Ah yes, the luddite argument. A sure fire way to dismiss an argument when there's no reasonable counterpoint to put forward.
My position aligns with the dev in the tweet. Subscription services that don't provide lump sum payments to content producers are toxic for this industry. GamePass doesn't do this, so isn't particularly a point of concern for myself nor the tweeting dev in question. A "time played" model of remuneration for content producers limits the service to MP and GAAS type games, which in my mind aren't very well suited to a subscription service in the first place.
On the whole subscription services can never be all encompassing in the games industry, regardless of what internet pundits think. GamePass games are supported by their ability to launch first as discrete products. Without that option, the biggest games simply wouldn't exist on GamePass.
Real and legitimate concerns. I've been saying this for a while. I can't see how the business model works for gaming at all.
The biggest games cost too much to be included in a Netflix-Style service and the smallest games will get ripped off through shitty business deals that force them to accept "per hours played" royalties instead of a lump sum payment that the larger games on the service will be granted.
Fundamentally, these services screw over the content creators and places more revenue in the hands of the platform owner.
The evolution of tech and the internet has allowed a lot of content producers to come up with innovative ways of selling and distributing content at a far lower cost than had been the case earlier by simply targeting far greater numbers.
Microsoft wants said that they want to get to a position where they have one AAA game every quarter. Let us imagine that these titles cost $100M each and you have two or three smaller titles that cost in the range of $30M to make. You would be looking at something in the $500M to make games each year.
What would you be looking to make of sales (digital and physical) to break even and what would you be making off subscriptions? From this, how much are you going to make off DLC, micro-transactions and how much can you get users to double dip by giving them discounts if they are subscribers......how many will pay to play online?
Game Pass and Microsoft's problem in general this generation has been that there has been a lot of content that they have released that is targeting the multiplayer component of games more so than they have made an attempt to make single player experiences. Sony is on the other spectrum where they have very few multiplayer experiences while they have focused heavily on single player games.
There are those that will argue like you that MP and GAAS games are not well suited to subscription services, and there are many I have seen argue here that one of the biggest mistakes that Sony can make is to have single player games launch on day one on a similar service if that is something that they are thinking about.
Both stances are wrong. The only thing that makes a service compelling is the amount of quality content coming in and variety in that content to make sure that you canvas a good amount of genres. Microsoft is still going to have multiplayer titles, but to their roster of developers, they have bulked up with some who have specialized in single player experiences. Their publishing arm invested quite a bit on single player experiences that did not pan out. So, you need balance in that area.
I can also say that people that are clamoring for lump sum payments probably would run a company into the ground if they had an opportunity. What happens if you pay huge money for a game that no one is interested in? Make some bad bets (which is normal in business) that are compounded over time and you have a service that is bleeding money it would rather not be losing. Time of play is something that somewhat offers protection against that. Third party games that are launching on it day and date would also be looking at it as an opportunity to reach several million subscribers without having to put money into ads etc. Older titles have an opportunity to earn publishers money when the said games are moving minuscule amounts.
In any case, Microsoft says that subscribers are trying out more content than they did before they subscribed (again, normal.....people want to maximize their investment) and that they are seeing people buy more games. There is no reason to think that they would be lying.
EDIT: When it comes to Microsoft saying sold more copies of games like Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2 etc. What are they comparing it to other than internal projections of what they would have liked those games to sell? EA just stated that they expected to sell more copies of Battlefield V than they did....they were short something like a million units and selling the title at a discounted rate in the holidays. Was it in comparison to Battlefield 1 No. Call of Duty Blackout made £500M in three days and under-performed because Activision Blizzard needed it to do more for them to meet their earnings reports not that it was not wildly profitable.
All these games have a break even point, and a minimum profit that publishers think is good enough to justify the investment in time and money.
