Office releases are generally on a 3 year cycle. So unless you are talking about Enterprise licensing or something, it would not be $150 per annum, and with licensing it wouldn't be that per head anyway.
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Gears 5 breaks records as biggest launch for any Xbox Game Studios game this generation, 3 million players through opening weekend
- Thread starter bsigg
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Office releases are generally on a 3 year cycle. So unless you are talking about Enterprise licensing or something, it would not be $150 per annum, and with licensing it wouldn't be that per head anyway.
Yeah, and I prefer it this way. Those threads always lead to console wars, list wars, etc...
This business model is far more interesting for me. People get frustrated because it requires re-thinking everything. It's refreshing.
Something we've never seen? As I recall, Sea of Thieves launched with 2 million players over its first week. State of Decays had over 1 million. Then Forza Horizon 4 had over 2 million. Crackdown 3 was a dud. Now we have Gears 5 with 3 million.
The fact of the matter is we are discussing the same thing that we have at those other launches. Before it was free trials, then it was gamesharing, and now it's $1/$2 deals. People keep coming in with stupid downplay arguments that don't reflect reality of the situation that all these accounts can't reuse those deals.
People know it's a long term investment and they know the model that Game Pass is taking. This isn't some sort of new model, it's aodel that has found success in other forms of media. The controversy comes from people thinking that gaming is somehow special and can't sustain this business model on top of the traditional one. That is more foolish to think that it won't be when it curbs the used sales market (as does digital gaming), and piracy. Those things still happen, just at a lesser degree.
Either way, this discussion has happened before and it will happen again when Halo Infinite comes out.
Some people hate themselves, and this is a good way to spot them.
I know people who will never play or buy Gears game, but they couldn't resist Game Pass offer, some bought Xbox One consoles others played on PCs. The first thing they did is playing all previous Gears games to get into Gears 5. Now they are discovering other games on Game Pass. Some of them will cancel subs, some will continue to pay monthly or use deals. The thing is, they got a good amount of players who weren't previously interested in platform or service.
No, no, no, no, no! EVERYONE who pays the $1/$2 deal WILL cancel their subscription when their month is up!
They already canceled subs three times (just to be sure that they canceled), got refunds and sold their Xbox One consoles :/
And this is a win for MS for this reason, because business as usual would've only attracted a small base of new gamers, Gamepass opens the flood gates to all, and those that stay, who can now play with thier mates who have Gamepass and can now multiplay together without synchronizing libraries is a huge deal for MS, something no one in the industry is offering, its a big reason to pick the Xbox ecosystem.
I post here just to put my foot print here. I also want to express my through and through satisfaction with Game Pass since I subscribed to it.
Games played: up
Money spent: down
I also played games I would have never played otherwise and enjoyed them
IMO the days of SKU sales/digital sales are over if more and more using subscriptions to retrieve their game content.
Games played: up
Money spent: down
I also played games I would have never played otherwise and enjoyed them
IMO the days of SKU sales/digital sales are over if more and more using subscriptions to retrieve their game content.
OK, but what happens after 2-3 years if GP was ultimately a moneypit with no signs of becoming profitable? MS isn't a startup built on spending venture capital, it's a successful business in its own right with shareholders who only have so much tolerance for losing ventures syphoning profits.
We're a long way away from there being enough results to determine if Gamepass is a "win".
Funny thing is, if other forms of media are used as an example, you can't support a subscription mode like this alongside a traditional direct sales model.
The subscription model almost always wins and direct sales plummet to the point that they are barely if even profitable.
GamePass and similar services are the future of gaming. A lot of comments here are going to struggle over the next decade during the transition of understanding that the old way is dying. It's like the people I knew that kept collecting Anime DVD box sets after 2012 or those who were still hoarding CDs after 2003 and insisting digital would never win that people preferred to "own" their content.
MS sunk $35 Billion USD into Bing before it became profitable.
By most accounts they sunk $4.5 to 7 Billion USD into Xbox before it became profitable.
GamePass would likely take a decade or longer of being a complete failure before they even approached those kinds of numbers.
I doubt people who like GamePass and are buying into it have anything to worry about.
I can still buy a DVD. I can still buy a CD. And I can buy them digitally. I can subscribe to music and I can subscribe to tv/movies.
Yep and all those businesses are shrinking fast while services like Spotify, Apple Music, Netflix, Hulu, and others are growing fast.
Almost every retailer who specialized in music and or movie sales has died or diversified their businesses to the point that they no longer rely on those sales.
Others that had sales of Discs for movies and music as a part of their retail business have significantly shrunk the floor space or eliminated it like Frys, Best Buy, Sam Goody, and others.
In most businesses the writing is on the wall. Go digital and offer an amazing subscription package or start dying. I would bet that within 3-5 years this same trend becomes obvious in gaming. There is a reason everyone from Microsoft and Apple to EA and Ubisoft are launching gaming subscriptions.
Nobody's asking you to lock in a permanent answer to whether or not it's going to be successful long, but this is a positive indicator. The profitability, even over a span of longer than 3 years, is irrelevant if they can continue to deliver good growth.
If in 3 years time Gamepass is stagnant or has declined in membership notably, that would be far more likely to result in its termination even if it is profitable. Conversely, if it's a billion dollars a year in the red but rapidly growing and emerging as a clear market leader, they are almost certain to continue it. Spencer did not get given a seat at the big table because they want to chase short term profitability, he's put there because they consider it a vital long term interest. They're also doing their best to decouple the success of Xbox as a platform from Xbox as hardware, because that way they are not limited in growth simply by the number of boxes they sell.
That last point is a very good one a lot of people are overlooking when comparing success of games in this generation versus Xbox360.
Up until recently, MS was selling games on less than half the systems in market they had to sell them to compared to last Gen. Releasing on PC and a service like XCLOUD with something like GamePass behind it can completely change the market.
It also helps explain why Gears5 is doing so well now despite having around half the Xboxen in the market.
Note, I'm not refuting your words. I actually agree. I'm just saying that it will be a while before traditional goes away. Note vinyl is making a comeback ;).