Netflix where subs are nearly their only revenue stream and metric.
Nah. They are saying all this shit for regulators.
“Gamepass is profitable” “Cloud console is years away” “Gamepass expected to be 15%”
All claims to deconstruct regulators claiming “Microsoft is burning cash to build an unprecedented Cloud Platform that will become the dominant form of gaming”
Gamepass is ups and downs…last gen consoles are done. New gamepass releases will be next gen only.
It already has 23+m or so console subscribers we’re going to have to wait for more consoles to sell to get more console users …which is the rest of the generation.
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I will continue to refer to Phil Spencers comment from about a year ago where he talked about Xbox having multiple revenue strategies and not preferring any one single strategy.
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I do find it amazing that no matter what Phil Spencer said, it always generates some crazy hot takes.
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