Serious discussion, with Microsoft gamepass strategy, can their 1st party studios still make high budget high production value AAA games? Or cut back games production budget to make more mediocre games to sustain subscribers? How do you think? Compare to sony's traditional Strategy, which one is better?
Edit: which one is more sustainable?
So, whenever a game goes onto GamePass, the amount of money that game loses in sales has to be offset. That offset is paid for via GamePass subscriptions, or from other Microsoft revenue streams, should GamePass not create enough profits.
Therefore any subscription service of this type must have enough subscribers to generate enough profits to plough back into production. If there aren’t enough subscribers, fewer AAA games will be made. Simple.
Whereas with Sony, its the more standard single product revenue stream that funds future projects. If their games don’t sell well, they will make less games.
Arguably, Sony’s strategy is more sustainable, IMO. Especially if Microsoft aren’t producing enough exclusives to persuade people over to their ecosystem. Subscription services like GamePass and Netflix rely on a growing subscriber base to ensure future content production. And a potential subscriber base is not infinite. There’s only so many people out there. The trick is to get the balance right of enough subscribers to continue content production at a good enough level.
Ultimately though, that subscription service must have compelling fresh content to gain more subscribers. Not sure Microsoft are producing that at the moment. Time will tell.
