Activision Boss Admits He'll Have To 'Agree To Disagree' With Microsoft Over Xbox Game Pass

Well if this acquisition goes through, his opinion won't matter (not that anyone cares about Kotick's opinion anyways)

The big wigs that are publicly against Game Pass so far are also people that happen to be mocked/strongly disliked by the gaming community as a whole. Perhaps it's not a coincidence?

Well people who have game pass will love activision games added it’s only the people who don’t have game pass lol

Activision can use the Elders Scrolls Online model of GamePass… base game on Gamepass and later paid DLC. Not too difficult to wrap your brain around it Bobby….

@Broosh I think in Kotick's case, the dislike might be over something else. Can't think what.

Just like Gamepass isn’t a good fit for every player, it’s not a good fit for every publisher. Not surprising; they all have different KPIs and opinions. It doesn’t mean it’s bad either.

I’m kind of tired of this debate whether GP is 100% good or bad for everyone; it’s more nuanced than binary. Obviously if Xbox acquires Activision-Blizzard it’s a moot point, but I don’t think this means Kotick is necessarily wrong either (and believe me, I despise the guy)

Not surprising. ABK and 2K have been very well on the record about their opinions on Game Pass. 2K has been more vocal, at the same time they also think its a great marketing tool for short periods, as we seen some back catalog 2k titles show up for a few months.

If Bobby Kotick doesn't like it, you KNOW it's good for the consumer.

If you're in charge of the best selling product in an industry of course you're going to be against selling it in bundles with other products for less. If you're in charge of any of those other products it's a lot more compelling. Common sense here.

For Ms it's worth it because cod isn't the product they're selling, it's just a feature of the platform they're trying to sell.

@Tharsman 2k has similarly great reason to be against it, but it's also a unique case because they have very close relationship with Sony second to Square, so they'res a bit of mutual interest block voting involved there, too.

@Markatron84 " I think in Kotick's case, the dislike might be over something else. Can't think what.".

Is this related to the article about Bikini Bottom? 🤔

We live in a world where Netflix and Disney+ regularly drop projects with 200 Million dollar budgets on streaming, no reason a AAA video game cannot do that. All arguments from Kotick,Ryan etc still sounds BS to me.
Plus, CoD will still sell its bajillion dollars on PS, Nintendo and many PC users who don't use/have access to GP.

@NEStalgia But isn't it like, fundamentally a wrong comparison?
With a single product, you have a chance that User A spend 80 bucks on CoD once a year, vs a scenario where User A spends 15 bucks a month, totalling 180 euros a year, to play CoD and many other games (a large part of which are small indie titles with small budget who no one would even bother to play if they weren't part of GP) plus now you have user B and user C etc dipping in because it is not 80 euros outright, rather 15 per month. It is the same logic that a car maker has for letting you finance or lease the car, instead of asking you to pay up 40K outright.

@BrilliantBill but still to be seen are the big tentpole releases of EA, take2, Ubisoft, capcom to release day1 on GP/PS.

I think they are all nervous to take that plunge. Hence some are testing it with smaller titles.

@BrilliantBill I think there's two models at play in that. The first is for publishers like Sony, Square-Enix, etc, with a more movie-like sales model, they see the model of recovering maximum margin due to a manufactured media frenzy as irreplaceable. Could they still be profitable with subs, and with more even keeled quarterlies? Sure. But they can be MORE profitable exploiting their media frenzy, and more importantly they're in a cadence where it works well for them. No incentive to tamper with that model.

For publishers like ABK and 2K where their model is mostly driven by GaaS (CoD/GTAV:O) their main weapon is locking users into that one single game. If you have a multi-game subscription you're going to play some CoD, you're going to play some Yakuza, some Vampire Survivors, some Starfield, it spreads the surge of players and creates the possibility that you'll move on from one game to another. For MS, they could care less, you're paying your $17 a month in their ecosystem. Why should they care if you're playing CoD or Exoprimal or Mass Effect remastered? They don't. But for ABK/Rockstar, they want to make sure you're locked into their game, only their game, buying only battle passes, cosmetics, and currency in their game, and then buy the next one next year because you're already neck deep in it. The more you're engaged, the less chance you are to jump to someone else's. The model works well for a platform holder, but not so much for a publisher competing against other publishers, if their main model is either day 1 sales, or total player lock indefinitely.

Of course EA and Ubisoft have embraced the model by simply offering their own more limited sub platform for their own games. EA Play on PC is an insane value that makes GP look like price gouging. But they're not in a position of already possessing player lock over millions of players like CoD and GTAV:O. But we don't use big words near Bobby.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner To be fair Ubisoft and EA do put their big titles day 1 on their PC service, IIRC at least EA's even includes early access pre-release, something GP charges EXTRA for with Starfield and Forza. They're still hesitant to do so on consoles, though. I think fundamentally the PC market is just more accustomed to waiting for price drops and also more prone to dedicated single game players (the MOBA/MMO/RTS players in particular, as well as online shooters) so they're possibly at a greater advantage getting direct sales on subs instead, while console is somehow weirdly tied to "release weekend" movie style hype cycles where milking players in the cycle is worth more. It's also just a smaller market of more seemingly impulsive customers.

Here's a thought...

TV streaming services are removing content (even stuff they generated themselves) to get tax-write offs.
There is content that becomes totally unavailable... and could never be seen again.
Could we see them same things happen with games streaming (whether Xbox, PS or other services)?

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Ubisoft offers Day One releases of its titles on Ubi+, so they have already kind of taken the plunge. The rest not yet
@NEStalgia Very valid arguments, specially about the media frenzy, Sony has certainly nailed this by releasing a string of games that are broadly mostly overrated and simply lifted up by sheer generated hype. Plus, releasing games like this injects more "prestige" into the game, which is a big part of Sony's schtick (calling remasters on PS5 something like "Director's Cut" because the term comes from prestige Cinema and film-lover community and sounds more elegant than "Enhanced").
But in terms of publishers locking you into one game and one game only, Supposing that I am locked into CoD, and a new one releases per year, am I then not locked into paying a whole year of subscription and its price? There are millions of players who play almost exclusively just CoD and Fifa. Many of the most-played games out there are also F2P anyway so releasing them on GP vs not on GP is not even a discussion (Fortnite etc).

@BrilliantBill Between "Director's Cut" and "A Ubisoft Original" (Just Dance MXXCII !) I want to gag every time I read these things. But yeah, Sony, at one point SIE was actually going to absorb Sony Pictures as a subsidiary, then they cancelled that plan, but it's very clear around that time they really started merging the overall strategy and planning of the two organizations, with SIE mostly taking on Sony Pictures' entire business model, marketing strategy, and overall business profile. As someone that really dislikes Hollywood and modern cinema, it certainly doesn't gel for me. But there's no denying it works on a large population for business purposes.

But with publisher lock-in, the last thing they want is for you to try someone elses game and decide you like it more, or even split your time and therefore your currency/pass/cosmetics spend with someone else. Multi-game subs take all risk and cost away from you to try that. Whereas once you're $70 investment into it, and trying some other game is also another $70 investment, plus whatever mtx to spend there, you're probably not likely to try another game, or split your time and spend between multiple.

That's only an issue if you're at the top and control a significant chunk of single-game players though. The opposite effect happens if you are not (Exoprimal for example.)

But, yeah, the F2P thing, which includes CoD, invalidates a lot of that. They don't want you splitting time there either, but really subs make a game more competitive against F2Ps. But for a case like CoD, they're already the leader by far, all that money is already as good as theirs, and offering more variety, value, ways to split your time and money doesn't advantage them in any way while they're looking down from high above. I definitely see where their position comes from. But it only works for the biggest of the big. (or as some execs see it "unanimous" among publishers. Or at least the 5 that matter for 90% of revenue and all others can get stuffed. Same thing really.)

Bobby kotick disagrees putting CoD on game pass 'cause He's hungry for revenue share. Meanwhile MS buying ABK 'cause MS is fed up with Bobby's terms

The smart money, and I’m betting this where it’s all heading towards, is Microsoft getting a large enough portfolio of devs under its belt to bolster Game Pass and offer a tier of Game Pass that plays on other systems besides Xbox and Pc. By next Gen I’m sure we’ll see at least talk of something along those lines.

If Xbox does this well enough, they’d be in a prime position to move away from Hardware if they want/need to. And that’s the goal, to be able to sustain even if the hardware needs to be axed.

Nintendo could surely do this if they ever needed to and survive just fine. PlayStation I’m not positive it has enough first and second parties to survive just as a software dev/publisher:

The whole Game Pass on other consoles has a large amount of hurdles to jump over. But, the subscription model does thrive on active subscribers, and if your install base can’t grow large enough to sustain due to lacking hardware sales, the only route forward is have more hardware options.

@BrilliantBill they only dislike it because they can't rip us off

Oh Bobby - I don't think anyone here will agree to disagree with you. More like tell someone running a company worth $69Billion that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

@EvenStephen7 'I’m kind of tired of this debate whether GP is 100% good or bad for everyone; it’s more nuanced than binary.'

One of the most intelligent comments Ive read on this site for a long time, and very self evidently true.

Subscription services and full price games are both equally good because they offer players the option. Having just one or the other would not grow the market.

Interesting how you’re correct, we’ve never seen an activision game on Gamepass… seen quite a few on psplus over the years though.

Wonder if that lays credence to PlayStations marketing having blocking clauses in them from titles appearing in GP - genius move

I don’t believe at any point the fact that activision games have/are/coming on psplus was brought up during the trial? Having never been on GP?
Strange considering COD is literally this coming months psplus big game…timings perfect for it

I pray Microsoft get to buy Activision. If they dont you know Sony will and the FTC won't say a thing because they seen pro Sony to me.

I hope and want to the deal to go through for xbox sake. Sony will be fine regardless. Xbox needs this in order to stay competitive. I really want the deal to happen. But I have my doubts. From the beginning it seemed like a slam dunk that it will go through easy. But so many months later, here we are. Even now this trail seems super in favor of xbox yet still....somehow the courts could still block it. I'm like 60/40 on it going through in my clueless head.