One Dev’s Xbox Struggles May Show How Game Pass Is Already Changing Games

The 2016 cult action game 'Furi' is getting updated for 2022, except on Xbox, where the developers couldn't make the math work.

[masterfox]

"The future of Xbox is tied to the future of Game Pass" , "But Game Pass is only a few years old, and it’s only now that we’re starting to see how its priority at Microsoft can and will have consequences on what games are made."

Glad to see finally more stuff is appearing in the internet an making awareness in how gamepass is affecting the quality of games and affecting devs income as well, also Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki comment PS won't follow Gamepass cause it will affect in general the overall game quality result.

Also in this article: "Leprice isn’t sure exactly why Furi connected more strongly on PlayStation than Xbox" , "“We’re not sure!” she said. “We’d like to know though!”"

I mean really is that hard to understand why in Playstation side SP games perform better?, lol xbox fanbase has never ever care that much of single player experiences hence don't care about buying SP games that much simple as that, and this is not because xbox consumers fault is because MS itself did this to them and put into their brains this ideology, MS with the 360 wanted only one thing and is to create a internet service console only, while alienating the single player experiences, ever wonder why MS struggles up to this day why can't release a AAA single player experience?, well know you know they never cared in the first place, since the 360 MS strongly push their online game service Xbox live and focused only mostly in Multiplayer games and while doing this they actually shoot themselves in the foot in the long term, PS3 came a year later and still was able to outperform the 360, and in that time PS3 online services weren't that good but still it manages to do better in the end with sales and that's because, yeah you guessed it SP experiences.

[sparky77]

If you read the article you would realize this developer isn't complaining about Game Pass in fact it's the opposite. They are saying they only see success if they are on the service like when they released Haven.

Furi was released before GP even existed and they know that Xbox most gamers won't buy their DLC because the game was never on GP and MS is refusing to put Furi on GP because it's so old.

Read the article first before posting because you will embarrass yourself.

[rippermcrip]

They said Haven didn't sell at all outside of GP. That's complaining.

[CBaoth]

Umm no. Haven made no money on Xbox outside of the GP deal

"Plus, the numbers didn’t lie. Furi on Xbox was selling “less and less,” and according to Leprince, and were under “a third” of sales on Switch, frequently seen as one of the better places to sell indie games in the larger crapshoot of the marketplace. Compounding the issue was an inability to secure future promotions for Furi on Xbox’s storefront for increased awareness, and Haven “didn’t sell at all” on Xbox, outside of its Game Pass partnership."

Lol. 1/3 of the Switch's sales? It's the THIRD best selling platform, after PC and PS. They don't even include the Xbox percentage on the pie graph. That's pathetic. I thought Uncle Phil said you Xbox gamers buy more games when subscribed to GP?

“We talked to the team at Xbox to see if there was a way to get some support, but Furi didn’t align with the Game Pass strategy focused on new titles,” said Leprince. “This is why we took the decision not to bring the DLC to Xbox at launch: the chances the investment was not going to recoup were high.”

So Team Xbox would rather have new games instead of good ones?
FACT: Furi was released on Xbox when GP didn't exist - some sales
FACT: Haven was launched on GP. Sales non existent
FACT: Xbox gamers apparently don't buy games ergo the devs think they can't recoup the investment

Definitely not a glowing endorsement of GP. No wonder you brain dead Xbox gamers get hoodwinked all the time

[FanboysKiller]

Nothing personal with peoples wallet but could you explain why there are more used playstation games in the stores ? why they're so accustomed to get rid of what they've constantly and all the times? It wouldn't be fair to say cause there are more people buying it cause this logic is stupid, the only logical answer is they find no value after beating it, I hate this habit of justifying high cost and value for contents that eventually will be obsolete in no time, why is this even a thing ? I didn't asked sellers permission to justify how and for how long should I consume their products , it's not their business to do all that and not healthy by any means cause their practices are far from the pc business model.

[Godmars290]

"Nothing personal with peoples wallet but could you explain why there are more used playstation games in the stores?"

Because the PS4/5 has larger market presence, sells more games, than Xbox?

For example: excluding Switch, if 2/3 of the physical market is PS5 and 1/3 is Xbox, then that's a 2-1 difference in used game sales so of course when you go to Gamestop PS5 games are taking up most of the space.

[shinoff2183]

Theres more used games in the games store from sony because microsoft has like a 75000 print minium or something like that. Therefore less games are being made physically for xbox. Where as on playstation ive seen 1000 print runs on a few collector websites. Sonys minium is way way less. Hope it makes sense to you. All the info is out there

[Petebloodyonion]

Did you actually bother to read the complete article?
Why did Fury sell more on PlayStation versus Xbox? because it was offered for FREE on PS+
That's basically why he wants a Gamepass deal because this time nobody paid for development and Gamepass is the best window for indy dev.

Also Funny that nobody talks about the fact that Steam is the best store despite all piracy on PC.

[JamiroquaiBocephus]

@Petebloodyonion- You might have read the article but clearly you lack the comprehension skills to understand it. “Sales” of Furi were high on both platforms when the game was offered on the subscription plan. Once removed from both, the game sold much better on Playstation, as well as other platforms. Xbox was the one platform where it declined in sales so much that the dev has decided that it’s not worth it to publish on xbox. The implication is that xbox gamers are being conditioned to only consider games coming to game pass because they don’t want to purchase games anymore.

[FanboysKiller]

And somehow ps+ magically made RL successful , but all the eyes staring at gp as a failed service.

[KillBill]

Completely false. Single player games sell very well on Xbox. Many Bethesda titles of old sold better than PlayStation even with smaller user base. Only real variable is 1st party SP games are more focused on by Sony but 1st party games on either system sell a very small percentage compared to 3rd party offerings. And Indie games are usually well received on Xbox. (when they are good)

[wiegraf]

Sony games are way overrated. I owned a ps4 for 10 months at the end of last-gen before selling it. It very quickly became a Bloodborne machine.

[thesoftware730]

This is Hogwash, a lot of gamers were gaming before MS entered the picture, to claim in a negative way that MS made people like only like Multiplayer games is absurd.

Ms indeed bought Multiplayer to the forefront but that was just the next evolution of gaming, it would have happened one way or another. The thing is people will play how they like and what they like, games like Condemed, Alan wake, Riddick, Quantum break, Tomb Raiders, and many more were single player..Sony just produces better single player games. Go look on GP and in general the Xbox store you will find 100 of single player games.

As for Devs, not every game will be for GP, we have heard more successful dev stories than unsuccessful ones. These companies have to do what is best for themselves and their IP...we as gamers should not be this entangled with the inner working of these deals, we are the consumer and not game contract negaotiaters.

Stop the madness please, it's becoming old, it's like reading the same spin post from the hateful, blameful vocal console renegades.
My man just blamed MS for people liking multiplayer and Xbox owners not liking SP games because an indie dev with a just ok game made a comment.

[porkChop]

Furi released in 2016, a year before Game Pass even existed. This game not taking off on Xbox clearly isn't because of Game Pass. I fully understand the devs prioritizing other platforms first. That's smart business. But to insinuate your game didn't do well because it wasn't on a service that didn't exist at the time? That makes no sense.

[Eonjay]

There are games older than that on gamepass.

[porkChop]

I didn't say there aren't?

[BrainSyphoned]

Furi developer's president Audrey Leprince-- "The game has sold “year after year,”"
They aren't stating year one sales. If you want to play an indie game on Xbox it is going to almost always be on Game Pass. So over the years since release on Xbox people play indies they don't have to pay for instead of looking up the best of what isn't on game pass. This is about life time sales, get your bias out of your comprehension.

[porkChop]

You're missing the point. Their game wasn't selling on Xbox before Game Pass existed. That means the issue existed before. So by using basic logic we know that GP is not the cause of poor sales. Other indie games have sold well on Xbox, Death's Door for example which wasn't on GP at launch. This developer for whatever reason isn't selling well on that platform. There could be a number of reasons for that. It's disingenuous to use GP as a scapegoat when they were having trouble even before GP was around.

This isn't me being biased, it's called using critical thinking.

[Nacho_Z]

"But to insinuate your game didn't do well because it wasn't on a service that didn't exist at the time? That makes no sense."

Can you quote the part where the devs did that because I didn't see it.

[porkChop]

Sure.

“Game Pass is such a fantastic platform for players,” said Leprince, “so there are possibly more Xbox players than ever interested in indie games. Unfortunately, without Game Pass, it is also very hard for many indie games to be visible on Xbox.”

“We talked to the team at Xbox to see if there was a way to get some support, but Furi didn’t align with the Game Pass strategy focused on new titles,” said Leprince. “This is why we took the decision not to bring the DLC to Xbox at launch: the chances the investment was not going to recoup were high.”

They aren't developing the new content for Xbox because apparently they can't get the original game on Game Pass. And they're saying you have to be on GP to have any visibility. They're insinuating that not having the visibility outside of GP is why their game didn't sell on the platform. But they even contradict themselves because they mention that Haven, which is on GP, didn't see many sales outside of people playing it on GP.

So clearly GP doesn't cause or even solve the underlying issue they're having. For whatever reason the Xbox community isn't buying their games even though other indies do well on Xbox. They make good games though so I'm really not sure why the community isn't buying.

[crazyCoconuts]

I wouldn't think it would take a large amount of time/$ to port to Xbox. I wonder if they're just fishing for a GamePass deal

[Nacho_Z]

They're saying that GP helps indies get noticed but I don't read it as them suggesting it's the reason didn't sell.

On that she actually says: "Leprice isn’t sure exactly why Furi connected more strongly on PlayStation than Xbox, though she theorized the platform’s “strong connection to Japanese games,” which also influenced the design of Furi, may have played a role. But the game also feels very French.

“We’re not sure!” she said. “We’d like to know though!”

[DnBSkillZ]

That’s the only way Xbox can compete with Playstation at the end of the day Xbox needs PlayStation and vice versa because otherwise we would have half arsed over priced games loaded with mtx

[Godmars290]

Why does Sony need MS? Aside from the formerly multi IP they've bought up.

[Gunstar75]

Erm... how about for its cloud infrastructure

[DnBSkillZ]

Sony needs MS to be kept in check unless you want another PS3 launch

[Godmars290]

@Gunstar75:
But does Sony really "need" cloud gaming? Game streaming? Do they really?

@DnBSkillZ:
They thought they could get away with another PS2 - which was also hard to dev for, at first - cause they got away with the PS2.

Mind you, the PS3's utility as a BR player and online browser were underscored by poor marketing and support as well as the HD-DVD counter-campaign where the former at least had "playable on PS2" stickers on most anime DVDs.

[GJC1]

Competition. If Xbox wasn’t around Sony would be charging even more for their exclusive games

[S2Killinit]

A lot of what we like as gamers will not survive a gamepass future. Maybe now that Playstation is going in the same direction, these xbox only fans will wise up to what is happening in the near future because of the gamepass business model…

[Godmars290]

Sony's issue is that they went full into AAA rather than save some - consistent - love for experimental budget titles.

[Eonjay]

Not really. I mean look they gave us Dreams. Can't get more experimental than that.

[Godmars290]

@Eonjay:
As a platform on the platform, would hardly call Dreams a "budget" game. Certainly needs more advertising to promote its sub-culture. Ninja Cat's pretty cool but I found it by accident.

Guess I'm just saying they need to support more indies.

[crazyCoconuts]

I'm not sold Sony is going the same direction. They've had psnow for a while and the latest changes to the service aren't that radical imo. Let's hope they stay on the same track

[MadLad]

And virtually nobody used PS Now. Probably one of the major reasons they just absorbed it into PS+

[darkrider]

Gaming isn't series or movies it take years to make a single game not weeks or months. You cant have new series every week or movies with quality... Comparing TV services to gaming services never made sense. I got Netflix and HBO max and even with both isn't enough... I'm watching again Seinfeld... Tryng to bring that to gaming won't work. And no company can keep buying games and spending hundreds of millions to make them without profit sooner or later... Something is lost on the way.

[purple101]

Also you watch a movie once but could play a game ( if it's got multiplayer) over and over.

So they were never really the same.

I look to buy games physical on sale.
Sell them when I'm done or at the end of the console cycle, gaining 50% of the price back.

Overall, I don't pay as much as gamepass would like to charge £180 per year in UK,
& I get exactly the games I want.

[Orchard]

“Gaming isn't series or movies it take years to make a single game not weeks or months.”

I think you’re underestimating how much time is spent on movies and TV shows… most aren’t being churned out after a few weeks of work.

[John_McClane]

Yawn, more click bait.

[gold_drake]

i feel like its the genre of the game that doesnt resonate with the xbox fanbase.
they are more into the fps, shooting, acing games.
nothing wrong with that, but thats why games like that just dont sell as much on xbox. thats how i see it anyways.

[Orchard]

Sucks that the guys game didn’t perform well, but alienating a huge user base like Xbox probably isn’t the best way to boost future sales on the platform.

GamePass itself is great for indies though. They get a guaranteed dollar value and great publicity and marketing from MS that they wouldn’t get otherwise.

The problem is getting into GamePass. You can’t just opt in, you have to pitch it to your account manager and have MS accept it and they have limited slots in the program and everyone is fighting to get into it - so you need something special if you’re an indie.

[Orchard]

Well whatever GP may or may not be - it and it’s model are here to stay.

Game devs are mostly happy, consumers are over the moon and Microsoft are selling more Xbox’s than ever thanks to it - so are likely happy too.

And with others now copying it, the model is here to stay.

It’s good to finally be getting good deals as a consumer.

[Orchard]

Well that hasn’t happened thus far - the highest scoring first party games of 2021, Infact the only 90+ 1st party games, were all game pass day 1.

So by your logic, dollar store games were better than anything put out by Nintendo and Sony.

Like I said, the industry is going in this direction and others are now copying game pass. So best get used to the idea of subscribing for games.

[Orchard]

Pure speculation on your part.

What facts we do have show that the complete opposite of what you’ve said has been happening.

- GamePass day 1 games were the highest rated games for 2021, more than big publishers like Sony, Nintendo, EA, activision etc

- GP games haven’t been flooded with MTX. Infact the most egregious example of MTX and that with the most backlash in recent times was a $70 Sony game…

I’ll go with facts over speculation, thanks!

[S2Killinit]

Yeah no to all that lol

[MadLad]

This article is all over the place. It's obviously trying to paint Gamepass in a bad light, but all it really proves is they were happy to take platform deals from both Sony and Microsoft over the years, where they see the biggest boom in overall player interest, and then shifts mostly over to PC sales when not on either service.

The game wasn't getting traction even prior to Gamepass even existing.

Then again, this was written by Patrick Klepek. The living, breathing walking bad take of the games industry, himself.
The dark cloud on every gaming site he's been part of through his career. Finally finding is rightful place with Vice news lol.

[John_McClane]

The article looked like spam, so I didn't read it! lol

[KillBill]

They are comparing 2020 sales of a completely different game to 2016 sales of Furi. Furi did not sell well in 2016 on any system and worse on Xbox, (gamepass did not even come out until 2017) Furi simply wasn't that great a game. Haven did well on gamepass doesn't mean other games that weren't on gamepass didn't do well too on there own. Furi DLC doesn't matter simply because there are not enough purchases of it on Xbox and nobody is going to buy a 2016 game for a 2022 DLC. If they were smart they would go the route of getting Furi as a games with gold offer and THEN dropping the DLC for it on Xbox.

[Stanjara]

Small indie developers want Gamepass, cause its cash in the pocket. ($1-2m right away)
AA and AAA budget cant survive of of this. They need 2-3m sold at $60 first month. So the deal with Gamepass must be higher than a couple of mill.

If you're not on Gamepass , you can forget Xbox platform.

Oh and for those who will comment about Abe... game wasn't good. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.