How Xbox Game Pass freed The Coalition to make Gears Tactics for PC

Gears Tactics is the next big first-party Microsoft launch for Xbox Game Pass. Developer The Coalition made the game in part because of Game Pass.

[Spurg]

Let's hope this is an opportunity for developers to develop more single-player games.
I feel there will be an insurgence of AA games like the focus home interactive games they publish.

[mikeslemonade]

Yep yep yep Xbox game pass continues to be the best game on demand service.

[Thundercat77]

Best game on demand On Xbox of course. Let's not forget that if people would love the service, they would have run in masses to buy the Xbox which is not the case.

[TK-66]

@Thundercat77

So somethings quality is determined by sales/subscriber count? Didn't know you thought so highly of Call of Duty and Fortnite.

[mikeslemonade]

^
Nope it’s the best GaaS service bar none and it’s not even close. And Xcloud will be a forced to be reckon worth. Microsoft will claim the video game industry this gen. And this is coming from a PlayStation fan first.

[Automatic79]

Triple AAA games take time to develop. The double AA games are passion projects that allow for more variety in space were most games are cookie cutter. Variety is good for gamers like me who appreciate something different. Bleeding edge is a perfect example the game is lots of fun. I hope more people try it. It was easy for Xbox to bring the smaller projects while giving developers enough time to make big games.

[Atom666]

Agree with you, and there's even more to gain imo. I always thought Nintendo had a good model. Even with their console and handheld teams being placed together now, you still see a mix of team and game sizes delivering a mix of AA and AAA games. That's why they have the talent pool that they have.

A smaller sub-team can go off and make these smaller or more niche products that not only offer variety to the catalog, but can help develop talent. Using Ninja Theory or the people making Grounded over at Obsidian as an example, you can have a small subset of team members getting experience well above what they'd receive as 15 members of a 100+ dev team working on the next AAA game for 5 years at a shot.

That's how you build young talent in many fields. It's also how you keep creative members from burning out.

Hopefully Coalition members get more opportunities to branch out. Same with 343 and Turn 10. Look at Mojang with that dungeons game as another example.

Gamepass is a nice outlet for them to get past the mentality that all games need to cost 50million and need to sell millions of copies. Most of your top movie makers started small, gained experience, and learned their craft before running huge blockbusters.

Similarly, people need to remember that the legends of the current dev community started making games with no more than a handful of team members. Those old classic games would get called indie filler by some today, but you can't substitute the experience they gained from shipping games on their own.

If these big pubs want to be around for decades to come, you absolutely should find ways to cultivate the next generation of talent. Funding AA games and side projects backed by deep pockets and subscription models is a smart way to do it.

[neutralgamer1992]

I miss the old days man when we had healthy AAA and AA markets. Some of the most fun games aren't triple AAA. I think there should be a healthy market once again for these mid tier titles which don't need to sell millions to make profit

THQ Nordic are doing many AA games

[Donnie81]

Yeah seemed there were more games to. Not every game has to be a aaa

[rainslacker]

Too many investors aren't that keen on respectable returns, and tend to want huge returns. Because of this, you either have low investment, low risk games that return a lot of money, or high risk high investment games which when they do return, return a lot. The mid-tier doesn't fall into those extremes, so there is less investment in it, because they are more likely to not return investment.

I'm not really sure how Game Pass makes these games money, which means the only people that are going to make them are those that aren't are contracted to do so, or for the service provider who needs to promote their service.

[waverider]

Only morons believe in crap like this.... When a game is good it sells millions.... In the first days its all profit.... That means hundreds of millions.... Even before, with the pré orders numbers... With services You need 10, 15 million paying much more then 1,2 or 5 bucks.... Sales dont matter, is Just crazy...

[ElementX]

Um... not quite. If 2 million people buy Live for 2 years, that's $240M (retail value), if they upgrade for $1 that's $242M for upgraded Live. Furthermore, if 2 million pay $10 monthly for 2 years, that's an additional $240M for Live, PLUS $480M (2 years of $10 monthly) for a total of $720M. Add the upgrade customers and the monthlies for a grand total of $962M for 4 million customers in TWO YEARS.

Even after paying 3rd parties for GP, that's a lot of money. That figure doesn't even take into consideration the Ultimate people paying $15/month or the PC GP users paying $5/month. There could be millions more paying monthly which only brings in hundreds of millions more in revenue.

Sure, there are people who may pay $10 for one month when a game looks interesting, but would they have bought the game? That is difficult to say.... Maybe MS loses $50 in potential income from the purchase or gains $10 from somebody who wouldn't have bought the game anyway.

[waverider]

Only if people buy year and not a month or 3... More that money is low with You got also Triple AAA games day one. Ffvii did over 250 million in 3 days....

[ElementX]

MS also sells games, Phil Spencer said Gears 5 outsold Gears 4 even with Game Pass https://www.gamespot.com/ar...

Furthermore, Steam has over 60M users, many of which are diehard fans who don't want Epic Store or MS Store. They couldn't care less about Game Pass which isn't on Steam. Gears Tactics is currently the highest selling game there, which shows that people are willing to buy games even when GP is available. Halo MCC sold between 2-5M copies according to SteamSpy https://steamspy.com/app/97...

There are people like me, who don't want GP on principle. Devs get a fair price for the games they put on Game Pass, because they wouldn't sign up if they didn't. I'd rather give MORE money to devs, so I buy my games. MS gives you the option to buy physical, digital, or rental.

MS keeps adding quality games to GP. Some may be older, or released on PS years ago, but there are many people who haven't played them. Those people will probably keep their subscriptions if they are satisfied with the service.

[sinspirit]

Do you realize how many games are licensed through GamePass? The cost per person doesn't hold up well when you account for first party AAA game costs and missed out sales per person. I'm confident that either policies will change a few years in or first party titles will have lower budgets, or more monetization practices as we've seen. They don't just simply get money. They also spend it.

And, Live doesn't factor into GamePass. It's a separate service.

[ElementX]

Witcher 3 development budget was $32M to make and about that in marketing.
https://www.playstationlife...

AAA games don't automatically cost $50M+. MS doesn't need to spend as much marketing their own games across their services. Even if only a third of the revenue from GP is used for games, how many can they make with it? Their acquired studios are small to medium sized and don't need huge budgets like Rockstar

I didn't think I needed to mention profit vs revenue because that's a given

[sinspirit]

@ElementX

"Witcher 3 development budget was $32M to make and about that in marketing"

https://www.gamespot.com/ar...

It was $82 million. And, we're talking about, GamePass. GamePass subscribers are generally on a $1 dollar trial, or pay yearly. This one single game at $82 million. Then you're talking about tons of games that cost more than your monthly sub if bought separate, even just one game. Then, to talk about day 1 games. GamePass can only be sustainable if the separate sales of the game cover thr cost. You can't twist a $60 AAA game coming to GamePass Day 1 as a smart financial decision. They just want platform adoption. Nothing wrong with that. The more GamePass grows, the more it's expenditures and loss of retail income can grow. I don't see how it's a long term service in its current state.

"MS doesn't need to spend as much marketing their own games across their services."
I don't think you realize.. MS spends a LOT on advertisement. Remember their "$1 billion" gaming budget on 360? Half was for advertisement. Not for developing games thrmselves. Half of their game budgets tend to be for marketing. That's substantial.

"I didn't think I needed to mention profit vs revenue because that's a given"

I think, if you broke down the monthly GamePass sub, the cost of how many games you can choose from if played without the service, and especially when you take into account MS exclusives that cost easily over 50 million a piece, and their big AAA exclusives like GoW, Forza, and Halo which can easily reach 100m+. If GamePass had 2 million users, how do you think that cost would make sense in the long run? They lose a ton of money per game. And, it essentially becomes an all you can play renting service. Tell me how that worked for GameFly and Blockbuster(when they had their gaming rental service for a flat monthly fee) when you only rented one game at a time, no licensing fees, no limited availability, and along with acquiring games at less than retail value, and turning around to sell them at retail again at near full price

[ElementX]

The Gamespot article mentions total budget with development and marketing. They had to pay Microsoft for marketing on Xbox, how many millions did that cost? MS doesn't need to market on Playstation or pay themselves to market on Xbox, saving tons of money.

Let's be real here...Microsoft isn't paying small devs millions of dollars to put their indie games on game pass, that's unrealistic. They can afford to pay smaller amounts for limited times which is why they aren't on the service forever. If people want to keep playing they can buy the games at a discount through GP.

You forget that not everyone uses game pass. Tell me how Gears 5 outsells with GP thrown in...MCC selling millions on PC... More revenue

GP subs doubled, meaning repeat business because users are keeping the service, otherwise there would be no growth with users leaving after a month https://www.windowscentral....

[TK-66]

@Sinspirit

"You can't twist a $60 AAA game coming to GamePass Day 1 as a smart financial decision."

Which is why XGP ended up being what pushed MS into acquiring more studios.

Bad business results in some good shit I guess/s

Evidently what's smart in business is not determined by your backseat internet entrepreneur. It kinda reminds me of how we have people winging about how XGP is bad business and then bashing Nintendo for not dropping their prices years after release.

[sinspirit]

@TK-66

Okay. Do the math yourself. Then tell me how it works out. Or, just blindly comment. Are you here to comment and provide your personal thoughts or not? So, don't insult someone else's if you haven't thought it through yourself.

Good one. We've all heard the keyboard warrior, armchair executive, etc type insults. Don't comment if you're just gonna be annoying.

You might want to look into MS product history then. And, I bring up MS because it's a direct reflection of bad business they have done in the past. Boy do they have a lot of products that they spent insane money on to advertise and push for years upon years but failed. But, oh they wouldn't possibly keep pushing those products that hard if they weren't making money, right? That's your logic. Funnily enough, GP becoming adopted by millions and millions would even more-so directly affect profits as their first party titles lose direct sales for a service that people had already paid for. Hundreds of millions of dollars lost on launch days at retail, if GP catches on to be very common. It's very easy math. Go ahead and show us how thought out your comment was before replying.

[Spurg]

How about you gauge an understanding of how the business works before you criticize it.
The developers get money from Microsoft to put their games on their service and for AA developers that a lot. Their games are also on the market which means its a win-win situation for them. And for Microsoft, they get more eyes on their service so they can sustain a continued monthly fee from millions of gamers.

Lets as there are around 10 million gamepass subscribers across Xbox and PC
Gamepass: £5 a month
MS makes: 10 million * £5= 50 million per month

Gamepass ultimate: £11 a month
MS makes: 10 million* £11= 110 million per month

On average I'll say they make 80 million a month from Gamepass subscriptions. This in itself allows them to spend some of that money to put games from other developers on the service. Gamepass pretty much becomes a billion-pound service.

Now they can easily quadruple that by using Xcloud which will stream Gamepass games on phones. And partnering with Nintendo they can get their customers to subscribe to XCloud easily gaining them millions of customers which can add up to 100 million subscribers.

[--bienio--]

And we knows what that means? Game over Sony.

[ElementX]

Funny, because Double Fine, InXile and Obsidian are all AA devs and their games have sold millions of copies. Their games continue to sell even after several years because they get good reviews. I wouldn't call them fluff, there are many games from smaller devs that I actually prefer over big budget AAA titles.

[waverider]

Dude 10 millions 😂 😂 😂 😂 if it got two its already very Good. If gears got 3 millon combined sales of xbox pc and gamepass in first month.... The biggest seller of microsoft... Those numbers You talk are just utopic. So far away of the reality. If Microsoft got 5 million they already made a vídeo like the one from bleeding edge. If they got 10 million... A console that sells 50k each month....

[crazyCoconuts]

It's only a win for the developer if they get more $ from MS than they lost in sales if they would have sold it outright, right? For small games it wouldn't take much $, but for really popular games it's gonna cost MS some scratch. For MS, once they get more exclusives per year, the same issue exists - they could cannibalize their own sales. If your average GamePass user would have bought just 1 $60 MS game per year that they no longer have to buy, that eats up $5/month of lost revenue. So $5/month is being spent just to make up for the lost revenue of that one game, and none of the other expenses have come out like the $ MS has to pay to other companies for their games to be included. I'd love to see their planning models for this stuff...

[King_Noctis]

“ I think I'll stick with Sony and AAA games thanks. Enjoy the fluff guys.”

Dude, I also love Sony and their games. But based on your comments, I think you love them just a tiny bit too much.

[Ra3v3r]

@waverider it was estimated at 9.5m users in May 2019 and makes up 30% of Xbox revenue...

Meanwhile, PSNow just hit 1.1m recently. GP is a great service, MS ain’t losing money or sleep over the costs. And you can bet they’re relying heavily on the £1/$1 introduction price to get people to sign up in a hope they forget to cancel, or are so happy with it the stick with it or got to Ultimate. If it was making them massive losses, it would have been wound up months ago...

[Fishy Fingers]

Who cares about how much money is made by either? We're end users. Do you calculate the profit margins of fast food companies before you grab a burger?

Now I know being a N4G user and having a console basically makes you an experienced industry veteran in all aspects of the business and development but if the guy is crediting gamepass for helping get the game greenlite it's quite likely that was the case.

[monkey602]

I certainly wouldnt concern myself with sales numbers so to speak. I have a Game Pass Ultimate trial for 3euro to redeem and I've been waiting for this game to kick it off. I'm delighted that I'll get to play it for that ludicrous price.

But at the same time I would be curious to see if this really is sustainable long term and if it takes off as a system how long before it really affects the industry as we know it. Look at micro transactions and how they've moulded games for the worse in recent years.

[King_Noctis]

Don’t you know? Gamers on N4G aren’t just gamers. They are also part time financial analysts, especially when it comes to MS and Gamepass.

[Christopher]

As a GamePass Ultimate and PSNow subscriber, it's pretty important to know that these companies are making money off of the games they put out that you like otherwise there won't be any more of them.

This attempt to play off the importance of profit is just as lame as people who want to make it entirely about profit.

Y'all need to find a center. Not go in the opposite direction.

[Kiwi66]

Guess you are one of the people who think that every xbox owner only has gamepass and therefore they don't buy their games from other sources

[TheColbertinator]

Gears Tactics please launch already

[--bienio--]

The truth is, if Microsoft doesn't break it, it may turn out that gamepass is what was missing to succeed in the fight against Sony. More games like Gears Tactics exclusively for gamepass and Success is guaranteed .
Personally I remembering what Microsoft did with the PC market ( Windows game live-shame) , and Now such a return as in recent times shows that they finally learned from their mistakes to draw conclusions.

[oakshin]

I don't know about direct competition but on the Playstation side I just picked up a year of psnow for $3.80 a month and I'm about to drop ps plus (all the big multiplayer games are free on Playstation making Playstation plus pointless) so I'm making the plunge

[Miacosa]

Let's hope that Game Pass to justify its price and existence doesn't turn into a dumping ground for any ol'game.

[galmi]

Loving the doom and gloom on here, same old roses

[Thundercat77]

Meanwhile the competition keep selling blockbuster high quality exclusive games like crazy and Microsoft still last place.

Poeple like to ignore that but that is what it is.

[Kiwi66]

How can anyone forget when we have you here to remind everyone, so guess its a job well done 😊

[King_Noctis]

So how does that change the fact that Gears Tactics is a good game?

[Imortus_san]

They do? One game in 2018 an another in 2019, that is less then scraps.

[AK91]

Wait what? Didn't they go play anywhere long before Games Pass was a thing?

[Dragonscale]

So gamepass allowed them to make a game thats not even on xbox. Wtf?