If what we know of Spartacus is correct then this sort of deal isn’t in the pipeline. I wouldn’t put it beyond Sony, but one or two day one games isn’t enough.
GP stands strong on it’s commitment. First party games will always come day one and will always remain on the service. Further, Microsoft will continue to fund more 3rd party day one releases because they have, as I stated, spent years pivoting to have a very GP-centric model.
One or two day one releases on Spartacus would make headlines, but what about one year down the line? Or two?
Just for fun, let’s run a hypothetical scenario with fuzzy math!
Let’s say Elden Ring comes out and Bandai Namco expects the game to sell 5m copies on Xbox. That translates to roughly $300m. Now if we subtract MS’s 30% cut (assuming it’s still 30), that leaves us with $200m. Now, if you’re Bandai Namco, you’re probably asking MS for at least that $200m even though you know probably half of those 5m copies will still be sold despite being in Gamepass. The main reason for this is because Bandai Namco isn’t going to be looking just at their projected sales figure and will instead be looking at 20m+ Gamepass subs that will not be purchasing their game. I’m sure their is a formula these companies use to try and squeeze as much money out of Xbox as possible.
And this is just for Xbox, not PC. The number probably shoots up dramatically if you include PC Gamepass.
Now, if you’re MS, do you make that deal? Let’s say 2m new people sign up to Gamepass (and that’s probably being generous), that translates to $20m of immediate revenue. Is that worth it? How many of those people would you realistically expect to stick around for more than that one month? How much “momentum” for the service will you gain from this? Does this convince your current subs to continue subbing when they might be thinking of dropping off? I’m sure there are a dozen or more other factors that play into these decisions as well.
These numbers could be way off, but I’m confident Bandai Namco would be asking for an obscene amount of money well North of $200m (assuming they even have any interest to begin with). These companies aren’t charities and if they know a game will sell, there’s really no reason for them to give Xbox a discount.
For the same amount of money, Xbox could fund an entire exclusive (or two) through Global publishing and/or purchase themselves a decent studio (or two), etc.
It’s not my money and I would love for big titles to hit Day-1, but I don’t see it becoming a regular thing because the money probably just doesn’t make sense. I think they’ll continue to make deals for titles that are less than guaranteed to sell big and also titles that didn’t sell as well as expected and/or need an infusion of players (Avengers).
Again, I could be way off on all of this and I’m sure someone more in the know is reading this and thinking “what a f***ing idiot”. Regardless, my point is this stuff probably isn’t nearly as simple as some people make it out to be.
I’m sure MS has enough data to prove Bandai Namco wrong if they think like this.
Also this game would bring at least 5 million to the service, you’re understimating it’s hype.
Yeah, most casuals won’t buy it, expecially after Sekiro marketed by Activision led many people to buy the wrong game for them. I know many people who bought it thinking was like the classic action. XD
But why? that’s just from your head…
What is 200M for MS even? they have to allocate money for gamepass, they started a service that IS money hungry why would they be stingy with it now?
I think youre talking about good business sense from MS’s here. They need to get a decent return on their investment. They aren’t using Monopoly money.
Honestly I think too many near term GP expectations are out of wack and more about what we want than Xbox needs. Gamepass is growing quickly with what they are doing right now. it’s going to continue improve once their studio pipeline continues to improve. The number one thing MS can do to grow GP is to sell more Xbox consoles and #2 is improve their PC experience.
Because that’s the reality of business. Bandai Namco doesn’t have to do anything they don’t want to and they would definitely be in the driver seat for a deal like this.
In regards to #1, because its big games that bring people into the service
There’s a reason there was minimal growth in GP in the first 6 months last year, indies and AA level games might keep people subscribed but it’s the big games that grabs peoples attention and force them to finally subscribe
That doesn’t make any sense. They spend a lot of money on the service and the service is awesome. Not grossly overpaying for a single game isn’t going to kill the service.
They’re already significantly bringing people the the service. The main bottleneck for growth is console stock and perhaps the PC experience. The content is going to really start to flow with Xbox in the next 18 months. I also assume they are going to launch a streaming stick this year. Things are lining up nicely for Xbox.
I think we’ll judge their moves in february and march, when bigger games than january will release. The concept is pretty easy: if you don’t have any new release and/or meaningful updates for your GaaS games, the only way is aiming for big 3rd party games, if you want the service keep growing.
I really hope since 2023 we’ll be past this thing, Netflix and Prime don’t release big series and/or movies only 6 months each year. Subscriptions have different rules than traditional releases.
You value indies beyond AAA games, gamepass won’t grow much if that’s the their meat.
They have to ways to grow gamepass both ways including a healthy those of BIG AAA games, be it by acquiring and funding games or building a healthy relatioship with 3rd party, they need both, they need to pay for both, expensive or not.
Once MS start pumping out games reguarly they wont have to rely on big third party games anymore but right now and likely for the first half of this year, thats not happening
Spending big money on a Dying Light or an Elden Ring doesnt need to be a thing eventually but right now, it is the sort of thing they should be going for considering their situation right now and they need to keep momentum going until their own big games start releasing this year
I assure you if they get Elden Ring on GP, no pc gamer would complain. At the end of the day the games work, it’s mostly qol issues. Content is above anything else, Nintendo platform services are crap and nobody care.
