WSJ - Microsoft Plans to Put Latest Call of Duty Game on Subscription Service, Sources Say
- Thread starter Smitch
- Start date
- Microsoft Activision/Blizzard
I don't think there is a middle ground here. It either works and saves GP or it fails and GP dies and they potentially devalue COD in people's eyes. It's a hell of a gamble and feels like if it goes poorly, a lot of heads will roll. It'll be interesting to watch how it plays out over the next 18 months.
is it an absolutely certainty that Microsoft will make more of their employees suffer layoffs?
Fiscal year change hits on July 01. Related to all the recent news… maybe not… but there are almost always some layoffs during FY changes.
absolute certainty? like has MS come out publicly and said "we're gonna shitcan more ppl"?
no, but i trust Jason Schreier and his reporting on it
Honestly, out of MS's entire portfolio, the 5k devs (or whatever the number is) who work on CoD are probably the most safe, no matter what. If this series doesn't bring in the subscriptions the way the C-suite wants, literally nothing will.
honestly, if cod day one doesnt make some numbers go up, its over.
Thing for the life of me I can't understand is why even take the risk? At this point as much as the consumers would be furious I would discontinue Game Pass or start to sunset it. Like the damage it has done is crazy to me. They have fostered an environment where their customers don't expect to purchase anything.
Gambling on something that has failed so spectacularly with one of biggest franchises in video gaming just seems honestly crazy to me.
5-6 if we go by a simple dollar spent by player, which is not a good metric i guess, the need to have players buyin mtx and dlc.
for the typical multiplayer user? 4 months as you will need Ultimate to play it on console (at least $17/mo)
hardly anyone will be subbing to play a single player campaign only.
This really feels like the last Hail Mary attempt to save Xbox hardware.
Incoming announcement from phil of largest single day record for gamepass sub addition, followed by no announcements in following months whether those subs have sticked around or not.
Worth the risk for such a rich company. There's no game they'll ever get that is this big that they'd be able to do this and see the impact it has on subs. If not a lot they'll learn quite a bit about their service. If a ton then it's all worth it I guess.
View: https://twitter.com/bossshawnX/status/1791456352411562173?s=19
Probably not related but it's interesting how Series X sales have shot up with over 4K sold just on Amazon alone within the last month. Most of it probably within the last few weeks. Game Pass subscriptions have skyrocketed as well.
Honestly there's no other logical reason for this to be happening other than Hellblade 2. If this is even some tiny indication then Call of Duty on Game Pass could be pretty massive.
My bet is that MS is hoping that COD being on Game Pass turns it into the GAAS service as a one stop shop for most of the big GAAS games. Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon, Fallout 76, Elder Scrolls Online, MLB The Show and last year's EA Sports games all being on the service alongside COD and any other future GAAS hits that MS might have (Gears 6, Halo 7, Contraband and probably other stuff too) and third party GAAS games already on the service.
And realistically, if you're someone who only plays COD, you're already spending a bare minimum of $130 a year ($70 on COD, $60 on Gold) on Xbox, and assuming a price increase of Game Pass Ultimate (needed for COD) to $19/month, that's just two other full price games needed to entice someone to join Game Pass. The social aspect of the other games probably makes it more enticing to those casual players too
I hope for the sake of their employees, it doesn't, because they will be the ones who will suffer. It will be a bloodbath.
Made a tweet on this but basically Amazon typically has low stock of Series X to begin with, but now they are the only top 5 retailer (GameStop, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Amazon) selling the X at $449.
That would be why it's shooting up the charts now.
I'm not so sure about that since Game Pass subscriptions have skyrocketed as well. I don't think they had low stock of those as well.
I think they will. The thing to pay attention to is if the momentum holds beyond a month or two after. I can see people buying a month or so just to play the campaign and/or mess around in the multiplayer, especially those that don't usually buy (or want to buy) a CoD game at full price.
Game Pass Ultimate 1 month sub card is #10 for the month of May and Game Pass Core 12 month sub card #27.
Game Pass Ultimate 1 month sub card is #9 in the hourly chart right now and Game Pass Core 12 month sub card #40.
They are placing/selling the same as they've been all month, more or less.
Even if they are increasing, I would have pinned it on the rumored price increases being the cause. I don't see it being CoD on GP because I don't know why'd you buy GP now when CoD is not out for another 5 months or so.
If you're talking about the overall games numbers relative to past months, things are unusual on Amazon right now because they're having their seemingly biannual feud with Nintendo.
I think that has to be calculated user-by-user. Lets say you have two players that typically buy CoD every year and that's their main game that takes up almost all their gaming time and money:
Person A may buy CoD for full price (~$70) every year at launch. Person B may be the type that waits for the game to hit a holiday sale (~$50).
Since a lot of game purchases are digital, it's possible to see at what price range different individuals pick up the game historically and then calculate how much was being "given up" by putting it onto the subscription. From there, you can take the sum of how much they're getting in subs (n * average GP cost) versus how much they're losing in sales (person A + B +C....) to tell what it looks like in terms of net profit. This is pretty clean math since you're dealing with people who really only spend money on one franchise.
The average gamer only buys like one game a year so the $200/year for GP is significantly more than that but might also be less than what the hardcore spend. Actually, hardcore players would be the messiest from a data analysis perspective because they buy lots of stuff in physical stores (or used) so tracking their price history can be difficult and they are also just likely to finish a lot more games every year which makes it hard to say the impact any individual game has on keeping them subscribed.
I think the comparison was last month vs this month which has definitely seen an increase. Not this month vs the current hourly chart which it being similar is not much of a surprise.
Yea I can't imagine it's COD on Game Pass since that's still a ways off.
I think it's plausible that it's seeing a bump because of Hellblade 2. I don't think it's outrageous to think that people that have let their subs expire are grabbing 1 month cards to play it. Much cheaper than paying full price for a game that's looks amazing but ultimately is just a 8-12 hr experience.
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I don't know...I think the typical COD players only plays COD. It just makes sense to buy the game that they will play throughout the year and not bother to just "rent".
April
Game Pass Ultimate 1 month sub card was #13, Game Pass Core 12 month sub card #32, Game Pass Ultimate 3 month sub card #43
May
Game Pass Ultimate 1 month sub card is #10, Game Pass Core 12 month sub card #27, Game Pass Ultimate 3 month sub card #45
In terms of ranking, it's "up", but the real sales aren't going to be too much different.
Which is why Sarah Bond said it's about using the in-game stores of their games to drive interest in discounted MTX purchases via their mobile store. Microsoft is aiming to get more (all?) of the revenue from purchases of MTX/battle passes/DLC of all their live service games no matter what device you're on.
I'm halfway tempted to see if I can find some financial reports from Sony, Apple, Google, Activision, etc. on how much revenue is made from purchases of MTX, DLC and battle/season passes. It would stand to reason that will grow as AAA dev has to find ways to keep players engaged and monetize that play time.
How much does Microsoft stand to make if all of a sudden, for example, Candy Crush MTX is going through their own payment system versus giving Apple or Google a cut just because it's in the iOS and Google Play store, respectively? That's why they're fighting them to be able to make an app that doesn't have to process through the Apple or Google payment systems, so they don't have to give up that cut.
I think Game Pass was meant to always be the way to get more people to try more games. The in-game stores and monthly subs (e.g., Fallout 1st, WoW, ESO, etc.) are meant to monetize as much of the play time from those gamers as possible.
this reads like layoffs that are not out of the ordinary though. I meant layoffs within the thousands directly after recent acquisitions
I guess what I was asking is, based on the market trends if it is basically inevitable that Microsoft will lay more staff of from companies they recently acquired. Schreier may be one of if not the most trusted name in video gaming news, I would believe all of his reporting too.
The introduction of Game Pass and decisions around it strikes me as having been that sort of thing, and attempting to keep adding and sustaining value was always going to happen which is what this looks like. I'm not sure what the next step is for the service if this move doesn't act as a catalyst. They need to successfully move all these Xbox hardware customers over to the next box they make, for it all to have been worth it as well.
Why would they do this?
EA does it on their sub service, on PC.
Both EA and Ubisoft do it.
I'm assuming it will be like Diablo for PC game pass where it's a battle net launcher thing? I only play warzone so maybe I'll dip in for the campaign and level up broken meta guns for a month.
I think it may work. again I know it sounds like wishful thinking for the Xbox community, but Call of Duty is consistently the biggest name in video games, hate it or love it. and Microsoft is greatly boosting the incentive to own an Xbox and a gamepass subscription if it means getting the new CoD day and date without having to pay $70 for it.
And why would people switch consoles to get CoD on gamepass. Also if you only play CoD why not just buy it instead of paying more for it over the long term?
They wouldn't make it exclusive to the subscription, but for a long while Microsoft has felt really oblivious to their situation on PC, and I've seriously wondered when they might say "nah I'd win" and stop putting games on Steam.
They're apparently planning on putting Minecraft on Steam, so maybe they wizened up. I legit think their PC games operations weren't getting much oversight until very recently, when the ROG Ally came out and Phil Spencer got one for himself.
I think this news might be offset by the general Xbox doomerism at the minute though.
Why pay $70 when you could pay monthly forever!
Snark aside, this does feel like a final gambit where major, major changes come if this move comes and goes without GamePass subs increasing but sales decreasing.
Getting an Xbox and a gamepass subscription is a significant investment compared to paying 70 for COD.
If you don't own an Xbox free on gamepass doesn't matter much. When obtaining that "free" game is actually hundreds of dollars.
I'm honestly curious how many people fit into this chunk of the consumer pie like MS thinks they do...
I don't imagine this pushing the numbers up in some wild way as like... most COD fans especially playing on the Xbox probably already have GP i would imagine? Like, I can't imagine there is this secret treasure trove of Cod Consumers just hiding in the wings on PC waiting to sign up to GP if only CoD was there...
this is gonna be an interesting couple of quarters...
I don't imagine this pushing the numbers up in some wild way as like... most COD fans especially playing on the Xbox probably already have GP i would imagine? Like, I can't imagine there is this secret treasure trove of Cod Consumers just hiding in the wings on PC waiting to sign up to GP if only CoD was there...
this is gonna be an interesting couple of quarters...
I can't see how CoD can drive up subscription numbers, at least on console. Where are are those users coming from?
Are they existing Xbox owners that don't have a Gamepass sub? How many people is that? Would CoD have any power to convince them?
Users switching from PlayStation? Does buying a whole new box to get the subscription make financial sense for a lot of people?
PC is a bit of a wildcard, but I don't have a clue of how big CoD is on PC. I always figured it was way bigger on consoles.
Are they existing Xbox owners that don't have a Gamepass sub? How many people is that? Would CoD have any power to convince them?
Users switching from PlayStation? Does buying a whole new box to get the subscription make financial sense for a lot of people?
PC is a bit of a wildcard, but I don't have a clue of how big CoD is on PC. I always figured it was way bigger on consoles.
