this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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By every metric we know of, they're very far from achieving it. Even with some of the largest companies by market cap now in their ownership, they're still nowhere close to owning the breadth of games that get made. Palworld still sold more copies on Steam than there were Game Pass subscribers who tried the game out as part of their subscription. Growth for Game Pass has slowed dramatically to something in the ballpark of a plateau, and subscription services for games only accounted for 10% of spending. This was two weeks ago that Matt Piscatella of Circana said that the idea that subscription services would take over gaming is unsupported by the data.
Palworld isn't a MS Exclusive and the studios they bought haven't churned out anything of note, yet. So it makes sense there hasn't been any inclination of sudden growth in subscriptions.
But as I said, it's a long con. The plan remains the same, get Game Pass into as many homes as possible. Let subscription become the new standard. It's Microsoft after all, their track record speaks for itself.
You don't have to agree with me, time will tell if it works out for them or not. But as for my part, I'm still actively against it and will stick to my guns about "Subscription Services and Storefront Exclusivity" being a no go.
I don't have a subscription to it either. Their games aren't exclusive to Game Pass, and you can still buy them a la carte. In fact, my point with Palworld is that many more people still opt to even though the intuitive answer is that it's cheaper to rent the game for one month than it is to buy it outright, but I think people have a pretty firm grasp at the value you're giving up to not own it outright. It was a long con to get people to buy games from the Windows Store too, and people rejected it. They can't squeeze blood from a stone if the market doesn't want something. The online subscription service that is doing the nasty stuff that you're afraid of is Nintendo's; there are games there only available via subscription. Not to say you're wrong for where you draw the line in the sand on what you will or will not buy, but nothing indicates we're anywhere close to that doomsday scenario.
"Doomsday Scenario" might be a bit much as a descriptor. XD
And yes, be it Nintendo, Sony, EGS or whatever, it's the same deal. The biggest difference is simply that MS is so big that it not even close to a risk for them. As long as Xbox's income evens out to zero and they aren't actively losing money, it's "a win" and they can easily make up for it and add to it until it starts making money. But it already does, so...
A juggernaut that size is hard to contend with and usually gets it's way.
It will be interesting to see how many of InXile, Obsidian, Bethesda and ActivisionBlizzards future games will be Windows Store and Xbox exclusives. (timed or otherwise.) They are the new bargaining chips after all.
The second one of them becomes exclusive, they lose me as a customer too. But I think history shows that they tried that already.