Ben writes: "We were on the show floor at this year's Blizzcon - and here's what we made of Blizzard's first in-person event in over three years."
Xbox Game Pass and Diablo 4 are a match made in heaven, with the hellish RPG series blazing a path for ActiBlizz’s future on the service.
“Last month we added our first Activision Blizzard title, Diablo 4, to our Game Pass service,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says during the company’s latest earnings call. “Subscribers played over 10 million hours within the first 10 days, making it one of our biggest first-party Game Pass launches ever.”
Sarah Bond announced this a few weeks back. That's the gamepass effect I suppose.
If that was even the case since you don't know anything, let's entertain that it's no different than 1 million ppl buying a game and playing for 10 hours and quitting. Though it doesn't matter to the pub since they bought the game for 70$ they don't care if you throw your disc like Frisbee. Same with subscription, they got the money so a completion rate doesn't matter. 50% of the ppl didn't even play past the first lvl in Baldurs Gate. What does that mean?
If you troll me you get put down I don't put up with that just FYI, not sure if you're new or not I'm just letting you know.
@S2 No different than HD2 killing 1 billion bugs or whatever.
They would not be in the mess there in if they sold all those copy’s of games instead
Guess they had to find at least one glimmer of positive news to combat the poor Xbox hardware sales trends. GamePass stats on game from a 1st party studio that they spent $70bn to acquire are kind of useless IMO, especially when other than Act/Bliz the entire XBOX division was flat. I hope that spike on Diablo 4 was worth having to the XBOX brand go multi platform for.
You mean with out ABK they would be flat with nearly no growth.
They actually made allot of money only because of ABK. With out it they would suffer and slowly be obsolete.
Xbox Content & Services Revenue +62%
- Gaming Revenue +51%
- Revenue $61.9 billion +17%
- Operating income $27.6 billion +23%
- Net Income $21.9 Billion +20%
- Cloud Revenue $35.1 Billion +23%
- Xbox Hardware -31%
They probably all fell asleep due to severe boredom and left their consoles on overnight.
I really don't get the obsession with these stats. So what? Is always my response.
If 10 million people bought the game, it doesn't matter at all how long they played it for. It's irrelevant. The sale is made, the revenue is earned. The person can take a year to finish the game for all the developers care.
If 10 million played the game on a sub, what does it achieve? They could play 1 hour and delete it as quickly as they downloaded it. I've done this with games like Need for Speed Unbound or Immortals of Aveum, I just don't have the time for every single game.
Unless Games Pass generates developer and publisher revenue for every hour spent, this is meaningless.
In case of a gaas game, hours played is an important indicator for the succes of the game imo. The game needs to generate money AFTER purchase (when bought) or when the game is on a sub.
This is a non-point, because in-game purchases generate revenue and can be tracked. Number of players is a meaningless statistic unless you're talking about a PURE multiplayer game. Otherwise you can make that point about any game that has DLC or microtransactions.
It's irrelevant how many baterangs are thrown in Arkham Knight or how many hours people spent playing The Witcher 3. A sale made five years ago or a sale made now is a sale.
why are you even comparing witcher or arkham to d4? They don't have the same business model. Your punchline "a sale is made" is cool and all, but d4 is not an offline, single player rpg. It has a battle pass, cosmetics to buy and by the look of it yearly expansions. Every 3 months the game gets changed up and they try to incentivize you to buy things because the cosmetics you can earn ingame look dogshit.
Your logic is super flawed, diablo 4 is a gaas game.
"They could play 1 hour and delete it as quickly as they downloaded it. I've done this with games like Need for Speed Unbound or Immortals of Aveum, I just don't have the time for every single game."
So you just proved it doesn't matter if it's on sub or bought full price, half price whatever, you still deleted those games, allot less ppl beat or stick with games unless it's LS like Fornite, Minecraft etc you always here about a backlog of games. That's just a world we live in, doesn't matter if it's sub service or bought anymore. It's made worse with sub because you have access to many other games of course but the metrics are still not that distinguish from sub to fully own since backlogs are a growing issue regardless.
People don't beat games like they used to that's just facts.
Did you read my comment? Your response is literally nothing to what I wrote? I got Need for Speed Unbound and Immortals of Aveum off PS Plus, I paid nothing for them. Me playing them for an hour generated nothing for the developers. However if I had bought them, even for a dollar, my playtime would be utterly irrelevant because a sale was made. People not beating games is exactly the point - if they bought it, it doesn't matter how long they played it for. Hence, hours played is a meaningless statistic, yet Microsoft keeps peddling it.
It literally does matter if it's played off a service or bought - you're buying into Microsoft philosophy now. Game Pass monthly sub revenue goes to Microsoft, it isn't going to lead to better games unless it's a small indie studio getting a payout from MS.
On Diablo IV, if I buy it off Steam for 50% off, developers get revenue. If I download it from Game Pass and then delete it after an hour, worthless statistic and nothing else.
Diablo IV generated over $600 million in revenue from sales. Do you think MS' compensation package would match this if it was released exclusively on Games Pass and nowhere else for sale?
@Michiel1989 As per my comment above: "in-game purchases generate revenue and can be tracked" That aside, however, Diablo IV generated millions in revenue from sales and was a huge financial success, which is a metric that can be measured. I reiterate that the hours it was played on Games Pass means nothing. If they tell me that millions of $ was spent on in-game cosmetics, that obviously means something.
My point is little other than Microsoft repeatedly peddling worthless statistics and they've been doing it for months. They won't tell you how many Xbox units were sold (until financial results forced this), but they'll certainly tell you how many locusts were killed in Gears of War.
By the way, I'm not comparing Diablo IV and The Witcher 3 or Arkham. I'm comparing the difference between playing a title on Games Pass for some time and buying it at any point it's on sale.
I don't get why people argue this. I bought A Plague Tale: Innocence and enjoyed it. I then played A Plague Tale: Requiem on Game Pass and cancelled my sub soon after. Which scenario helped the developer? I don't see the long term sustainability of the Game Pass model, and adding all these high profile triple A games to it from mega publishers is going to come crashing down in the next few years unless Microsoft releases its games on all platforms, which they're clearly setting themselves up for.
"I got Need for Speed Unbound and Immortals of Aveum off PS Plus, I paid nothing for them. Me playing them for an hour generated nothing for the developers. However if I had bought them, even for a dollar, my playtime would be utterly irrelevant because a sale was made."
You made no mention of getting of Plus not like it makes a difference because those games come with your subscription. Those games are part of your paid subscription, so Sony gets your money and whatever cut they're giving to Immortal and NFS devs. These things aren't for free and devs aren't going bankrupt from it either.
Plus you literally just made my point. When you said play time is irrelevant when a 70$ transaction was made. Which is 100% true.
"Hence, hours played is a meaningless statistic, yet Microsoft keeps peddling it."
Attach rate/console engagement is important to MS. Having high attach Tate means more will spend in the echo system that's why they track that. They have high console engagement but can't sell Xbox's they have to pick their battle.
"Game Pass monthly sub revenue goes to Microsoft, it isn't going to lead to better games unless it's a small indie studio getting a payout from MS."
I dunno HB2, Indy Stalker 2, Avowed look pretty good this year and they're all on gamepass this year.
If you are considering getting Diablo 4, Steam offers an incredible discount, so now is the perfect time to do it.
Blizzard Entertainment has announced the opening of beta registrations for “World of Warcraft: The War Within,” inviting players to explore new subterranean worlds beneath Azeroth.
