I think we’ll get through 2021 with the Gamepass price levels staying around the same but I’d expect a bump before Starfield comes out.
My own freebies run out in November this year. I feel I need to add a couple of months to get through Forza Mexico and Halo. For next year I wouldn’t mind trying OW2, Atomic Heart and Somerville but Starfield I would probably buy. I’m coming over to the ‘I want to own my games’ side I think, rather than deal with the vague time pressure that subs instil in me. I’m going the other way from everyone else :)
I think keeping the loophole makes sense as long as they are in the accumulation phase. Once they reach a satisfactory subscriber base they’re happy with, they can go into a retention phase and try to close the loophole, and see how people react.
Not really. When you think about it, the loophole is really tricky and confusing to do right, and gives the customer a full three years at 72% off. That doesn’t make sense as a promotion compared to something like (for example) buy one year, get the second year free, or even just half off your first year when paid in advance.
Indeed but they don’t really want people like me long-term because I’m cheap as hell. I’ll never pay full price. Right now I’m a MAU number but ultimately they want me to go away.
Tricky yet incredibly good deals aren’t the way to convert to full priced customers. Half off your first year would be.
Also regarding owning games I want that too-- I will certainly own starfield. But I may buy it a year after release when it’s heavily discounted.
The loophole is tough to negotiate – you really have to know what you’re doing as a customer to use it, and part of it involves being savvy enough to get email alerts when XBLive annual cards go on sale somewhere like Newegg.
And negotiating the loophole for a customer is likely to expose that customer to the janky nature of the XBLive account/customer interface UX, which isn’t something any marketing initiative would want to do.
And finally, yes, it absolutely introduces and fully reinforces a specific customer behavior, namely having customers come to think that under $5/month is a good price to pay for XBLive/Ultimate. Which for folks in the MS business NOT at all what they want.
Well I’m even cheaper than that because I pay nothing for Game Pass using rewards points. And I’ve done this for years previously for Live Gold. These aren’t loopholes.
The rewards method of getting Game Pass takes more clicks, searches, achievements, engagement, what-have-you, than the amount it took to get Xbox Live Gold in the past. That part is working as intended.
Exactly. THAT is working as intended. People buying overstock cards via Newegg and using an account conversion thing that seems to be the hind end of a marketing/streamlining campaign that no longer is emphasized as much is a loophole.
I don’t know why you’d call it a loophole though, it’s clearly an intended alternate method of getting into Game Pass. If they ever axe Live Gold completely then yeah, that method is dead. But as long as it seems like an attractive way to get into Game Pass, then it’s doing what they need it to do, namely set the hook.
For the reasons we’ve already mentioned – it’s not a good method for getting into game pass. It’s a janky method that involves utilizing third-party sales and which then expose users to the worst bits of the XBL user interface and the confusion of feeling like it’s easy to do it wrong and be stuck with a live services subscription for a console you maybe/probably do not own (which is why you’re doing that conversion in the first place.)
If XBL wanted this to be a way to get people to buy into GPU, they’d make the process more streamlined from top to bottom. And they certainly wouldn’t let folks pay up front three years in advance at $4.13 or whatever monthly (I mean, customers can now lock in GPU until the summer of 2024) for what is clearly a renewed emphasis on Game Pass.
But you guys seem to be hung up on the fact that because it’s relatively difficult, it must be unintended. I don’t think that’s the case at all. I’m certain they have metrics on exactly how often this particular method is used and the type of consumer who is using it. But I guess we’ll see over time if or when it gets shut down.
Not “hung up on” as much as “There are about 5 different things required of a consumer in this process, and that’s not something that you do if it’s meant to introduce people to the excellence of your product.”
I suspect they do have some metrics on how this is being used/exploited, and those metrics suggest such a low incidence of use/exploitation that they’ve not bothered to close it. It’s possible it’s used to such a light degree by percentage that some quant has figured out that it would hit that business unit harder to program out and then manage the PR and marketing side (and not to mention, cause something of a “gold rush” of users seeking to do one last extension) that for now they’ve let it slide.
Yes, and there was that disastrous price experiment with Live Gold that predictably blew up on them. They may have just decided that hands off is the best policy.
It’s an amazing deal! It’s great for everybody willing to go through the tricky signup process. I just don’t think it’s the best use of Microsoft’s marketing dollars but on the other hand, I don’t care.
