Xbox Exec: People Were Worried Game Pass Would Devalue Games

It's impossible to argue the positive impact gamepass has had on indie titles and studios without big marketing. The only negatives I hear are from people thinking it's not financially viable and those people don't have any stats to back it up. Gamepass is a great avenue for the industry. It shouldn't be the only one but I'm glad it's an option.

Been with game pass day one, game pass ultimate upgrade as soon as that was available as well. I use it almost every day, and have bought tons of dlc for games I don't own but play thru game pass. It rules.

TBH, when it was first introduced I was a sceptic and didn't use the service. Recently all the games I've played have been from GP and I got the All Access Series X deal so I'm in for 2 years. Even if I only play 2 or 3 games that would have retailed at full price I've got value from the service. It's brilliant.

@crippyd
Same here. Initial scepticism gave way to glowing praise. Game Pass is awesome already and I can't wait for what MS has in store for us in 2021 as far as Game Pass is concerned.

I just came into the fold a few months ago so gamepass was already great and then xcloud & EA Play got added plus Zenimax announcement so I'm over the moon. I've played games i never would have as a result and I don't have any intention of going back to the old way. I'm playing more games, trying to get my friends into the ecosystem and truthfully spending more than I would have. Thing is I'm getting a lot more enjoyment so I'm ok with the cost. I'll be buying cards when they are on sale and getting as good a deal as i can but my enjoyment levels are a lot higher than they have been since I was a kid with cash and time to burn. It's a game changer for sure and industry will be shifting as a result. I think we will be seeing a lot of smaller games coming out which is great...i don't have 150 hours to play a game, give me some shorter but great experiences.

@RedShirtRod Gotta love all the self-proclaimed experts on economics in the comment sections of those articles. Because obviously, a random user on the internet knows more about business models than a multinational corporation.

@Kefka2589 This is one thing that intrigues me, and following our conversation about "that guy" on "that other site" that's a dev has said a lot of things about having information and admissions from the inside on GP not being profitable, being a big loss, about his own experience with a game that is on GP that makes nothing there and will make projected lifetime on GP less than it made on week 1 - and was a sales dud then as well (And I keep thinking, well, then your employer had some reason of putting and keeping the game on GP other than to hemorrhage money.....they have an option to, you know, not?) Comparisons to Spotify and the gutting of the music industry, etc. etc.

I'd love to see a real debate between that person or those on that side of the thinking with the business side of MS and the studios that invariably have done well by GP to see where that difference in viewpoint lies. One side has data that says it's a cash sink that does nothing but lock in the MS ecosystem as a whole. And you have MS and other devs that seem to think it's the only way to save the sustainability of AA gaming. There's two realities out there on Game Pass.

Been a Live subscriber for 16 years now and when I saw Gamepass I joined there too. Find old articles from the early '00s and the media sincerely doubted the validity of Live service back then too. "No one will pay for that," was the rallying cry. Now scream ahead to today and you can't imagine Xbox without it. Gamepass will be the same. I love my GP.

I just prefer physical..

Game Pass is the best value in gaming period! That's all I'll say.

@Bmartin001 and there ain't nothing wrong with that. Nothing in this world works for everyone so no need to like Gamepass if it ain't for you.

Game Pass is the best thing to happen to gaming in years.

It's a great service. Only issue is finding the time to play all the games...

@Kefka2589 Absolutely PS "as a second console" does nothing for Sony but boost their install base numbers and publisher attention but the financial meat and potatoes for them (and Nintendo) is the third party licensing.

The mantra that keeps coming from Sony-land though is that Game Pass is simply unsustainable, it loses tremendous money giving away the first party games like that, devs don't make money being on it, and it's basically devaluing games like Spotify and Netflix did - the argument going so far as that all those streaming services were built to pick up the scraps of customers that weren't buying at full price - and that when people stopped buying at full price and started buying subscriptions instead, it created a funding crisis in their industries and GP will with game as well.

While I've heard those arguments before, and I see the comparison being drawn....what I keep hearing from inside Sony land (including what seems to be common thinking within studios as stated by that guy), it's not bearing out with what MS and studios favorable to GP seem to be saying. There's a definite disconnect, apparently even inside the industry, with the financial reality of it. Not just among fanboys but studios (apparently including big ones) that see it as an unsustainable money hole that threatens their entire financial model, and that it's a cynical play by MS to basically take an overwhelming loss that only they can take just to bolster the ecosystem. Then there's EA of all companies saying "sure, take our games and put them there too, don't leave us behind!"

@BANJO 100% the biggest issue with the service

@Kefka2589 these companies are making record breaking profits but somehow just justified to themselves charging more money for games...if cost are going up drastically how can you make record profits? I love gamepass, it's a big part of why i have an Xbox. The world as a whole needs to stop chasing record breaking profits each and every year. I wonder what impact some of the annual franchises will see if people have plenty of games to play in gamepass already vs spending $100 CAD for a new game that's just last year's game with a few tweaks? Their profits will hopefully suffer and they will make a better product.

Yet we have complete numpties over on the sister site, assuming GamePass to be unsustainable...

It's been a fantastic option for those interested in a subscription option, while also supporting the ability to purchase outright.

I love Game Pass but I also still buy games outright. That’s usually due to me either wanting Steam functionality as I have more friends on there or buying them on PS4 as I focus more on trophies. The two things can co-exist rather easily.

@Kefka2589 Cyberpunk reminds me remarkably of E.T., the game that almost single handedly, not almost, but actually did annihilate the entire video games industry, completely, until Nintendo came along and rebooted it. That's the last time I can think of mass returns/refunds happening on this scale in response to a broken game sold on high marketing promise. I do think that the net effect of Cyberpunk is going to reverberate in the industry for years. It may look like slick marketing today, but the effect of that is going to hurt the whole industry for a long time.

I do find it funny that Sony is the first company, and its fans in and out of the industry the first to rail against Microsoft's deep pockets loss leading in this space.....when Sony is the company that started selling $1000 worth of hardware for $300 with the PS2. Every giant loves throwing their weight in gold around until an even bigger giant does the same.

Spotify definitely has a ring of truth though. It did gut music. And artists aren't happy. They used to make their living cutting records. Spotify did more or less kill their entire revenue stream down to unsustainable peanuts, and they have to rely on live performance instead. Arguably though, recording killed the revenue stream of live performance back in the 50's and Spotify reset it to the 1940's status quo. Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw didn't make their money cutting records. They lived in the tour bus. But I see the fear. No game dev wants to see what happened to music happen here. But I also think the "it's unsustainable" mantra comes out too unfounded. Claims that MS has admitted, internally, they take a loss....as you say that's not an inherent guarantee it's not profitable as an overall strategy. Nor do I think it's necessarily true. It's not like it's free. It's $180 a year for ultimate. Sony loooooves touting that all their numbers work out because the average gamer buys 2 games a year.....well...Microsoft is charging more than 2 $70 games a year worth on Game Pass, but providing a ton more value in return. So how is that a loss on that average consumer? They get more, not less, gross revenues per average user. Since the currency of gaming is time more than money, does it matter if, as the provider, you get $140 a year in exchange for 2 games or $180 a year in exchange for 100 games if the customer is still giving you $140+ and getting roughly 1000 hours of play out of the year? The extra games cost you nothing to provide.

Plus it has gains of predictable revenue meaning it can be invested and multiplied for higher yield behind the scenes.

There's a lot of angles I can see this revenue stream working, though a cornerstone of it is that the games, outside 1p rotate out. It's not Spotify that has literally every album, ever, permanently available more or less. That alone makes it a rental service, not a subscription catalog first and foremost anyway.

Meanwhile I just bought Doom 2016 for $6 on the sale. Should have bought eternal, but I'll keep that on GP until it's even cheaper.

Let's see would I rather subscribe to Gamepass for a year and play 100's of great games and Microsoft's exclusives day one or would I rather just buy Godfall for the PS5? 🤔

In the years to come when the big Xbox exclusives start to come out, the PS5 is going to start to look very expensive in comparison to the Series X/S. It's not just AAA games either, I'm really enjoying playing the likes of Xenocrisis, Streets of Rage 4 and The Messenger and now all the Yakuza games are coming too.

The biggest difference is I stopped playing the PS5 after a couple of days once I'd finished Astro Bot and Miles Morales but I use my Series S every day and don't see that stopping for quite some time. Not to mention that I don't even have to spend a penny between now and October, yet I'll still have plenty of new games to play

I think at this point the main concern still present regarding Game Pass is the outcome where Game Pass type services end up a forced option like how subscriptions are needed for online multiplayer because of Microsoft going the paid route with Xbox Live (later on as a result Sony introduced PS+ requirement for online multiplayer in 2013 and Nintendo introduced NSO in 2018).

I use it as a demo subscription service (and my I don’t have to buy Stuff from EA service...Ubisoft you wanna jump in?). I don’t have enough free time to beat games on the xbox but I can get far enough to decide to add a game to my backlog. Granted I don’t always buy the game on xbox, but devs are getting a lot more of my money because I am finding new gems to play.

Plus I would assume that unlike the 90s where one got so many free demos one could build a “library “ of games from them, since this is the full game it may entice one to add it to their collection instead of just playing the free level.