GamesIndustry: "A triple-A mobile pioneer on why free-to-play won him over."
PC Game Pass doesn't negatively affect game sales, on the contrary. That's what EVERSPACE 2 developer ROCKFISH Games has said.
Gamepass does affect game sales, it invites them to buy more games.
If you got onto the service to play Starfeild you will end up investing a game on Gamepass.
Its about creating a pool of players that will be spending money within gamepass.
LOL, they say it increase sales while at the same time games on Xbox sale 2/10 (if that) of what they sell on other consoles.
No.
There have been many times where I bought a game then months/years later it came to PSPlus
You know how my times I've found a game on PSPlus and then went and bought it?
Zero Gamers aren't that stupid. Stop trying to trick us into thinking we are that dumb.
If you are talking about boosting micro transactions then sure.
You're talking about the free monthly games that don't get removed, all you have to do is maintain a subscription.
That's different then having a game on GP or extra and having it there for a limited time.
I'm sure there are games that some would like to keep after the games been removed.
^
So far for me, zero, and I've been on Extra since it launched.
Also, for what it's worth, I've only bought one DLC related to Extra: one expansion pack for Dead Cells.
Yes they did so I'm not sure why these rougue comments stating the contrary even exist.
Thats just not true whatsoever, i can not tell u how many comments on game videos i aint playing this less its gamepass, i wont have spend a dime its gamepass. Noone is buying gamepass games that is silly
Why, if a mild, general market gamer has access to something like Starfield tough Game Pass, would they buy the full game?
Even if you are a fanatic fanboy, a hardcore gamer, how can you not see the issue? How tf did MS's beancounters not see it even if they've never so much as looked at a game?
They would not buy Starfield but they will be investing in a game within gamepass. Similar to how gamers would come to play Minecraft Legends and end up investing in another game.
It's about keeping people within an echo system, which in this case is gamepass. They spend money on games within that space means Xbox is making money off the sales.
I don't see the issue because I am not looking at things from a traditional point of view.
Gamepasss is all about inviting people to spend money within that space and the more it grows the more people are spending money within it.
This is also the part where people don't understand and need to remove the lens of traditional purchases, putting a game on gamepass is not a free endeavour made out of the goodwill of the developers. They are paid to do so.
In terms of the first party, they are paid based on how many people have reached. if it has reach Million of gamers based on the revenue share between Xbox and the studio, the developer gets paid by Xbox. Where do they get that make-believe money from?....well Gamepass believe it or not is a paid service. 30 Millions of users leads to $3.5 Billion a year. From that, they pool a fraction the money and pay the developers for the amount they have reached. That is why Gamepass gets more subscriptions the more that pool of money increases.
You cant understand gamepass within out understand the economics behind it.
"This is also the part where people don't understand and need to remove the lens of traditional purchases, putting a game on gamepass is not a free endeavour made out of the goodwill of the developers. They are paid to do so."
Agreed, but Godmars290's comment didn't imply devs aren't getting paid to be on Game Pass.
"In terms of the first party, they are paid based on how many people have reached. if it has reach Million of gamers based on the revenue share between Xbox and the studio, the developer gets paid by Xbox. Where do they get that make-believe money from?....well Gamepass believe it or not is a paid service. 30 Millions of users leads to $3.5 Billion a year. From that, they pool a fraction the money and pay the developers for the amount they have reached. That is why Gamepass gets more subscriptions the more that pool of money increases."
This is more questionable.
1st Party: Are they paid based on how many they reach? Is it as simple as that? I would think retention and subscribers added are more important factors. It's possible to have a game on GP that many try because it's there, but it's not a factor in retaining subs or adding them. A game that reaches less people on GP but causes more to subscribe or continue their subscription would be more valuable.
30 Million Users: I don't think Xbox has confirmed that number. Hasn't it been over a year since the last official update? Regardless, the difference between sales and subs is that subs fluctuate whereas sales are static (with the exception of some negligible returns). Xbox reporting a milestone of over 25 million users does not mean they maintain that on average. It's also worth noting that was reported in January after a holiday period, which I suspect would be a period of higher subs.
$3.5 Billion: Let's go with this figure for sake of argument. That's revenue, not profit, and that revenue cannibalizes other sources of revenue they would have received sticking to the traditional model. They already said GP cannibalizes game sales. However, some of those GP subs are also cannibalizing Xbox Live subs. There is also the matter of having to pay devs/pubs to put games on GP. It flipped from devs/pubs paying to be part of the Xbox system (via licensing fees) under the traditional model to Xbox paying devs/pubs to be part of the Xbox ecosystem under the GP model. That's another revenue stream cannibalized. That's without getting into any indirect negative effects on consumer behavior, which we'll summarize as "the GP effect."
I bought my Xbox one some years ago. I immediately bought blue dragon and lost odyssey. I've yet to one time buy any other games on the Xbox. I font think gamepass drives sales like you guys are putting on about. Even the guys at work I never hear them talking about damn that games so fking good I paid for it. Nope not once. I do hear them talk about who's playing what of the latest gamepass offerings.
Same. I buy indies and 360 games for MS points. I never buy aaa on XB. No need. All first party are on GP and i'd rather play multiplat with a Dualsense.
Past yr i bought Tails of Iron, Witcher 3, XCom The Bureau, and Dragon's Dogma on XB. I'll prolly grab The Darkness at 3.99. It's a GP and 360 emulator for me.
im not sure if you actually believe what ur saying here.
cause what u said is beyond what actually happens haha
Umm I have PC gamepass and I have bought less games because of it. It definitely saves me money. I been taking advantage of it ever since. What's funny is that Microsoft admit GP cannibalizes sales 😂😂
PS5 is my main, if a game is available on PS5, I buy it there.
Switch is my secondary, I still buy a lot of games there because there are many exclusives.
XSX is my third, owned it for 1.5 years, I just play whatever is on Gamepass, bought zero games so far, because all third parties I would just buy on PS5, which most of the time runs better, and all first party are free day one, zero reasons to buy anything on XBox, and one day when I sell the console I won't feel like I have invested anything on it, it is basically a box required for a subscription.
This is exactly what I do.
Buy on PS5 and switch
Only use Xbox for gamepass
Gamepass is great for gamers in the short term but will ultimately cause problems down the road for developers and Microsoft
I do exactly the same. I don't need to buy any games for my XBSX because I use it for GP only. My PS5 is for exclusives, AAA multi-plats & current Indies that I want to play that are not on GP. Sometimes I can save a little money from buying games like Wo Long & Atomic Heart because they are on GP, had they not been on GP I would have bought them to play on my PS5.
"You cant understand gamepass within out understand the economics behind it."
Which only begs the question: do YOU understand its economics. Because from a plain common sense POV, vs all the seeming accounting BS which has lead to multiple economical collapses, Netflix type subscriptions for gaming does not work.
It doesn't even work for Netflix now that everyone who use to supply them is trying to do their own version.
Netflix currently offers nothing of their that I even enjoy. Stranger things is the last thing. After that I'm probably out.
I do understand it and it's a common business practice.
Netflix is a company takes too many risks with it properties in terms of not vetting who makes its shows like The Witcher for example... Viewers will decline due to the bad quality of the writing and dwelling into the realm of identity politics. The audience don't like that so they will bail.
Let's not forget the main thing that made Netflix in debt...the fact that almost all studios are bailed out and started their own service. Netflix had to become its own publishing company to compete.
Also, I do not even pay for Netflix I use my friend's account. There is a lot of that going on to a point where they are losing 100 milllions.
With Gamepass that is not happening because they are building up their studios and publishing them.
They have already predicted that there will be a content war and that Sony would have to deal with as many publishers as possible. And with the way Sony have been acting in the recent years with their third party exclusive, they are too aggressive. For example, they tell, Sqaure and Capcom not to publisher their games on Game Pass.
That is why Microsoft is buying studios to make sure they they are able to secure first-party games for gamepass.
You may not like the service-based future but take a close look at the moves Sony has been making, they are also going to the realm of service games.
What the heel do these developers know! Sony fanboys know best what's successful or not. /s
@RauLeCreuset
First off thanks you for being one of the few mature ones here and is willing to have a discussion.
It is also retention, the metric is hard to explain because of the lack of information. For example, I would say that if a subscriber did sub for a game then downloaded various other games that is a bonus. It is like they game is responsible for more engagement on the service.
There might be a clause that says that if your game gets downloaded that many times and well as creates reach to other games then you may be liable for a bonus.
To break down reach I could use Hi Fi rush as an example.
It has reached 2 Million subscribers. If we take a 70/30 revenue split and based on its price which would have been £35 the split between Tango: £23 to Xbox: £11
2 Million times £23= £46 Million which is what Xbox has to pay Tango from the pool of money GP subs. Xbox takes the rest.
If it was released traditionally, hifi rush would have an audience in 500k to 1 million range. Then tango would not reach as much as they did with gamepass.
The subscription is beyond 30 Million by now they're probably at 35 Million and will be at 40 Million by the end of the year due to high-profile releases in the year. Starfield alone can bring in Millions of gamers to gamepass. And lets not forget high profile releases such as Hellblade 2, Avowed, Indiana Jones, Perfect Dark and many sequels planned for the future...those are enough to bring in gamers that would not usually get Xbox.
Gamepass has been growing year after year. With a slight decline in 2022 which is due to a lackluster year for xbox as they did not have any first-party games that year. But right now Gamepass has no competition that do what they do apart from ps plus.
Gamepass aim to reach 100 Million and they can easily achieve that if they market towards mobile gamers. Such as telling them that you can get the console version experience of COD on your phone through streaming.
Cloud streaming will be a big factor in the future of game pass and the attractor to millions of subscribers. I myself skip turning on my PC or Xbox and simply play games on my phone.
I would say as an extreme that out of the 3.5 Billion, 70% of that goes towards sustaining the games on the service and the rest is taken as profit.
Xbox makes a range of 15 Billion a year in revenue, some of that money would be used to funnel into gamepass until it reaches.
Apart from the fact that your numbers are pure fantasy, Tango IS Xbox.
Also, why would 2MM be considered some big success? If there are over 13MM GP subscribers, that means only around 15% of subscribers played it.
Do you seriously believe there are at least 35 million game pass subscribers? Xbox would have been shoving that number down everyone’s throats every day if they hit that. Why don’t you know for sure what the number is? Might it be because they are still stuck at around 25 million subs? You and everyone on here knows that there is no way Xbox would have passed up an opportunity to flex on milestone numbers.
40 million subs by the end of the year? That’s a good joke.
https://kotaku.com/xbox-ser...
https://www.google.com/amp/...
What you're suggesting seems pretty unlikely. They've confirmed it has hit a plateau. Missed target for 2 years straight and by a large margin. They will not hit 40 million or be anywhere near that.
Also no way they are at 35 million. They would have had to have 5 million subscribers since the fall and considering they're down in most categories and have had no major releases since then that's pretty much impossible. Purely fantasy numbers you're pulling out of nowhere. Notice these are ACTUAL numbers from Phil Spencer/Microsoft not some made up ones.
@Knushwood Butt
Same reason why there are 140 million PlayStation gamers on ps4/ps5, Yet Japanese games do not sell millions on their systems. Not all of those 140 Million bought God of war did they, its the same thing here.
It's pretty common sense that there is with those numbers there is a market share of gamers who like those games. Which is small.
30 million gamers does not mean that 30 million will play the game. But within that 30 Million, 2 Million downloaded the game which is impressive considering that away the game was launched. That means that there is an audience of 2 million gamers of gamepass who like games like Hi fi Rush.
Also these numbers can these numbers increase over time.
The numbers are not pure fantasy, the recent report on the quarterly earning proves my point because this quarter they have already gotten a Billion in revenue. This means that they are on route for not 3.5 Billion this year but beyond that.
@JamiroquaiBocephus
How can they still be at 25 Million its been a month since that last report and the latest one showed close to 29 Million. We are nearly in May which means it's grown significantly since so my number of 35 Million is not far off.
This is common sense stuff.
"40 million subs by the end of the year? That’s a good joke."
What joke? does a report need to be published every time they reach a milestone.
@Chevalier
Don't post Kotaku...these lots are not Journalist. Also, another suggestion get your news straight from the source not activist Jorno who mixes their opinion with reports.
They have missed a target does not equate to it has not grown. Its means that have grown slightly.
They have not reached their plateau yet, as they still have blockbuster games on their system. Lots of people are going to want to play Starfield on gamepass, that game alone can amount to significant growth for gamepass. Which would lead to it reaching 40 Million subscribers potentially by the end of the year.
Also How hard is it to think that they can make 5 Million subscribers or more in 6 months?
"Also How hard is it to think that they can make 5 Million subscribers or more in 6 months?"
With no major games in the last 6 months? Lol. Pure fantasy on your part. But here let's do the math.
Gamepass launched in 2017 June. To this date that's 70 months. Divide 30 million by 70 and that works out to just under 430,000 subscribers a month. So in 6 months by averages that's at most 2.6 million.
Don't forget Microsoft own numbers show drops the last 2 years. With a huge drop last year its highly unlikely they even hit 2.6 million. That's why its hard to believe 5 million is possible.
"Also, another suggestion get your news straight from the source not activist Jorno who mixes their opinion with reports"
Here's a suggestion Bandarhub before making stupid suggestions LEARN to READ. The confirmation of the back to back drops and percentages were in an interview with Phil Spencer on the second link by Metro NOT Kotaku.
That's not an opinion when Phil Spencer confirmed that in interview its FACT. The article even explained that's why both Spencer and Nadella didn't get their bonuses for Xbox.
You were already invited to buy more games, LOL.
And, yeah, what the hell is everspace 2? It's all relative. If you are a small game and you do marginally better - then YAY gamepass you did it!
I call sponsored comment on that developer otherwise we wouldn’t have a article right next to this one titled “ Microsoft Gaming Revenue Drops 4% year-on-year, while Xbox Hardware Revenue Declined 30%” so ether this developer comment is a puffer to make Microsoft look good or Microsoft themselves are lying
Let’s argue more because that’s what this world needs more. How about we enjoy the games and leave this nonsense alone
If I have access to "a game" via gamepass why would I also purchase a game I already have access to?
Dlc, season passes and micro transactions don't count as actual game sales... 🙄😏 More so holding back content to sell later to us.
As do some other developers. But we're expected to sit here and accept the opinion of this guy, because his opinion suits the preferred narrative of wccftech - a media outlet that apparently employs professional writers that don't know the difference between 'effect' and 'affect', looking at that headline...
One thing I did find interesting, is how they are singling out PC Gamepass in this article. Does that imply the same can't be said for xbox console Gamepass..?
"One thing I did find interesting, is how they are singling out PC Gamepass in this article."
The article is loaded with so many caveats in an attempt to find an outlier.
"This is quite interesting for sure, although it should be noted that this applies to EVERSPACE 2, and might not be reflective of game sales in general. Also, EVERSPACE is currently only available on PC, and the stats shared were from the game's Early-access period."
"As do some other developers."
Where´s the proof???
I´d never heard of a single developer which put his game on Gamepass and said it had it´s sales canibalized. Nevermind a "few" as you said.
I think you´d just made that up! I´ll wait.
@obscure_observer
I'll bite. No developer that I know of has said this, probably due to NDA, however Microsoft themselves confirmed this fact. So the company running the service has verified that metric. Is that acceptable or will you continue to deny reality?
https://www.techradar.com/n...
"One thing I did find interesting, is how they are singling out PC Gamepass in this article. Does that imply the same can't be said for xbox console Gamepass..?"
No, it doesn't imply anything about console GP. They're talking about PC GP because Everspace 2 isn't on console. They can't talk about the console version of the service if they haven't used it.
I was going to say the same thing
They’ve literally admitted it and it’s funny because they only said it because they were desperate for the Activision deal to go through and used it as a counter towards Sony
Was it really worth it now they’ve blown that card…
Most gamers don't really care, but I'm sure developers and publishers heard that and there was a collective 'hm...".
It really depends on the type of title, I'd wager. If it's a well known game that's highly anticipated and launches on Game Pass? I think that's a hard L for devs and pubs. If it comes to the service later after sales have gone down? Gives it more exposure and probably sets things up well for a sequel, so this is probably a good case. If it launches into game pass after being exclusive to another platform (e.g., Persona 5)? Similar case, but I think it's a net positive. If you have no expectation of your game doing well on that platform and you get paid up front to put it on the service? Yeah, that's a win. Best case? Probably if you have a game that's very good, launches on the service, is there for a limited time, and is frequently updated. At that point, you'll want to actually purchase it and keep the good times rolling.
It absolutely does. WTF?
Maybe it doesn’t hurt their income because of what MS pays them upfront, but it definitely impacts digital and physical store sales.
I keep forgetting that MS has to pay a fee to the devs upfront. I can’t imagine how much money they’re bleeding with Gamepass right now.
This subscription is going to have to turn a profit pretty soon.
I'm doubtful it turns a profit soon. They've admitted to missing targets 2 years straight for Gamepass subscribers.
@Gamerscore2077
Now that they removed the $1 thing its about to get worse, pretty much the only reason they kept me as a customer as I forget to cancel it sometimes.
Yeah... This article's statement is ridiculous. It 100% affects sales. Like you said, maybe the devs still get money. But it will assuredly still hurt the actual sales number of the game. No way around that.
If this guy’s statement is true, why don’t we see more big budget games on Gamepass?
Exactly. What makes more sense is MS offering money to keep devs interested in their platform. Given the terrible sales that often plague the XB brand, I'd imagine paying these companies would soften the blow of dev costs met with the lackluster sales.
Because it's only true for these smaller budget games that most people haven't heard of. Big budget games have bigger marketing and don't need GamePass to get attention.
Once again not what Microsoft publicly stated in the FTC case. No article or argument can counter what was officially stated.
MSFT said it was in 3rd place which is true.
MSFT also said GamePass is doing well which is also true.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive
Though the PS4 Pro version will probably “go a bit easier on VFX.”
Wccftech chatted with Michael Schade, CEO of ROCKFISH Games, on their rogue-like space sim EVERSPACE. The conversation spanned a wide range of topics from the reception of the expansion, their future plans for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch release as well as the upcoming Xbox One X update.
