Insightful, well-researched and positive, while still critical enough, Xbox articles is exactly why I turn to this community and website. Great job!
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Amazing polished analysis by OneBadMutha and the Xboxera team. Checked the video version, btw.
God that was good!
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This was a great video @OneBadMutha!
Think there is a lot left to the story of Game Pass growth going forward too. There are 3 major areas that all look to be in front of us still yet:
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Accessibility: GP will be on essentially all mobile phones, PC’s, browsers, tablets, TV’s, streaming sticks and even X1 consoles and XSS/XSX a year from now. Additionally, xCloud being updated soon means we can likely expect to see GP allow for instant game streaming while the game dl’s in the background across PC/consoles. Imagine using Netflix and having to download the whole movie before starting…it’d have never taken off. GP will likely be at 30mil+ by the time this instant-access feature even becomes available. That feature could be explosive in its own right.
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All Access: Once console stock stabilizes All Access could become a real disruptor for console sales. If that happens, GPU subs will be tied to every single All Access purchase and those two together could really make the value prop Xbox is offering go mainstream beyond console gaming circles. It also could very likely rope in a bunch of PS5 owners into the ecosystem, which is not just great for MS but could be trouble for PS5 software sales too.
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Prestige Content: This is the part that is more obvious. Major exclusive games will start flowing this yr with Psychonauts 2, FlightSim, Starfield, Halo and Forza Horizon. There is a solid chance Cyberpunk and BF come to Game Pass this holiday too. Add to that new stuff bubbling up through EA Play and the rumored Ubisoft+ deal and even just in 2021 we should see explosive growth potentially. Then comes 2022 and 2023, etc, which all look like they could be similarly packed with top class exclusive content that grabs ppl’s attention. If those games deliver on quality it will b e hard to slow GP down.
It is genuinely wild that these 3 major areas aren’t even meaningfully in play at all yet, meanwhile Game Pass based on even just the existing value prop is dominating the news cycle and conversations online. I’ve said before there is no clear ceiling to the growth, even for 2021. With target devices widening its reach and major games hitting an ever-improving service it could be 30mil or 40mil by year end for all we know. It’s a wild time to see this kinda market disruption.
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I didn’t subscribe to gamepass until 2019. Before then i had already played a lot of the games on there. I feel like 2019 is when gamepass really started getting good.
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I think breaking through 50 million subs is a sure thing. That’s just a matter of time, possibly late 2022 but most likely 2023.
Getting to 100 million and beyond is more of a trick because to do so they need high adoption on pc, and through the cloud.
Xbox one sold around 50 million units. Let’s say series consoles sells 85 million like the 360 did. Let’s say they can get 50 million from Xbox consoles which would be a feat because that’s assuming nearly 60% of owners sub to gamepass.
Another 50 million outside of Xbox is going to be tough and could take a while if it ever even happens. The biggest issue to me is the Microsoft store. People don’t want to use it because it has so many issues. The potential audience on pc is bigger than Xbox, but getting them is harder. If they can get gamepass onto steam I think 100 million subs is very achievable. It bypasses the MS store and it’s issues and directly reaches about 120 million active gamers.
The other place they can get a lot of subs is mobile/ smart tv’s. Both of those go through game streaming though. This audience will take the most work to reach but the potential is hard to quantify.
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I think the potential audience from consoles is anywhere from 50-100 million. The lower end is achievable from people who owned a Xbox before. The higher end will require Nintendo and PlayStation users to jump into gamepass either through buying an Xbox or from Xcloud streaming onto their consoles(this seams hard to believe especially for Sony)
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the potential from pc is about 100 million IMO. Steam has 120 million monthly active users and those numbers go up every year. There’s also other launchers out there. 100 million would be around 1/2 or 1/3 of PC gamers.
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streaming through mobile/smart tv’s/ other devices gains access to the most gamers. Probably 500 million real gamers that do so exclusively through mobile.
Thankfully, on the PC front, MS seems to have big changes in the work for Windows Store, both UI and policy changes according to Windows Central :
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Only 185 million subs to go!
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I feel like Game Pass will be more like Disney+ than Netflix
Disney+: Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars
Game Pass: Xbox + Bethesda + Indies + EA
Indies could be Ubi in the future.
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I feel like games are a bit different then films and tv series. A lot less disposable so it won’t kill off the sales of owning the games, especially the replayable non always online ones.
Yeah agree with that. It’s not a 1 to 1 to Netflix. I mentioned that even Sarah Bond said as much. With movies and TV, engagement per IP is much shorter. There isn’t the same monetization opportunities after the fact. Where it compares to Netflix is how it can disrupt and expand the industry and bring types of content to the masses normally reserved for the hardcore.
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