People are really having a hard time understanding how Game Pass works it seems. Game Pass isn’t just a gaming subscription service, it is also a marketing tool. Nobody asks “how do timed exclusives work?” people know the reason those deals are made.
What if, instead of buying timed exclusivity for a game where you seemingly have to buy up all of the potential sales of your competitor, you buy up all of the potential sales on your own platform and give away the game for “free” to your users?
What matters most is how outriders performed on Xbox in comparison to PlayStation. If it did much better on Xbox than that’s really good for Xbox.
Even then, it is a completely new IP that didn’t have much traction before the Game Pass announcement. To see it played that much is a great thing.
You know what?
Gamepass takes advantage of the gamers who wish to have games purchased forever. Those gamers will pay for Gamepass and then pay for the game as well. Gamepass is like a demo service.
For someone like me - i haven’t bought any game yet and probably may never have to buy one in the future.
That part of the genius of GP. You can use it like a rental/demo service if you want. Pay $10 for one month of 100s of games. Any games you like and want to keep you can go out and buy, even if it is on a competing platform. $10 a month if you only consider it a game rental service is still an excellent deal.
If you just want to subscribe “forever” you can do that too and just keep playing games without having to buy them.
This is me and I’m fine with it. It helps that I got my three years for a low price.
To be honest, I kind of use Spotify as a demo service for my vinyl collection.
For most people, subscription services like Game Pass are a great way to discover new games and to play some titles that we probably wouldn’t buy otherwise, because we don’t know if we would like them or not.
But for people with disabilities, Game Pass and other services deliver a way to see if they are able to play that game in the first place, like, do this game have a colorblind mode, or can I remap the buttons so I can reach them more easily.
I can’t tell you how much I love this.
So is there anything to the RE8 launch on gamepass rumor?
From Jeffs podcast today:
Mike (reading a superchat question) : Do you think Resident Evil Village will be on gamepass day 1 ? Jeff: No ? Maybe ? Mike: That seems a little too big, that games got some hype (some big lady hype). Jeff: I mean I can see Phil Spencer and his team at Xbox wanting to do a big deal with Capcom but that one seems to be too big even for them and even if they could come up with the money that Capcom would want I still think Capcom would say ''we wan’t to go our own way still and sell this to people and not associate RE with Gamepass quite yet. I still think there are a lot of publishers who are feeling that way.
This part bummed me out. I hope this is just him speculating and not basing this off his insider info. Because a lot of publishers have gladly associated themselves with gamepass wether its Take2, Ubisoft, SEGA,EA, Capcom, Square-Enix, Bethesda (even prior to acquisition) etc…I mean that’s almost every publisher besides Activision. Unless Jeff meant publishers releasing their games day 1 on the service. And we’ve also seen with Outriders that gamepass doesn’t kill retail sales. If anything it enhances it. It’s the 3rd most popular game besides COD Warzone & Fortnite.
I do think borderlands 3 will hit gamepass in the next couple months. It’s discounted to 20$ right now.
I assume this is based on play time, not sales. I don’t think we have an indication of how the game is selling on Xbox (unless I missed something).
I think day 1 AAA 3rd party games are still in “dip toe in water” territory.
This Outriders success on Game Pass is going to do bloody wonders for the service, this couldn’t have been more successful. I think the Sony moneyhat timed exclusives are going to go away or at least slow down a lot because surely it’s going to cost Sony more and more.
Let’s say square for example puts FF16 exclusively on PS, they’re missing out on Xbox/Switch/PC money but Sony probably pays them for that. Microsoft will now pay probably the same money but allow the game to be on all platforms so they make even more money, but it’s on Game Pass day 1.
I 100% think Game Pass is going to cause Sony to pay more for the exclusive shit they’ve been doing because the companies Sony is paying will see what Game Pass is doing and it is a MUCH better deal. It’s going to cause Sony to pay more for the same thing and it’s going to get to the point where it’s gonna cost too much.
All this and Game Pass is only at 18-20m subscribers… the more subs come the harder it will get for Sony.
MS is using Game Pass as the good option of partnerships, they will allow the game to continue to be sold on their platform and every other platform so there is no lockouts on sales on every other platform.
Gamepass theory is simple. It beats timed exclusives.
Sony: Paying more for other platform users compensation
Xbox: paying more for there own platform users
Charity at home is the best cahrity. Xbox is winning here 
Curious is that top paid games list is actually based on sales, or if all non-f2p games are included regardless of how they were acquired.
That I still wonder, but I think either way, it is pretty positive. On one hand, Game Pass has helped given the game visibility to put it even beyond big profile games, and on the other hand, it has boosted sales.
More gamepass devs speaking truth
Mike Rose (from Descenders publisher) always speeks truth about Game Pass.