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[TBiddy]

Game pass is the best service out there right now. It's insane.

 

[xrnzaaas]

Isn't the XB1 install base around 40 million? 1/4 of all XB1 owners subbing to it sounds really high tbh.

I mean, if they do have that sort of engagement, then it's an outstanding success. It's something that they will tout to the high heavens to their investors.

I suppose there's some people who are PC only who may have subbed and add to the number, but I imagine that number is really low.

Only recently you could get Game Pass for three months for a symbolic price (I think it was one dollar)... and it's not the first time they've done this. They're building the userbase for this subscription and hoping that people won't cancel when the "free" period is over.

I know I'd subscribe without waiting for sales if XONE was my main gaming device, the value is insanely good.

 

[Silent Chief]

Do you not know anything about marketing? I guess Netflix isn't successful because they offered the first month free, or 14 day free trials.

Netflix makes money buy has been racking up debt as it does and subscription growth is what they use as capital to finance that debt. "Impressive percentage of overall revenues" might just mean that overall revenues are low. Certainly, the subscription revenues adds predictability, but the more people use the service the fewer games they buy. Which mean lower overall revenues and less money for publishers and developers.

 

[DanielsM]

Netflix makes money buy has been racking up debt as it does and subscription growth is what they use as capital to finance that debt. "Impressive percentage of overall revenues" might just mean that overall revenues are low. Certainly, the subscription revenues adds predictability, but the more people use the service the fewer games they buy. Which mean lower overall revenues and less money for publishers and developers.

Netflix burns cash as a business model , as do most of the so called "disruptive" companies... Netflix, Tesla, Uber, etc. Uber just IPOed and its tanking already. No ability to make money other than hope someone keeps funding the cash burning business. I think a company can make money streaming i.e. Disney/Sony but I don't think the numbers will be huge.... meaning over traditional media. Games are an even tougher proposition, imo., not going to say its impossible to make real money but the whole business has to be geared towards extracting more money from the gamer not less money.

I expect most (maybe not all) of the new dotcoms to go up in flames just like the old dotcoms from the late 90s. They are lucky to still be around i.e. zero interest rate policy by the fed.... all these things wouldn't exist without huge amount of debt that can't possibly be paid back let alone at a real interest rate. All these companies are doing is rinsing and repeating the failures of the late 90s and stupid people keep buying it like its new.

Nice post btw.

 

[lock2k]

They're doing the drug dealer approach.

Sub for $1 and when you're hooked you're spending top dollar. lol

 

[Croatoan]

hopefully it comes to PC and includes the Halo games.

 

[Jigsaah]

It's 3 months for $1 dollar.

3 months.

I'm not saying the service is not successful, but if it was as big as some people are trying to make it out to be, I doubt they would even offer 1 dollar for 3 months. I'm also sure they took a huge loss with Crackdown 3 going straight to GP because the game didn't even make a dent when it comes to digital\physical sales.

I'm sure they're going to stop these 1 dollar deals when Gears of War 5 rolls around.

It's possible they are being very aggressive with their pricing. It would be interesting to see what happens when they stop giving out near freebies. I believe the last number reported by Sony was around 700,000 subscribers, but I would think most of those would pay full price. I also believe their service is more than 10 bucks a month...wanna say 14.

So if Microsoft can get a healthy enough library of first AND third party games, then I would imagine the price slowly going back up to normal range with less low bars of entry. This is simply another nest egg they are incubating until its ready to hatch, if you follow the analogy.

 

[Jigsaah]

Don't forget you don't get these offers if your already subscribed, and lots of people are shit with canceling subs or just leave them running because they shit with managing their finances or just don't care.

I'd find the 1 billion more believable if that was the total since the launch of Game pass.

I didn't even think about this...and i know because I'm one of those people who suck at unsubscribing. My wallet cries from my negligence sometimes. Really good point.

 

[DanielsM]

I believe the last number reported by Sony was around 700,000 subscribers, but I would think most of those would pay full price. I also believe their service is more than 10 bucks a month...wanna say 14.

PlayStation®Plus | Hundreds of games to download and play, PlayStation classics, game trials and more

Join PlayStation Plus on an Essential, Extra or Premium membership plan and get hundreds of PS4 and PS5 games, online multiplayer, classics catalog, exclusive discounts and more.

www.playstation.com

Its $99.99 a year in the US, $44.99 for 3-months, and for 1-month $19.99. You can also get deals as low as $79.99. With this you can stream 750+ games, download or stream 275 PS4 games, and this also includes the ability to play online with those games. So, that comes to between $6.66 ($79.99 annual) to $8.33 ($99.99 annual) per month.

There really is no sustainable business model to support this long-term. Microsoft doesn't have a one billion dollar business with Game Pass, they're lucky if they have a $15-30m business. Let's put this in perspective, a game like Red Dead Redemption probably had more revenue in one hour of sales. Its a rental program, which is okay, but I doubt anyone does huge numbers. Phil convinced Nadella to give him another check in exchange for him to get gamers on services, which is why Microsoft keeps promoting all this so heavily. Sony barely even wants to talk about it, why? Because its a loser to a degree.

 

[Mattyp]

hopefully it comes to PC and includes the Halo games.

Gamepass is already on PC.

I pay $9.99 a month, most people I know pay the full freight. Comes out automatically, $120 a year is nothing.

 

[Aidah]

Reminded me to make sure auto renewal is turned off. Bought a 6 month sub when it was half price, It's been useless.

 

[NickFire]

I always wondered how creators were compensated for this. Figured they probably got a flat fee to add the game that was based on how much MS wanted to add it. Being paid per install seems much less arbitrary. Still wonder about the mechanics of that. Would it be a one time fee, or would they keep getting a cut for subsequent months if the game remains installed?

 

[Jigsaah]

PlayStation®Plus | Hundreds of games to download and play, PlayStation classics, game trials and more

Join PlayStation Plus on an Essential, Extra or Premium membership plan and get hundreds of PS4 and PS5 games, online multiplayer, classics catalog, exclusive discounts and more.

www.playstation.com

Its $99.99 a year in the US, $44.99 for 3-months, and for 1-month $19.99. You can also get deals as low as $79.99. With this you can stream 750+ games, download or stream 275 PS4 games, and this also includes the ability to play online with those games. So, that comes to between $6.66 ($79.99 annual) to $8.33 ($99.99 annual) per month.

There really is no sustainable business model to support this long-term. Microsoft doesn't have a one billion dollar business with Game Pass, they're lucky if they have a $15-30m business. Let's put this in perspective, a game like Red Dead Redemption probably had more revenue in one hour of sales. Its a rental program, which is okay, but I doubt anyone does huge numbers. Phil convinced Nadella to give him another check in exchange for him to get gamers on services, which is why Microsoft keeps promoting all this so heavily. Sony barely even wants to talk about it, why? Because its a loser to a degree.

It's just a different pricing structure and one that at some levels may be less attractive to users. I know I would have a problem subscribing a full year for 99.99 when theres no perks like day 1 exclusives, such as gamepass has. To be fair, I dont know what Sony has on offer simply because the pricing serves as a deterrent. Game pass pricing is a much easier pill to swallow financially even if it does end up being more for the full year at $120 paying 10 bucks a month with the ability to cancel at any time.

I'd argue that Sony just isn't doing it right. I'd also predict that if and when Microsoft does reveal its numbers Sony will follow suit, which now that I think about it, would be a good reason not to share that information. As long as they quietly make that money, the competition doesnt see an incentive to change their ways.

 

[Jigsaah]

Netflix makes money buy has been racking up debt as it does and subscription growth is what they use as capital to finance that debt. "Impressive percentage of overall revenues" might just mean that overall revenues are low. Certainly, the subscription revenues adds predictability, but the more people use the service the fewer games they buy. Which mean lower overall revenues and less money for publishers and developers.

Theres a confound to this logic I dont think we are freely admitting here. Netflix began producing it's own shows, a lot of them. I believe this was the greatest cause of their debt. I also dont know if you can buy the movies from Netflix after you see it on their service, while all games are purchasable on xbox if gamepass expires.

While you could compare this to Microsoft studios making their own games, I mean they were doing this anyway. The new studios I think are going to be funded in part by gamepass while Netflix apparently borrowed money to produce these shows, essentially gambling that this would keep people subscribed. I dont have hard numbers on how this has worked out but if this but if what you say is true, then it seems Netflix gambled and is currently losing. I dont think Microsoft is borrowing anything. Revenue may be compromised, but debt has implications, such as interest. Microsoft doesnt have to worry about that.

 

[Bogroll]

It's just a different pricing structure and one that at some levels may be less attractive to users. I know I would have a problem subscribing a full year for 99.99 when theres no perks like day 1 exclusives, such as gamepass has. To be fair, I dont know what Sony has on offer simply because the pricing serves as a deterrent. Game pass pricing is a much easier pill to swallow financially even if it does end up being more for the full year at $120 paying 10 bucks a month with the ability to cancel at any time.

I'd argue that Sony just isn't doing it right. I'd also predict that if and when Microsoft does reveal its numbers Sony will follow suit, which now that I think about it, would be a good reason not to share that information. As long as they quietly make that money, the competition doesnt see an incentive to change their ways.

You have to go into the store i think to find PS now so that can't help, where as Xbox it's hard to miss it as its in the main menu as you scroll across. I always forget about it on PS4 as iv'e been meaning to have a blast on the free trial.

 

[tr1p1ex]

Yeah I don't believe it. They only have a 40 million install base. Maybe 10 million have tried it. And as someone said the article said users not subscribers. So there you go. People tried the 1 free month or whatever the free trial was.

 

[JCK75]

I think it's incredible and a game changer personally, I subscribe to it and honestly use it only once in a while (I'm a PC gamer mostly and I rarely turn on my Xbox One or PS4). Once the PC side becomes more robust it's going to be bigger deal to me more than something I sub to and forgot about.

 

[Lort]

There sure are a lot of cheep-skates here!

Sony admitted their subscription user-base is not comparable on their last PR release about subscriptions.

Gamepass is great value and very popular. If you read what is said here youd beleive that noone has an xbox, nobody plays xbox games, gamepass has aweful games and yet despite that everyone pays $1 a month continuously to just inflate the user-base.

 

[LOLCats]

i questioned thier business model with including new games with gamepass. My opinions have changed and im glad MS is making a bunch of money from it.

 

[DanielsM]

It's just a different pricing structure and one that at some levels may be less attractive to users. I know I would have a problem subscribing a full year for 99.99 when theres no perks like day 1 exclusives, such as gamepass has. To be fair, I dont know what Sony has on offer simply because the pricing serves as a deterrent. Game pass pricing is a much easier pill to swallow financially even if it does end up being more for the full year at $120 paying 10 bucks a month with the ability to cancel at any time.

I'd argue that Sony just isn't doing it right. I'd also predict that if and when Microsoft does reveal its numbers Sony will follow suit, which now that I think about it, would be a good reason not to share that information. As long as they quietly make that money, the competition doesnt see an incentive to change their ways.

So, basically what you are saying is you want all the games you want to play for $6 a month or less? Nobody is going to give you that and Microsoft doesn't give you that, accept to try and get you to subscribe.
You are saying Sony isn't doing it right, well, you haven't offered how they are going to make more money when they are basically giving it away right now. Microsoft isn't going to show numbers because they suck, they don't even give Gold numbers for years.

People don't sell something for $1 if they can really get $10 for it which means Microsoft has no customers, they same reason Sony keeps giving away free weeks of Now and Vue, no customers.

All it is, is a rental program, I don't see anything wrong with it per se, but big money maker, not really.... all they trying to do is to get consumers to pay more for rental, reduce ownership.... and charge more eventually.

 

[thelastword]

Who is coming up with all these rumors, who are these "sources", that shall not be named....... I thought we had already accepted that MS don't give numbers for anything anymore. So why are we trying to extrapolate numbers from a void?

So many sources, so little time. These sources have as much validity as Colin Moriarty does on the game industry....... The slippery slope that is not revealing numbers, is that anybody can get a source "straight from the ass"..... Like; My sources say Gamepass is at 10 million users, Gamepass is a beast with 1 billion+ in revenue, let that sink in, why don't you? ... Xbox is at 80 million units, Live subs are at 70 million. In essence, people can say what they want and source said things from any dark orifice and argue that the burden is on you to prove otherwise, it's hilarious stuff tbh.....

 

[DanielsM]

Who is coming up with all these rumors, who are these "sources", that shall not be named....... I thought we had already accepted that MS don't give numbers for anything anymore. So why are we trying to extrapolate numbers from a void?

So many sources, so little time. These sources have as much validity as Colin Moriarty does on the game industry....... The slippery slope that is not revealing numbers, is that anybody can get a source "straight from the ass"..... Like; My sources say Gamepass is at 10 million users, Gamepass is a beast with 1 billion+ in revenue, let that sink in, why don't you? ... Xbox is at 80 million units, Live subs are at 70 million. In essence, people can say what they want and source said things from any dark orifice and argue that the burden is on you to prove otherwise, it's hilarious stuff tbh.....

Its made up lies just like the PS Now numbers were lies, basically someone is trying to make money off of made up information. Let's put this in perspective.

PS4 has around 95 units sold.
PS Plus has about 36m subscribers at $40-65 USD annual fee a year - around a 37% subscriber attachment rate.
PS Now has 700k subscribers at $80-100 USD annual fee a year - around a 0.73% subscriber attachment rate.

So, if we are to imagine people are paying $120 an annual fee for Game Pass and its a $1 billion revenue business, that comes to about 8,333,000 Game Pass customers. Which would be 18.4% subscriber attachment rate (based on 45m Xbox One units), plus you figure all those customers have to pay for Xbox Live Gold as well.

My guess is Microsoft would gladly take Sony's 700k customers, my guess just and adding say 30% to Sony's attachment is 427,000 customer or say $50m annual revenue, which wouldn't even fund a AA game. No way anyone makes any real money out of this nor is a model to run a whole business. Now if someone wanted to say Xbox Live Gold generated $600-800m in revenue sure, not Game Pass though.

 

[Jigsaah]

Pardon me if I disrupt your paragraph structure for the purposes of my individual replies.

So, basically what you are saying is you want all the games you want to play for $6 a month or less?
Hasty Generalization, who said anything about "all"?

Nobody is going to give you that and Microsoft doesn't give you that, accept to try and get you to subscribe.
What Microsoft currently supplies in terms of games already warrants the full price...I subscribe due to this and to support the idea of them continuously improving the service in the future.

You are saying Sony isn't doing it right, well, you haven't offered how they are going to make more money when they are basically giving it away right now.
All Sony has to do is add the same value and adopt a less committal subscription pricing. They already have the install base. There's is a crap ton of money to make and while they've taken babysteps to appear closer to gamepass, they really need to go full on.

Microsoft isn't going to show numbers because they suck, they don't even give Gold numbers for years.
Your bias is becoming more apparent with every word you say. You should give credit where credit is due. Being beholden to Sony of Microsoft doesn't serve any purpose. You're literally assuming that without any information that the results must be bad. If that's not bias, I don't know what is.

People don't sell something for $1 if they can really get $10 for it which means Microsoft has no customers, they same reason Sony keeps giving away free weeks of Now and Vue, no customers.
Incorrect. Wow dude...you assume because Sony does bad, that automatically Microsoft has to be doing bad in this aspect. That's...just...amazing that you feel this way. You aren't considering any other factors you essentially equalize PSNow when Gamepass when they are still very different programs in terms of pricing and what they offer.

All it is, is a rental program, I don't see anything wrong with it per se, but big money maker, not really.... all they trying to do is to get consumers to pay more for rental, reduce ownership.... and charge more eventually.

 

[DanielsM]

Pardon me if I disrupt your paragraph structure for the purposes of my individual replies.

"All Sony has to do is add the same value and adopt a less committal subscription pricing. They already have the install base. There's is a crap ton of money to make and while they've taken babysteps to appear closer to gamepass, they really need to go full on."

This is all without form, what do you want, how much are you willing to pay?

As far as I can tell this is better than Game Pass, its cheaper with more much more games and includes streaming and online play... and nobody cares. You're not going to get all the big exclusive day 1 for $8 a month, they'll have to charge 100s of dollars a year. My guess, Sony has many more rental customers than Microsoft, but we don't know and who cares... its simply a rental program. Its like saying who is making more money GameFly or Redbox.... so what. You are assuming Microsoft's Game Pass is doing well.... my assumption is based on sound business... you don't give away $10 of services for $1 unless you have no choice. You assumption is based on false numbers.

The only way any of this works is if they can extract more money from the dumb gamers, not less. There really isn't a business model to support any of these silly service, not really, they're searching but not really finding a solution.... I see nothing wrong with a rental service but its probably never going to replace purchases. Old games really aren't worth much and they are all heavy front loaded, and you should consider talking to single player developers... they'll tell you... under a rental per hour play.... single player games will be a thing of the past.... as they can only get paid per hour.

I'll leave it at this.... if you think Microsoft has a billion a year revenue business renting old games.... I got a bridge to sell ya.

 

[Jigsaah]

"All Sony has to do is add the same value and adopt a less committal subscription pricing. They already have the install base. There's is a crap ton of money to make and while they've taken babysteps to appear closer to gamepass, they really need to go full on."

This is all without form, what do you want, how much are you willing to pay?

As far as I can tell this is better than Game Pass, its cheaper with more much more games and includes streaming and online play... and nobody cares. You're not going to get all the big exclusive day 1 for $8 a month, they'll have to charge 100s of dollars. My guess, Sony has many more rental customers than Microsoft, but we don't know and who cares... its simply a rental program. Its like saying who is making more money GameFly or Redbox.... so what. You are assuming Microsoft's Game Pass is doing well.... my assumption is based on sound business... you don't give away $10 of services for $1 unless you have no choice. You assumption is based on false numbers.

The only way any of this works is if they can extract more money from the dumb gamers, not less.

I'm not assuming they are doing well. I'm presenting what was said and literally say in the OP "IF THIS IS EVEN CLOSE TO ACCURATE". What I'm saying is that we can't assume either way, but can debate based on facts that we actually have. Arguments can be made on both sides...the problem is that you aren't using any of the arguments...you're just flat out saying Microsoft sucks and that why game pass can't be successful.

That is utterly ridiculous logic.

 

[DanielsM]

I'm not assuming they are doing well. I'm presenting what was said and literally say in the OP "IF THIS IS EVEN CLOSE TO ACCURATE". What I'm saying is that we can't assume either way, but can debate based on facts that we actually have. Arguments can be made on both sides...the problem is that you aren't using any of the arguments...you're just flat out saying Microsoft sucks and that why game pass can't be successful.

That is utterly ridiculous logic.

Yes, you can. Just like I said many times that the PS Now subscriber numbers were bullshit, logically it doesn't make sense that many people would subscribe to either service. People were clearly making shit up. Who in the fuck is going to pay for $120 for Game Pass and another $45-65 for Xbox Live Gold for a total of $165-185 to play old games? People don't even want to pay $79.99-99.99 for playing and streaming old games on PS Now.

Gamers aren't that dumb, they are very poor deals, why? Because old games are cheap as hell, gamers know that.

The reason why Microsoft doesn't release numbers is because the numbers suck. The same reason I said back in March Sony didn't release numbers... they suck. They finally released number, big surprise... numbers suck. I'll leave it at that, its just a rental program... yes Microsoft would love for you to subscribe to more services, if its your thing... cool.... but I doubt it will ever be a main way for most people to play as the numbers don't even come close to working out. Game development is basically able to be a business because of the upfront sales the first 3-4 months, Microsoft can experiment but its not going to work out. Game Pass seems like a good thing to cherry pick, eventually if they have a good exclusive, you sign up for 1 month.... play the game... if you like it... buy and than let the subscription run out... in the meantime you play some old games as well.

For $120 a year, I can come home with a whole stack of used games (I already do, have games stacked that I can play for 5 years and barely spend anything)... that I can never play in a year, plus if you subscribe to XBLG... you get 4 other games per month. Many games can one play in a year?