Its a long play where you forego initial sales in hopes of gaining longterm monthly sales and add ons. Xbox likely gets more money out of someone spending 180 dollars per year plus extras over someone who only buys a handful of games per year.
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Ubisoft, EA, MS, and Amazon have all adopted the subscription model. I have no idea why this such a sticking point with online forum goers.
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Thatās fair, just feel spending habits may need to improve because it could justify some devs and publishers to skip due to sales not so strong out of gamepass. However, I feel if people want to buy a game theyāll buy it, so some may be using Gamepass as a hypothetical crutch rather than game may have not been marketed better to entice gamers to buy.
MS wants best of both worlds. They 100% care about console and video game sales lol.
Itās not one or the other. Have no clue why people are so quick to dismiss the value of console sales when itās EASILY and by far the #1 driver of Gamepass subs.
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Yeah, I think we also have to look at whatās the % of gamepass subscribers actually paying $180/year. i feel thereās a good % that have done the gold trick. I know they value subscriber count, but Microsoft of course wants better spending habits out of each sub to justify this gamble. Thereās of course lots of money left on the table having games day one rather than on service at a later date which would be similar to EA play.
I donāt think we can dismiss the importance of consumers buying games because lack of purchases results in devs skipping xbox. Also, canāt forget about shareholders most likely wondering why isnāt revenue stronger compared to other platforms. Anyways, MS job with gamepass is to find ways to increase spending habits of their subscribers because donāt think sub count is valuable if consumers arenāt spending. It seems on social media and other places that people are subbed to service, but arenāt spending outside of it, which can be concerning.
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Game pass users actually spend more than non-game pass users.
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They care but also put their games on multiple devices so clearly they donāt see console sales as the top priority which is why I think if Xbox is in third place console wise again its not a massive deal.
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Looking at first year/full price sales numbers for some high profile Playstation games like Returnal, Demonās Souls or Ratchet & Clank this is like a problem for everyone except Nintendo at the moment. Even Horizon: FW and GT7 numbers were not that impressive considering they were cross-gen and available on two systems with a combined install base of what 140m? the market has changed A LOT from the 360/PS3 days and itās not only an Xbox problem anymore, this is a big topic but for starters GAAS and/or F2P games are two reasons people donāt buy games as they used toā¦there are more reasons for the change of buying habits in the gaming space in the last 10 years or so of course but those are the first things that come to mind.
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Is that really needed? everyone already knows all Xbox 1st party games are on Gamepass day and date.
Weāll agree to disagree on the first half of your post.
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If their number one goal was to sell consoles theyād make console exclusive games
Theyāre all interlinked which makes it the XBOX ecosystem.
If you want to grow Gamepass, you need to sell consoles so yes I do believe itās still their top priority.
That doesnāt mean itās their #1 goal but to reach that #1 goal, it will involve closing that gap in regards to the market share.
As long as the console still remains to be the best and accessible way to the Xbox ecosystem, itāll remain a top priority. I donāt see that even coming close to changing within this generation and the next.
When it comes to end goal ? I completely agree with you. Is it an attainable end goal ? Weāll see in the decades to come.
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I think we have to look at consoles as main driver for gamepass. It wouldnāt shock me if gamepass device split is 80% console and 20% PC. I donāt think on PC front Microsoft is in place to get a good portion to sub to service or else we will see much more growth in service and hit the 30million milestone it hasnāt hit yet.
No clue when we will see growth on PC, mobile, and tv app, but at this point Microsoft needs to sell more consoles in order to grow service. So, I do feel console sales and getting people to buy consoles goes hand in hand with gamepass growth.
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I agree with you, and PC Gamepass hasnāt been the source of growth they were hoping for yet. They really need to either buy Valve and Steam or figure out a way to integrate Gamepass into Steam to get Gamepass adoption on a mass scale on PC since thatās where PC gamers play and they donāt want to touch the Windows Store.
As for consoles, of course more consoles will lead to more Gamepass adoption and Iām sure that MS is hoping to sell more; I think they could do more on this front.
They also need a cloud only tier of Gamepass for all those TV/Mobile users.
There is so much that MS could do to expand their MAU but they seem slow on execution.
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I may be silly, but I am sometimes afraid Xbox will eventually abandon the production of consoles altogether. If their top priority is to put Game Pass in any device (PC, Consoles, TV or even other consoles if manufacturers allowed it) and they start doing way better in some of them and not in consoles, why not giving up on consoles? Phil also said recently they re already observing saturation in the number of subs/consoles sold ratio. I get more consoles sold, more possibility of gaining new subs but everybody or almost everybody has a PC or a mobile phone, and doesnĀ“t need an Xbox console.
Of course they will ditch hardware. I donāt even know why anyone would even question that. Their approach long long term is to not be reliant in hardware. Now letās face it thatās not happening anytime soon. But in the future sureā¦
And what that looks like is unclear. You could very well see Microsoft licence out Xbox branded āpc/consoleā hybrids to other hardware manufacturers to build rather than the dedicated home built option. Would I say there will be zero hardware entry points? Only if Sony allow native Xbox games on PS with gamepass or something like that. I see that as unlikely. So do I think MS will make dedicated consoles next gen? Yep. For sure. After that itās a bit more up in the air.
Apparently 493K consoles were sold across the entirety of Europe not including the UK in January which does not seem like a lot.
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Finally some hard numbers to put everything into perspective
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groundhog day with this non sense.