I was replying to @Rock8man’s post about what happens if people don’t buy MS first party games anymore because they all have Game Pass. It’s not all about you and your posts @Brad_Grenz.
If Game Pass were MS’s only source of revenue that would make more sense, but I don’t understand your saying that it has to support all MS’s first party deals in addition to all third party deals. That doesn’t make sense to me.
Sure, and then what if dogs start learning to code and then make really kickass games and they put them on Game Pass but they only let other dogs play it? I mean we could be here all day dreaming up what ifs.
Obviously there are other sources of revenue, but they have their own expectations and costs associated with them. MS isn’t in the business to break even after they add subs and licensing fees together. Individual first party game sales tanked for them last get which is why they are trying to disrupt the market in the first place, and it is pretty obvious to anyone they are outlaying enormous amounts of capital betting on GP subs being the future at a scale simply not supported by the existing customer base, so I’d appreciate it if you’d stop gaslighting me in your effort to paint me as the crazy one.
You say this like you still get Netflix for $7 a month and Spotify hasn’t devastated income for recording artists. The entire point of market disruption is a distortion of current dynamics. It’s idiotic to pretend that is magically always beneficial.
No, I don’t think you’re crazy at all. Just making shit up.
Ultimately, if you only have a playstation, and you think this new service from Sony is good, cool. From the outside though, it looks to be quite a bit worse than Microsoft’s offering in this regard.
Cost differences aside (and really, the cost difference is huge given most of us have only paid FOUR dollars a month for gamepass, and have years banked), the big problem is that Sony’s not offering up their own games at release. That’s a huge downside. It means that if you want to play those games when they come out, you need to buy them… which means it won’t even matter later then if they eventually come to the service.
Microsoft’s decision to put all their first party games (which is a much larger library now with their recent acquisitions) was a huge boon for users, and one that I think Sony is eventually going to have to follow.
Look guys, Game Pass is cheaper because my uncle works at Nintendo, and I get a discount. It is only 99 cents a month.
This is the part the I’m having trouble reconciling. In January, Microsoft reported a growth of 7 million new users to the service (25m from 18m the year before). Given that the service was only introduced in a limited form in 2017, that’s a significant percentage jump in that single year. So where are you seeing reports of drastic slowdown?
As for the Sony service itself, I think it’s interesting. If the gap between first party new release and appearance on service is somewhat comparable to the gap we see in films between theater->digital release and not, like, a year, I think the service will be extremely compelling. I don’t generally have FOMO for new releases, and just pick them up when I’m in a good spot to play. If I can get those trickled out to me in a somewhat timely fashion for the prices they’re listing, I’d be happy to sign up!
Personally, I hope Sony continues to be very aggressive in sales on their first party games. I mean, sure I haven’t gotten to them yet, but I own most of their big-tent first party games for not much money, usually in the $10-$15 range.
Anyway, the main reason I’m keeping an eye on this thread is because I want to see if Sony will manage to allow the PS5 to let me to pop in one of my PS/PS2 discs and just play them without additional cost. They seem to be creeping ever closer to that holy grail and would probably be enough to pull me back into their ecosystem.
Oh I don’t think they will. To put it bluntly, Sony is not willing to lose money on the service. Microsoft is, at massive scale. Game Pass is too good to be true at $10/month, much less $4.19. Once they convince everybody to subscribe or their business goals change MS will jack up prices. Until that happens, enjoy the amazing value it provides.
Remember, Netflix launched its streaming service at $8/month.
I would hope, by this point, that at least everyone on Qt3 is using this technique to get this price. It still surprises me, given how much we go on about it, how every couple of months people still mention not knowing about it in one thread or another. That technique should be stickied somewhere as a public service to all Qt3 members.
Eh, I know it wasn’t a day 1 release to the service, but it’s been reported that they paid between 5-10 million for Guardians of the Galaxy. And most games that hit the service are smaller indies, probably aren’t getting that much. And 1st party stuff that MS releases to Steam all sell like gangbusters there- see MSFS, Sea of Thieves, Forza, Halo, etc. The MS gaming division is doing fine, even with their service putting their stuff up Day 1.
That’s a good point. I edited it into the first post of the main game pass thread.
@Don_Quixote: They’re in business to make money, to maximize their revenue and shareholder value. Doing “fine” doesn’t align with that when they could be doing “fine + $X dollars”. Subsidizing Game Pass is a deliberate tactic to build subscription revenue, which Wall Street loves, and then once they believe they’re past the initial sub push, they absolutely will jack up prices.
Oh, I expect them to raise prices at some point. Or at least close that ‘loophole’ to start. But probably not for several years.
Nobody else is willing to spend the truly incredible amounts of money to compete with Game Pass, so I doubt it’ll take that long. Frankly I’m shocked the loophole still exists in the first place. It’s been years already!
Are they hitting their internal targets for subscriber numbers yet? I know last October they were behind, so until they hit those they’ll let that loophole exist IMO unless they really start losing money.
Who knows? They are certainly losing money hands over fist right now, though. MS just has so much of it, that it doesn’t matter.
The “PS Plus Collection”, that specific collection of games that have been available to PlayStation Plus subscribers exclusively on the PS5, is apparently not fully immutable or eternal.
Elsewhere I’m seeing that the collection as a whole is not going away with the other changes to PlayStation Plus and its tiers, but this is the first time that a specific game will leave that collection. Unclear when/if other games may be removed, or if new games will ever be added.
I’m sure this is just an expired licensing deal, but it does suck since being able to claim those games has depended so far entirely on how your luck has been at buying a PS5.
I could have sworn when they announced it they said it was going to be a limited time thing, but I could be wrong.