The Callisto Protocol Dev Explains Why It's A 'Difficult' Fit For Xbox Game Pass

Basically not worth the payout for larger AAA games day one, which obviously shows looking at what's been added over the years in terms of day one AAA games that aren't first party.

Curious though as to what this devs sales expectations are for this game as they clearly would want a large sum of money, can definitely see it doing really well without being on any subscription platform.

Of course it’s not happening…it’s another game sony is marketing and have paid exclusive content for…

@Bleachedsmiles Came here to comment the same thing!

Repetitive MP games are the exact opposite of the kind of games GP is suited to.

For one, you can just buy the game outright and pay less money long term. Secondly, most big MP games now are F2P. GP just isn't required for them.

Seems reasonable.. games that make sense for the service (and therefore games MS is willing to pay a lot for) are the ones that provide longer engagement, keeping subscribers hooked for longer period of time..

I have a feeling this is going to be a very short game. 5 hours, maybe 8 if lucky.

Why do I say this, well, based on stuff we heard in the past, we know there are two potential ways for someone to get paid to be in game pass:

Up front amount or time share.

Up front amount will highly depends on Microsoft's feel of how your game will perform ahead of time, hype and all that stuff. It sounds to me, if they discussed this, that Xbox did not offer them enough for them to take the up-front amount.

Going the time-share route, though, would have likely tied their performance to how long anyone plays their game for, and THAT means they themselves are not confident in Game Pass players playing it for long enough to make the money they feel they want out of the project.

@Cikajovazmaj I don't know anyone else, but I don't subscribe to GP to play the same game for long periods of time. I pay for GPU to have as much variety as possible.

Idk man Victoria was supposed to drop but won't now so maybe we'll get it. The universe has a funny way of showing what balance is like

This is one of the biggest releases of the year. It's gotten a ton of press given how amazing it looks and the pedigree of the developers. It would be a huge get for Game Pass but it doesn't make sense for the developers. My thought is that the game will sell very well on its own right out the gate. It doesn't have a visibility problem therefore it doesn't need Game Pass.

Someone FINALLY turning down M$ money. In other words, they KNOW they'll make more by sells them M$ buying their time. Bravo.

IMO I think the problem for Callisto with Game Pass is precisely that it's the opposite of mass appeal. It's a very specific niche horror game that's a spiritual successor to a bigger franchise that already announced a comeback of its own. This is a game with a relatively niche, specific, core player audience that KNOWS what they want and will pay for it. There's no real value in putting it on GP trying to extend its appeal, giving it away to a segment of customers that otherwise would have paid for it, and not really growing it's profile much in the process. It's also the kind of game, though ,that after initial sales and the core audience gets their fix, and after the word of mouth secondary market gets their fix, sales are likely to nosedive, and at that point GP and Plus could breathe a new life into it for some extra cash.

Phil has already said they want more single player on GP and don't want so much focus on multiplayer continuous content precisely because people subscribing and playing one or two games rather than a variety is bad for the service. If you just play CoD and Overwatch constantly, there's low value in GP, and the publishing partners aren't getting much value in terms of engagement from it. They want people to be playing a variety, so single player isn't an issue in general on GP, and MP isn't the focus of GP. But an ultra-niche game with a dedicated, but limited audience, and limited ability to grow the audience? Yeah, they definitely have to get their money up front on that.

There are loads of games not on gamepass. Should we be expecting an explanation article for each one?

Translation: "we are going to make more money selling the game at full price than putting it on game pass"

Considering this news comes out on the same day that MS have 343i drop all offline components of the new Halo game to focus on live service monetisation and I'd say that single player Xbox fans have a genuine reason to be very concerned.

Because it will sell well duh lol

@Dr_Luigi you speak as if there were one-and-done triple a games made anymore. Almost every single triple-a game comes either with side multiplayer modes, DLC season passes for more story content, cosmetics/skins (even in single player games) or all three.

@SmoothlyRough plenty of people turn down Microsoft Game Pass offers. If you think they don’t try to make the GamePass pitch to practically every high profile game that gets promotional placement, then you are not paying attention.

As for making more money, well, the likes of IOI just recently noted how GamePass made Hitman’s 3 second year even bigger than the first, that’s unheard of [any single player games second year being better than their first]. There is a case to be said that they get to have both years revenues now, but still, every time a dev talks about it they talk about all their success and still have to see anyone claim they felt shafted or that they lost money on their deal.

Lol it really is fine. EVERYTHING can't go to Game Pass. If a game is good, we'll buy it, it's cool lol

Game Pass hatin'! I bought games because I was given a chance to play them on Game Pass.

@Dr_Luigi

The first Plague Tale had some cosmetic DLC (coat of arms) and I expect the same or more in the sequel (also personally don't see it as a triple A game but that's just opinion, its still a fantastic game.)

TLOU is a remaster, of a triple A game that had DLC and multiplayer modes with microtransactions.

The original Resident Evil 4 also had DLC, and so far Capcom has attached skins and multiplayer modes to these remakes, don't expect much different from RE4 remake.

Calisto Protocol has a season pass listed in the PlayStation and XBox listings (you will have to expand the description in the xbox listing to see it, it's very obvious in the PlayStation listing, on the Deluxe edition.)

The previous God of War was originally going to have DLC but it ended up canceled/turning into the sequel, but it was part of the roadmap, I have no reason to expect Sony not to mandate DLC be added.

Read ps paid them more money to not go on pass, the amount ps has pushed this game shows they dropped tons on it. Also their argument makes no sense at all, thats not what game pass is about at all.

@Dr_Luigi My statement, that you replied to, though, was that no Triple A game these days is launched without at least one way to squeeze more money from willing players.

A game does not need to be picked up over and over again, not sure where that is coming from. Picking a game with a campaign and finishing it and moving on is something people do with any game. Even Halo and Call of Duty. At the same time, even pure single player games get players come back, for achievements, or speed runs, or simply because they loved the game that much, and those players are likely to pay for additional cosmetic content.

Going back to the spark of this is your point of developers [potentially] seeing game pass as a way to get players to buy extra content like DLC. That has been noted as a benefit of Game Pass but don't think anyone sees it that way. Someone that goes into Game Pass gets paid money by Microsoft, in the cases where its money up front, they have clearly stated sometimes the amount is enough to cover the whole development process.

A game being in Game Pass also ends up resulting in sales that would otherwise not happen, be it because of fresh word of mouth, or because someone loved the game and wants to keep it for good (I personally do that a lot with anything but XBox first party games.)

Anyways, all things aside, I am now intrigued by the fact that I noticed a Season Pass attached to multiple store listings. It's going to be very frustrating if this ends up being a 5 hour game and they expect to charge us extra for 2 more hours of content or who knows what.

@Dr_Luigi I meant that virtually every triple A game out there comes with additional content to sell to people. My line was:

Almost every single triple-a game comes either with side multiplayer modes, DLC season passes for more story content, cosmetics/skins (even in single player games) or all three.

Funny enough, its indie games I find are more likely to be "one-and-done" with zero DLC, and even those tend to get DLC if they have a publisher behind them.

As for how much money is going on, it was obviously enough to convince Plague Tale Requiem to launch into Game Pass. I think a the end of the day it comes down to relationships, and Focus has had a very good relationship with Microsoft and Game Pass in the past. They seen how it impacts or not their previous sales, and decided whatever offer was made was more than good enough.

At the end of the day none it really matters playstation has the marketing so there was no chance of it being on gamepass anyway.

@Dr_Luigi poop.... talking about "one and done games"....

We’ve left the world expandable. We’ve created a world that can tell different stories, and so we can either tell those stories either through DLC, or we could actually tell those stories through subsequent products. We’ve left those open.

That's Mark James talking about Callisto Protocol. Oh and seems that Season Pass is... 4 years of updates.

Link

@FraserG something interesting about tbis game's development:

https://wccftech.com/striking-distance-callisto-protocol-crunch/