You're right. Microsoft is perfect and can do no wrong.
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Subscription Growth Has Flattened claims games industry analyst
- Thread starter Marees
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Who said that ?, but anyway here a trial with discovery did show internal communication that confirm that Microsoft indeed knew the obvious, we do not have to speculate.You're right. Microsoft is perfect and can do no wrong.
All that graph shows is that the company leadership is good at advertising to investors. I am pretty sure that microsoft leadership does know what it is doing with their business in general. Your additional implied inference that they know what the f they're doing with their gaming division, however, I consider doubtful.
That doesn't even mention that the company is likely hampered by government-level amounts of internal politics and bureaucracy.
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A graphic of profit and revenues would look very good went from 22 billions in 2014 to 73 billions now.
I would not say they are particularly good at making games, more than good enough at business in general to know stuff that 12 years old know like the risk of cannibalizing business something that exist in every type of business and not particular to game was the implication. There is no bad business that would know that, people not even in business know that, it is just a ridiculous notion.
I will even think that I really doubt there very little we would come up with regarding business and making money that Microsoft does not know about in their core business segment, how many time would they need to prove that very little entity ever knew about making money like they do.
KazeoHin
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The stock market as a whole Exploded upwards from 2019 onwards, people called it "a great economy" I called it "printing so much money that failing corporations can look profitable". Everyone's lines went up.
DukenukemX
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People right now owe money. Like the kind of money that hasn't been seen the Napoleonic Wars. Prices are high and people are starting to cut corners. Subscriptions are going to be the first to go. All this money lending did was push people to take on larger loans because people felt this level of money spending was sustainable. Some companies believe there's still some pandemic money left to extract.
Armenius
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The Xbox division isn't run by Satya Nadella. The CEO of Xbox is Phil Spencer and the President is Sarah Bond. And Xbox is losing money hand over fist. The only reason I can see Nadella continuing to allow Xbox to exist is the growth potential for subscriptions, and since that isn't playing out as they had hoped at this point the gaming division may very well get the axe sometime in the future. How far into the future that will happen is uncertain, but after spending $70 billion on acquiring Activision Blizzard King the clock is ticking.
Apparently they over projected future subscriptions based on pandemic era lock-down surge, and now they have to face up to the lie they told to themselves
I don't see a way out using the subscription model for xbox. Probably premium cash cows might appear only in an exclusive higher tier model and not in the general tier, is my guess.
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Armenius
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That is the way PlayStation is doing it with their PSN model, so I can definitely see Xbox doing the same.
But we are talking about some basic offer and demand can affect price low level of general business knowledge here, people that run a corner store will have some notion (and to repeat, we know for a fact form the Activision trial discovery, that obviously they knew about this, we do not have to speculate).
I think we have to rewind back of how low the bar we are talking about, it was a simple hyperbole that was made.
I don't know what you're trying to say.
I think it was lost, Microsoft know there a risk of cannibalizing sales to put a title currently selling well or day 1 on gamepass, the idea that it would not be something they think about and try to calculate is an ridiculous hyperbole, it would be for a startup, it is even more for a giant mature well run company like Microsoft, it is one of the most basic business issue, that all substacker on their own and podcaster face weekly and that Microsoft has giant experience with, how much you give for free and its impact.
Which the poster agreed right away, saying that obviously the debate is about how much it does and if it is worth it at the end.
Armenius
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The concept of cannibalizing sales is badly defined, in my opinion. The publishers and developers get paid a rate by Microsoft based criteria that are not public, but we could deduce that one criterion is the number of potential subscribers and the amount of time they would spend playing the game. For first-party games this is all money that is going directly into Microsoft's coffers either way.
A Game Pass subscriber is effectively one sale on paper. For third parties it is their responsibility to determine if what Microsoft is selling them in the deal will equate to the amount of money they would make from direct sales, and even if the potential subscriber was a potential buyer in the first place. I've read many anecdotes online about people discovering games they would have otherwise ignored if it were not for Game Pass, far more than those who have said they abstained from a purchase due to a game's inclusion on the service. The data needs to be looked at and analyzed to know if there is any truth to that, but based on the projections posted earlier Microsoft's analysts are not good at their jobs.
Cannibalizing sales? I think not. I believe this is just yet another narrative created by the internet to attack Microsoft. While I would love to see the aggregate data to analyze myself, I'm sure it's considered a trade secret and will never be shared publicly.
And if the game is available on steam, buzz from Xbox gamepass play could boost PC games sales (where I do not imagine gamepass is that popular vs steam account), and it would be a bit more complicated determine if what Microsoft is selling them in the deal will equate to the amount of money they would make from direct sales, earlier the money arrive that has a lot of value and 100% certain money has a lot of value versus possible future money has well.
Cannibalizing sales? I think not. I believe this is just yet another narrative created by the internet to attack Microsoft. While I would love to see the aggregate data to analyze myself, I'm sure it's considered a trade secret and will never be shared publicly.
It must happen for big would have been popular either way game with a day 1 launch, to put it extreme if everyone was on gamepass there would be zero game sales, you can still sell quite well (Starfield), but the impact can obviously happen.
One is just the expected norm, so it is not something you will talk about, people rarely go around talking about what they would bought on DVD would it not have been on their Netflix account (in most case you do not even know if that would have been the case or not), the other way around being more exceptional will be more talked about.
Xbox Game Pass Is Running Out Of Wells To Dig Up New Subscribers
On Cloud Gaming:
there’s this fantastical idea that there is some giant, untapped market of current non-gamers that would play Xbox video games if only they didn’t have to spend $300-500 on console hardware. Again, tech issues aside, there is no evidence this is a large market. Mobile gaming exploded because that was an entirely different genre of games. No subscription, free games, casual games, essentially nothing at all like 90% of the games that are on Game Pass. I don’t know how you are going to convince someone who is not into core gaming at all and at best, is playing whatever mobile flavor of the month is big, that they need to pay almost $200 a year for a new subscription because Starfield came out. Who are these people meant to be?
Call of Duty:
This is one of the only series big enough to generate a potentially somewhat significant amount of Game Pass subscribers on its own, and Microsoft is considering doing just that. And yet it will then in turn lose out on an incredible amount of sales revenue on its own platform by giving it away in that fashion. This is also a trick they can only pull once, as there is no way on earth something like say, GTA 6 is going to launch on Game Pass (unless Microsoft just buys Take Two which I mean, is not impossible at this point). It’s also easy for players to subscribe to Game Pass for a couple months, play COD, then cancel the sub.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulta...ls-to-dig-up-new-subscribers/?sh=41f35b777a1a
"The thing that has me most concerned for the industry is the lack of growth. And when you have an industry that is projected to be smaller next year in terms of players and dollars, and you get a lot of publicly traded companies that are in the industry that have to show their investors growth – because why else does somebody own a share of someone's stock if it's not going to grow? – the side of the business that then gets scrutinized is the cost side. Because if you're not going to grow the revenue side, then the cost side becomes challenged." – In an interview with Polygon last month, Phil Spencer says that when the growth stops, cutting costs is the way to go.
(If there is no growth outlook, then what does the future hold for xbox 
)
Phil Spencer outright stated last year, arguing that the current circumstances of max layoffs could be solved if the industry got "back to growth".
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indu...ends-close-to-a-minute-saying-almost-nothing/
)Phil Spencer outright stated last year, arguing that the current circumstances of max layoffs could be solved if the industry got "back to growth".
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indu...ends-close-to-a-minute-saying-almost-nothing/
Game Pass will stay but become more expensive. This has already been reported as being talked about at Xbox, and it seems like the only solution left since subscription numbers just aren't going up.
Second is that Xbox will fully commit to bringing most, if not all, of its exclusives to other platforms. Microsoft President Satya Nadella stated, "Earlier this month, we had seven games among the top 25 on the PlayStation Store, more than any other publisher." That level of success won't be ignored.
https://www.pocket-lint.com/what-is-going-on-with-microsoft-xbox/
Second is that Xbox will fully commit to bringing most, if not all, of its exclusives to other platforms. Microsoft President Satya Nadella stated, "Earlier this month, we had seven games among the top 25 on the PlayStation Store, more than any other publisher." That level of success won't be ignored.
https://www.pocket-lint.com/what-is-going-on-with-microsoft-xbox/
...at one point you could get three months of it for £1 - and a stated goal to "reach the more than three billion gamers worldwide," as Ben Decker, head of gaming services marketing at Xbox, told Eurogamer in 2021.
that quest for massive, roof-shattering growth seems doomed. Since 2017, Game Pass has added a steady number of around five million subscribers a year, now sitting at around 34 million as of earlier in 2024. It's very respectable progress, especially since prices have risen and £1 offers have faded away - it's also a long way off those 3 billion gamers worldwide.
Xbox buys talent, mismanages it in search of impossible scale, and cuts it loose - be that the 20-year experts of Fable, or the battle-scarred makers of Dishonored, or the invigorating new generation behind Hi-Fi Rush. Xbox's leadership clearly knows it's a problem. I believe Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond were utterly sincere when they said they looked at Lionhead and promised themselves not to make the same mistakes again. But to do that, they have to step behind this first, surface-level layer of justification for closing studios, and get to the real cause - not the decisions themselves, but the principles that inform them. The principles that say expertise, creativity and talent are less valuable than the cost to let them flourish.
Dig out the scarlet thread again, and the thing that binds all these moments together couldn't be more clear. The philosophy of a great video game platform holder is that it makes money in order to make more consoles and more games. The philosophy of Microsoft - and by dint of that, Xbox - is evidently that it only makes consoles and games in order to make money. Like so many businesses owned by gigantic, publicly-traded mega-companies, Xbox is now stuck in a cycle of thinking back-to-front. It, and I suspect much of the video game world, no longer knows why it exists.
https://www.eurogamer.net/what-is-the-point-of-xbox
that quest for massive, roof-shattering growth seems doomed. Since 2017, Game Pass has added a steady number of around five million subscribers a year, now sitting at around 34 million as of earlier in 2024. It's very respectable progress, especially since prices have risen and £1 offers have faded away - it's also a long way off those 3 billion gamers worldwide.
Xbox buys talent, mismanages it in search of impossible scale, and cuts it loose - be that the 20-year experts of Fable, or the battle-scarred makers of Dishonored, or the invigorating new generation behind Hi-Fi Rush. Xbox's leadership clearly knows it's a problem. I believe Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond were utterly sincere when they said they looked at Lionhead and promised themselves not to make the same mistakes again. But to do that, they have to step behind this first, surface-level layer of justification for closing studios, and get to the real cause - not the decisions themselves, but the principles that inform them. The principles that say expertise, creativity and talent are less valuable than the cost to let them flourish.
Dig out the scarlet thread again, and the thing that binds all these moments together couldn't be more clear. The philosophy of a great video game platform holder is that it makes money in order to make more consoles and more games. The philosophy of Microsoft - and by dint of that, Xbox - is evidently that it only makes consoles and games in order to make money. Like so many businesses owned by gigantic, publicly-traded mega-companies, Xbox is now stuck in a cycle of thinking back-to-front. It, and I suspect much of the video game world, no longer knows why it exists.
https://www.eurogamer.net/what-is-the-point-of-xbox
Microsoft hoovered up these studios on the expectation that its Game Pass business would take off and its console business would compete more strongly with PlayStation. That hasn’t come to pass. Its gamble hasn’t paid off, and it’s the teams that are paying the price.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/what-do-studio-closures-mean-for-xbox-strategy-opinion
For years, Microsoft has been talking about finding the next billion gamers.
it has now seemingly given up on that dream.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/what-do-studio-closures-mean-for-xbox-strategy-opinion
For years, Microsoft has been talking about finding the next billion gamers.
it has now seemingly given up on that dream.
Xbox’s Shift To ‘High-Impact’ Games Is Misguided At Best, Reckless At Worst
Xbox’s move risks endangering more studios and its own projects, rather than helping the company remain afloat
Xbox is chasing trends that are becoming increasingly hard to replicate to any real success.
These kinds of games aren’t easy or cheap to make, and they’re only getting costlier and more unwieldy, making them tremendously hazardous investments.
It flies completely in the face of Xbox Game Pass, its premium subscription with a rolling catalog of both large and small games from third and first-party studios. Without Game Pass and the promise that its first-party teams could develop titles that wouldn’t be classified as “high-impact,” we wouldn’t have Pentiment or Hi-Fi Rush, two of the best games Xbox has been able to get out the door in years. They may not have topped sales charts for months on end, but they are the kind of games that produce good will amongst devs and fans alike, and diversify the kind of audience you pull when all you’re known for are big-budget shooters that many people are tiring of.
https://kotaku.com/xbox-bethesda-layoffs-high-impact-games-1851464703
Whatever Microsoft is smoking ... it's very potent.
DukenukemX
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Sounds like Xbox is not very profitable anymore. Ask any gamer and they would say this isn't a pro gamer move. Raise the price of Game Pass? Anyone can tell you that you'll lose subscribers faster then you'll make back from the price increase. Putting games on all platforms is a good idea, but there won't be much of an Xbox platform then.
Prince Valiant
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Not surprised Aveum did poorly, especially with that budget. One look at the screenshots from TPU's performance review and skimming the conclusion was enough to put me off.
Darunion
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I really feel that a subscription price change should legally shut down the auto pay until you resub. So many companies hope you just don't notice.