Call Of Duty Currency Now Discounted On Xbox Thanks To Game Pass

@themightyant I wouldn't say discounts would be a major thing in that regard. Mind you, the FTC or CMA might still come for them 😅

Can't wait for all the outrage from a certain group of people lol

Although anyone buying Call of Duty currency at all is taking a massive L.

Went to install MW3 last night and xbox went weird. It said I had to clear space because it's "bloody huge" but the list of games didn't appear. I went into my games and apps list and was greater by a spinning wheel in all the tabs.

Had to reset the OS to get it back.

@themightyant I think Microsoft know what have they written into contract with Sony and Nintendo. I have no doubt that this was triple-checked.

@themightyant I'm not sure these type of discounts are a major issue?
If you buy your psn credit on shopto for example, you can normally save between 12 to 16% anyway, so I doubt if anyone's overly jealous of a %10 discount.

Or maybe they are, I'm often surprised by peoples reactions these days...

@themightyant It's a perk of gamepass itself.
It's not a COD special promotion thing.

Do FTC want to remove even more value from gamepass subscribers.

@somnambulance Such a true statement. It’s remarkable to me (in a very bad way) how quickly the Overton Window in gaming has shifted from “microtransactions are unacceptable” to “you give us $20 a month for games and we’ll give you a discount on even more things you’ll never actually own” and the consensus of consumers being closer to “🤷🏻‍♀️” than “😡”.

Call of duty is a lot stranger now that for sure!

@AccessibleDaydream @somnambulance TBF both GP and PS Plus and NSO have always included members-only discounts and offers (in NSO's case it mostly amounts to the ability to buy vouchers) where often the big sales (at least on PS, not even sure it applies to XB) have 2 sale prices, one for subscribers and one for non-subs. So this isn't anything new or special, access to special sale pricing is a standard feature of all the subs that's always been there.

It's actually always been an annoyance of mine. When scrolling the sale pages you usually just get like 90 pages that are just different bundle sizes of different currencies for a bunch of GaaS games and MMOs but with one game mixed in. But yeah, that's been a feature of the subs advertised since the beginning.

As for the Overton Window....the problem with gaming more than other industries is no matter what the industry says, the target is children/tweens/teens. "M Rated" has always meant "high school kids that want to feel mature" and "college kids that couldn't even pretend to be." And for them, whatever existed in their lifetime is the way the world has always been. So the industry knows every 8 years of so the past never happened and whatever forced new world they apply will, for the upcoming new generation of majority players, be the world that always was, accepted without question. It's also (and more notably) why politics targets the young, going back even to WWII and prior. If you acclimate the young to your new normal, you just have to wait for the old to die off (or exit the market.) At least gaming publishers haven't resorted to getting the young to kill off the old to accelerate the process though (yet.)

So gaming has an unfortunate turnaround where within about 8 years, the new thing everyone rejected is now accepted as normal, because if they force it in for long enough, the new majority population of gamers grew up with it and is used to it as normal, even while anyone with a clue was resisting.

Heck, the mainstream gamer now grew up with phone gaming. Even EA seems consumer friendly if that's the only world you know.

@themightyant The rare cases I'll defend Xbox decisions these days, but yeah I don't see a problem with a discount promo on their retail side for subscribers, because it's not a new feature but one that's always been part of their sub, it applies to many games not just theirs, nothing prevents competitors from offering the same promos or better, including pricing via brick and mortar retailers, and competitors also have subscriber-only discounts on things.

It only becomes a problem (and this we wouldn't know about) if they're playing games with the wholesale pricing/revenue splits of the currency when sold to retailers and competitors to incentivize their own digital store as an obvious advantage to purchase from.

Slightly off topic question, but does anyone not have the 20% 'Game Pass Discount' on any games that came to game pass this month in the store? It shows up for MWIII and for Journey to the Savage Planet, but games like Dungeons of Hinterberg, Neon White, and The Case of the Golden Idol are all listed at full price for me. Is this some bug, or is the same for everyone else?

@somnambulance As far as value is concerned it's priced well. $20 a year for online, NES, SNES, & GB games, and the option to purchase Vouchers is pretty fair. $40 more for the Expansion Pak is a little more debatable though, and comes down to how much you like the N64 & GBA game lineups.

One thing scares me the most is what if Xbox game pass become new currency , like they get rid of all currency in games and they introduce Xbox gamepass currency and tied everything to gamepass. if that makes sense. then kind of force people to get a gamepass. I might just overthinking it.

@somnambulance

As a top tier family nso subscriber and a gpu subscriber(and ps+ premium), id still say gpu is the best value. Nintendos online itself is garbage. There is no way to justify paying anything over what we do for it. My daughter has to use facetime while playing minecraft with her friends to talk. (Ie. An ipad) The classic roms are nice, but they came st the expense of killing the old virtual store. And the packs you get for splatoon and animal crossing are essentially one offs that are not expensive.

Sony and ms have equal online these days, but the day 1 inclusions and pc games create more value. Also being able to login and go from pretty much any device at any time with the same save data rocks.

@themightyant Yes mate, your quite right of course
There have certainly been some discrepancies between what was said and what has happened. We probably all expected that would be the case, but it is ammunition for any legal challenges - though I don't expect any of them would achieve much at this stage

The difference now is that ABK is owned by Microsoft so now don't lose '30%' to a 3rd Party as the Retailer. Despite selling for 'less' on Xbox, that's still more money than they get from Sony where 30% will go to Sony.

Before 70% would go to ABK whilst MS & Sony would get 30% for selling it in their Store. Now MS/ABK gets '90%' on Xbox, but only 70% on Sony. MS can choose to take 'less' from the store sale as they own the Product and will make money from that 'Product' sale too - unlike Sony who makes no money from the Product itself, just from having the Only store selling it on their System. They still have to give MS their cut for the Product.

MS can say that they aren't actually reducing the basse cost - in other words, the '70%' that ABK would expect from both Sony & MS if they were still 'independent' but as MS own them, are willing to reduce the amount they take 'in store', that '30%' and reduced that down to 20% for a 'sale'.

In a Physical world, Amazon, Game and all those others may have to buy in 'stock' at say $50 each to sell at $70 but because of Competition with each other 'choose' to reduce their profit margin - that $20 per game to maybe $10. Would rather sell 100's making $10, than few/none making far less profit.. Digitally, its still $50 to MS/Sony, but as they have 'no' Competition, don't reduce costs and want the 'full' profit knowing Customers can't shop around for better Digital prices.

Point is, MS can easily justify this as saying they reduced their 'store' mark-up and Sony is well within their right to reduce their 'store' prices too and take only 20% instead of the full 30%. The 'Content' is still the same 'stock' price therefore has 'Parity', its just that Sony have chosen not to have a Sale in store, where as MS have..

@themightyant You can't expect it to be "to the letter" an exact experience in every way. The FTC can't hold Microsoft or any company to the absurd questions. They were just asking a bunch of unreasonable questions in an attempt to scrape together a case.

@somnambulance What is "NSO"?

@themightyant

Thanks. I never heard of NSO.

"Game Pass prices will not increase as a result of the Merger,.."

The price was always going to go up. The merger took two years to complete and the FTC is still being a nuisance. It may happen again in as much time. Game Pass is a lot more than CoD or ABK games.

"...and certainly will not increase to a point that offsets the substantial benefits of Activision titles coming to Game Pass on a day and date basis"

That section is true. It is actually a clarification of the first part of the sentence. Essentially, "The price probably won't go up as a direct result of the merger and any price increase will not exceed the value added by the ABK catalog." I already own D4 on PC, though I am having fun with MWIII now.

We are talking about a $2-$3 increase. Skip fast food for lunch one day a month, and that just about covers the price of Game Pass Ultimate. The increase only affect new customers and people who pay month-to-month.

There are also MS Rewards points, which renders the hardship argument largely moot. I was on Xbox Live uninterrupted since 2002s so converting to 3 years of GPU was a steal. My membership has been fueled by rewards points since and is good to 2027 and counting.