Not really. The games aren't exclusive to Xbox. They're simply getting on GP day one.
Yes, but there will be a growing trend of players who'd rather just "rent" the games from GP than buy them at full-price for $70 or even more, per-game, Day 1. For example if you're a multi-platform owner and there's a neat game you might've considered picking up on PlayStation for $60 Day 1, but then it gets announced for Game Pass Day 1, what are you likely going to do?
The game probably would only take a couple weeks to play through, maybe it's a single-player title with no online at that. You're probably much better off paying $10.99 for a month of regular Game Pass, than spend $60 for it on PlayStation.
But more on topic..... you do realize you're talking about Microsoft, right? The money problem isn't a big issue.
Apparently it was for virtually all of 2022, because we saw none of those Game Pass deals with big or notable 3P releases. 2021 set up expectation that perhaps MS were going to continue it. 2022? Crickets.
I don't get WC's sudden change of heart on XSS.
PS1/PS2/Switch/PS4 Pro were amongst the weakest consoles of their respected generations. So what? It's all about games, and only games. Hell, a few of my most beloved games this gen, TotK and GoW: Ragnarok, are running just fine on an aoutdated portable tablet and beefed-up old AMD Jaguar notebook. And they both look and feel absolutely monumental in bith Nin and Sony's portfolio.
Microsoft needs a game as monumental and awe-inspiring, as were Gears 1, Fable and Halo. And let's be honest, we have't seen anything from MS close to this level of magnitude in generations.
Was Fable honestly a monumental and awe-inspiring game? It never moved big numbers, I think its biggest claim to fame was the studio involved in making it, and Peter Molyneux.
But it was nowhere near the phenomenon that Gears or especially Halo were. I agree though, Microsoft need those types of games again. They just seem completely unable to make them in-house organically anymore, so they're buying 3P publishers who have those types of games already (Mojang for Minecraft, Zenimax for TES, ABK (potentially) for COD).
The majority of points that can be earned are outside of Xbox. Redemptions for other gift cards come and go (Amazon). Auto-Redeem for GPU was broken for months starting in April. I missed a month because of this and the following month arrived about 10 days late. And when the Game Pass Ultimate was available this past month, one month codes redemptions were handing out three months of service. Back when Achieve More, Earn More was available on the Xbox Rewards App, there are tons of times when it didn't register properly and people would be out of 50 points for the day. They also bring back Game Pass Quests that aren't obtainable for a lot of users like "Gain A Level or do a Revenge Mission in Assassin's Creed Origins". Revenge Missions haven't worked in a few years and if you have a max level character on your account, starting a new character will not complete the Quest. And that doesn't take into account people complaining of being banned or not being able to redeem rewards. The program is just riddled with issues but it's hard to complain considering it's fairly generous when it does work.
Okay yeah the whole system sounds like a broken piece of crap when you explain it that way. I don't have time to mess around with a lot of those types of programs; they remind me of those paid online surveys where getting anything of substantial value requires hours of time sunk into it, that feels like it could be better spent doing other things. Basically, like a bunch of busywork.
I just don't have the time for it, personally.
I genuinley think Starfield will move units this holiday. The software will bring people to the platform, it’s part of the reason sony bounced back so spectacularly at the end of the ps3 life cycle and start of the ps4. If microsoft can get a consistent cadence of Starfield and fable caliber titles, then people will go to the platform, the market has proven it before
Someone else already responded to this pretty well so I'll basically echo what they said: it takes a lot more than just one game to do what you're saying.
How are they struggling? They released Flight Simulator, Forza, Age of Empires, all well reviewed. They just had a showcase that confirms they are releasing a lot more games. Where is the struggle.
None of those games you mentioned have galvanized a swell of people to buy Xboxes or even sub to Game Pass. They are not blockbuster titles and do not appeal to the masses.
This doesn't mean they're bad games. It just means they have very limited "selling power", and Microsoft knows it. That's part of the reason they are trying to buy 3P publishers for IP like COD.
We'll see what the Starfield numbers are after the first week or two. Typically, these Bethesda games top Sony exclusive numbers on PC alone.
No, not really. I remember reading the sales splits for Skyrim and Fallout 4, up to a point, where majority on console, with PlayStation having a slight lead. If PC took the lead afterwards, it was due to being dirt cheap years after combined with the mod community being mature by a certain point to drum up long-term sales.
And the numbers about the cat game are directly from Sony, not from me. It was played by more users via the service than any other game in the PS+ catalog of games, because it was new and was worth considerably more to players than games that they likely already played years ago. At least that was true when Sony made that presentation, the stats could have changed by now.
Well that is one metric to go by, but you even said it yourself: PS+ doesn't have a lot of Day 1 drops so it isn't saying too much that Stray was the biggest new release played in the service. It's not necessarily up against a bunch of competition.
Side note: I'm really surprised that you intentionally tried to obfuscate the facts by talking about games played outside those "rented" from the service. That's a really poor effort there when I was specifically discussing the games played from the PS+ catalog of games (the GP equivalent). People playing multiplayer games or games they purchased from the store are irrelevant to the conversation.
Okay fair enough but considering, again, how few Day 1 releases there are in PS+, it's not like Stray had a lot of competition. Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, Shadow Warrior 3, and a couple other games are the only notable Day 1 releases I can think of. And VF is a niche (these days) fighting game series; Shadow Warrior an even more niche FPS series.
Good Point.
arstechnica.com
www.videogameschronicle.com
