this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Looks like Microsoft is now entirely focusing on selling games rather than selling Xbox. I read somewhere that eventually they'll bring the Game Pass to Play Station and Nintendo. It's no surprise if they do so because last year they earned more money on Game Pass than selling hardware.
Admittedly, that's helped by them doing terribly at selling hardware.
But also, screw gamepass and the subscription model overall. If we're gonna crap on Ubisoft for their recent foot-in-mouth episode let's be consistent and call all of it out. I'm cool with this as long as I can keep buying these in boxes.
I honestly don’t hate game pass, it’s great for trying games id never even consider buying and if I really like the game and it’s off of game pass I would purchase it. Or if you have a group of friends that like to hop between co-op games you can do that too.
Like the Yakuza game series they have all of them currently on game pass, but the new one won’t be and I’ll definitely be buying the game.
But if it gets to the point where Ubisoft goes and every studio starts making their own, I don’t think that will work if they don’t have the game catalogue to support it, that would mean Ubisoft could just start churning out horrible games to build their stupid catalogue.
It's good now, but so was Netflix before everyone decided they needed their own streaming platform.
It actually floors me that people don't understand this. It's the tried and tested subscription model business plan.
Create a compelling service > gain market share > crush competition > ramp up prices and introduce anti-consumer policies
And contrary to popular belief, GamePass isn't making money. There's a reason MS are very tight-lipped about saying whether it's profitable or not, and why they hide GamePass within another segment in their financials.
Shit, look at the FTC leaks where Phil Spencer says nowhere near enough people have subscribed to GamePass to make it viable (no wonder they want it on more platforms!). Microsoft will up prices.
And people here will say "yeah but then I'll cancel, I already have a large game library" - yeah, you do. But a kid in 10 years that has no games library, only GamePass? He won't say "man, another GamePass price hike? I'm gonna cancel", because his choice is between another, say, £18 per month (I just went with what I was paying for Netflix, idk what it'll be), and having to drop several hundred/possibly over £1k just to get all the games he wants back. Games he will probably have to buy across 3+ different launchers.
Microsoft is in it for the long haul. Subscription Office software, GamePass, rumours of subscription options in Win12. MS doesn't want your money now, they want money from you continuously and from any family you build (remember: if you have kids, they'll use this stuff too, and you'll be paying for it... until they're an adult, then they'll be hooked on it and probably pay for it thereafter).
You'll be paying until the day you die and your children will pay from being 18 until they die.
That's the plan. It's sinister.
Sure, it has its uses. So do the subscriptions from Ubisoft or EA, though.
All I'm saying is that the digital distribution outlets that people like and have a good reputation (Game Pass, Steam) still have all the downsides that people love to get mad about in the alternatives they dislike. That doesn't mean you should refuse to use the ones you like, but you should probably keep an eye on the effects it has on the art form and the industry.
I do see that since it’s Ubisoft, they could still push for games on the subscription service but in reality I could see the games being loaded up with micro transactions.
Or it could turn into a convoluted game demo service, where you can play a portion of a game then they hit you with a pay wall, and since you’ve already played X% of a game they could view it as more likely to buy.
OK, but that's not how reality works, you're making up offenses that nobody has committed because you've decided a particular brand is "bad" while ignoring actual offenses from brands you like and so have decided are "good".
So no, I'm gonna have to say your hypotheticals don't make their offerings any worse (or better) than Microsoft's or Valve's. Now, the pricing and lack of content? Yeah, we can talk about those. But those don't have anything to do with preservation concerns, lack of ownership or content churn, which are all legit issues with all digital distribution and subscriptions.
I feel like we're starting to see a rerun of the streaming service wars - if this takes off across the industry I can definitely see people going back to piracy. I don't want game pass, ubisoft+, Blizzard Prime, Nintendo Online Super Premium Expansion Pass or whatever stupid names these companies come up with just to play a few games that I'm interested in, just because they're spread across different publishers.
They’re horrible at making games too. Their biggest games have been IP conceived and developed externally and once they took them over they’ve run them into the ground of mediocrity. In over twenty years I don’t think any developer or franchise has benefited from Microsoft owning them.
I'm not sure who "they" is in this scenario. If it's Microsoft Games Studios... well, yeah, they're a publisher. You just described what a publisher is.
I think if we're talking about their recent publishing strategy they've certainly been on a bit of a rut. There's still some interesting stuff happening with their IP. They got Relic to make a surprsiingly faithful Age of Empires, people do like Microsoft Flight Sim, that type of thing. But still, yeah, they've made a lot of purchases and we haven't seen new games coming out from most of those to justify those purchases, which does speak to a bit of a struggle to find a direction. That Hellblade sequel looks intriguing, but for a publisher with a lot of fully owned studios that has been fighting claims of monopolistic practices for their high profile acquisitions their output from that stable hasn't picked up pace yet.
I get it, games take forever to make now. That Hellblade game has been marketed for as long as the Xbox Series has, and that came out in 2020. Still, that itself is a problem. If the big oil tanker is hard to steer you have to plan your turns before you get to the icebergs. I do genuinely hope they get it together, though. That's a lot of talent, IP and potential to let run on idle for too long. Or worse, to fail in the context of a major corporation and stop getting support.
"Their biggest games have been IP conceived and developed externally" so not really a counter argument to phillaholic when you mention two games outsourced to external developers.
Kinda. This is the exact opposite of that, in that they control the IP and went out to find an external dev with lots of subject matter expertise to make it.
On paper I'd say that's better than them buying Relic off of Sega, but then Sega fired a bunch of people at Relic this year, like everybody else, so what would have been better is very much up for debate.
Microsoft shut down the entire Ensemble studio, the original creator of AoE. Internal game development at Microsoft is bad.
If GamePass meant "you just get everything", I see a case for that but GamePass isn't that. It's "Here are a few Microsoft 1st party games scoring 7/10 other games cycle in and out like Netflix and you get no DLC so when you buy DLC and the game cycles out, you're out of luck"
I'm not sure if you read my comment backwards or you're just agreeing with it?
Anyway, yeah, I think hte big problem gaming subs have is that unless you have first party ownership over every game in existence you can't do the Netflix thing of pretending to be selling the only expense you're ever gonna need. The way games work you engage with them too long and they cycle around too fast, so even if there is a big pool of games they offer it's just a big fat pit of FOMO and feeling bad for seeing that game you're mildly interested in come and go without actually having played it. I already have a stressful backlog without adding the pain point of monetizing my not getting around to all the games I'd like to play.
I meant that no all subscription services have to be bad, just that the current ones are bad. You wrote "screw the subscription model overall".