We definitely play on the XSX as a family a lot more than the PS5 that’s collecting dust upstairs. Its smaller form factor makes it much easier to use as a gaming console in our main living area. But yeah, GamePass is a crazy good deal if you know how to use the conversion trick (buy GamePass core for like 2 years for $80-100 from key reseller, then convert it to Ultimate on MS site at a 2:3 ratio or whatever).
That being said, everyone knows GamePass isn’t sustainable long-term. Microsoft truly is killing their gaming division with such short-sighted planning.
Rather, it isn’t sustainable at its current pricing model. It takes the average studio team 3-5 years to make 1 AAA game.
Microsoft’s internal studios (excluding the ones they just bought over the last 4-5 years) have made Halo Infinite and… Hmm… Is the Forza studio considered OG first-party? I’ll just lump them in as well, since they’ve been associated with MS for awhile. So 2 major games in the last ~8 years. Then you have the major studios they just bought: Bethesda and Blizzard/Activision. Bethesda has released 2 major AAA games in the last 5 years while under MS ownership (I think Doom Eternal came out before the purchase). Blizzard has done 1 and Activision has done 1 CoD game.
So MS paid $7.5b for Zenimax/Bethesda and $68.7b for Blizz/Activision, for a whopping total of $76.2b. Starfield sold around 3m copies, Diablo 4 has generated around $1b in revenue since release (chose revenue since it’s a live service game and that includes copies sold), and Black Ops 6 has sold… I’m not sure, a quick search doesn’t show any hard numbers, just Xbox propaganda that it “was the biggest release in franchise history.” (I say propaganda bc many of their larger shareholders weren’t super pleased with how much it cost to purchase Activision, so of course they wanted to spin it as being a smart investment).
And it costs MS a lot of money to license some of the bigger games to come to GamePass.
I just don’t see it being sustainable without cost increases. And if the cost goes up, they’ll turn off customers. And we’ve already seen that their cheaper, indie studios aren’t safe from being axed despite releasing successful hits.
Their current pricing model is between $10 and $20 per month for somewhere north of 30M subscribers. The ability to get Game Pass for less than that was largely discontinued two years ago. You can conservatively estimate that to be $300M in revenue every month. Every two months, they can fund a Call of Duty game. Every month, they can more than fund one Starfield. That’s only Game Pass revenue without including game sales. I’ll also remind you that Microsoft publishes 6 of the top 10 PlayStation games last month; they’re still selling lots of games outside of Game Pass. “Excluding the [studios] they bought over the last 4-5 years” is a major omission. Their licensing deals for third parties on Game Pass have seen significantly less investment in the past few years; as their first party library increases, they’re less and less necessary. I’m also curious where you got that number for Starfield units sold, because my back of the napkin math puts it at more than 3M copies on Steam alone.
Minecraft also seems to get frequently forgotten about when talking about Microsoft gaming too. It makes Microsoft around £300m per year in games sales. That’s just the game. Imagine what the merchandise figures are on top of that.
I don’t think game pass is anywhere near unsustainable, when we consider what is actually sustaining it.
We definitely play on the XSX as a family a lot more than the PS5 that’s collecting dust upstairs. Its smaller form factor makes it much easier to use as a gaming console in our main living area. But yeah, GamePass is a crazy good deal if you know how to use the conversion trick (buy GamePass core for like 2 years for $80-100 from key reseller, then convert it to Ultimate on MS site at a 2:3 ratio or whatever).
That being said, everyone knows GamePass isn’t sustainable long-term. Microsoft truly is killing their gaming division with such short-sighted planning.
I don’t think everyone does know that. There’s a very real, perhaps likely, chance that Game Pass is sustainable.
Rather, it isn’t sustainable at its current pricing model. It takes the average studio team 3-5 years to make 1 AAA game.
Microsoft’s internal studios (excluding the ones they just bought over the last 4-5 years) have made Halo Infinite and… Hmm… Is the Forza studio considered OG first-party? I’ll just lump them in as well, since they’ve been associated with MS for awhile. So 2 major games in the last ~8 years. Then you have the major studios they just bought: Bethesda and Blizzard/Activision. Bethesda has released 2 major AAA games in the last 5 years while under MS ownership (I think Doom Eternal came out before the purchase). Blizzard has done 1 and Activision has done 1 CoD game.
So MS paid $7.5b for Zenimax/Bethesda and $68.7b for Blizz/Activision, for a whopping total of $76.2b. Starfield sold around 3m copies, Diablo 4 has generated around $1b in revenue since release (chose revenue since it’s a live service game and that includes copies sold), and Black Ops 6 has sold… I’m not sure, a quick search doesn’t show any hard numbers, just Xbox propaganda that it “was the biggest release in franchise history.” (I say propaganda bc many of their larger shareholders weren’t super pleased with how much it cost to purchase Activision, so of course they wanted to spin it as being a smart investment).
And it costs MS a lot of money to license some of the bigger games to come to GamePass.
I just don’t see it being sustainable without cost increases. And if the cost goes up, they’ll turn off customers. And we’ve already seen that their cheaper, indie studios aren’t safe from being axed despite releasing successful hits.
Their current pricing model is between $10 and $20 per month for somewhere north of 30M subscribers. The ability to get Game Pass for less than that was largely discontinued two years ago. You can conservatively estimate that to be $300M in revenue every month. Every two months, they can fund a Call of Duty game. Every month, they can more than fund one Starfield. That’s only Game Pass revenue without including game sales. I’ll also remind you that Microsoft publishes 6 of the top 10 PlayStation games last month; they’re still selling lots of games outside of Game Pass. “Excluding the [studios] they bought over the last 4-5 years” is a major omission. Their licensing deals for third parties on Game Pass have seen significantly less investment in the past few years; as their first party library increases, they’re less and less necessary. I’m also curious where you got that number for Starfield units sold, because my back of the napkin math puts it at more than 3M copies on Steam alone.
Minecraft also seems to get frequently forgotten about when talking about Microsoft gaming too. It makes Microsoft around £300m per year in games sales. That’s just the game. Imagine what the merchandise figures are on top of that.
I don’t think game pass is anywhere near unsustainable, when we consider what is actually sustaining it.