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Gears 5’s abysmal Steam debut could tell us something about the potential audience for Xbox exclusives on Steam - VG247

If you are playing Gears 5 on PC, what storefront did you use?

  • Steam

    Votes: 187 12.6%

  • Game Pass

    Votes: 1,236 83.5%

  • Windows Store

    Votes: 54 3.6%
  • Total voters
    1,481
morrigan8bit

morrigan8bit

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Jul 1, 2019
249
VG24/7...the whole article is a stretch considering Gears is part of Gamepass.

I could have bought it on Steam, but I didn't. I have Ultimate so can play it on both my X and PC. What the article fails to recognise is Microsoft doesn't care if you play Gears via Steam or Gamepass Ultimate. Either way, it is win-win - unfounded negative spin.
 
MilesQ

MilesQ

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,490
Patent said:
To the people saying its because gamepass, isnt that supposed to increase sales thought ms said it did
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Not just MS, developers also said it increased their sales. Maybe it only applies to Xbox One, but it's definitely weird we aren't seeing any boost in sales...at least right now.
 
Okabe

Okabe

Is Sometimes A Good Bean
Member
Aug 24, 2018
19,927
Shame that my gamepass is going to waste since gamepass only works on 1909 win 10 so cant even use it
 
Kolx

Kolx

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,505
Releasing on Steam would have been a big deal before Gamepass. Now? it's not. I expect Halo infinite to also do abysmal numbers not because there's no demand, but because most people will get it on Gamepass.
 
Hamster Plugin

Hamster Plugin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,841
First, there's the well advertised deal that you can play it for 2 months with $2. Then there's the problem that the game is overpriced in Europe which will push pretty much every European to doing that Game Pass deal instead.
 
Nzyme32

Nzyme32

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,245
Serene said:
obviously not many of those
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OR - like many folks gaming on PC, they don't know if its something they want to buy / is worth buying - for which gamepass is an easy solution at $4 vs $60

This is what I've done for the same reason (and I don't have time to play it right now anyway)
 
Powerofthecloud

Powerofthecloud

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,427
Also the bigger question is who actually pays $60 frequently for a game nowadays. I find that my actual purchase price has gone down just due to the fact that there's so much competition. Most of the time wait 3 months in the games half-price usually. Not to mention get game pass. A lot of people just play gears just for the campaign and don't touch multiplayer so it makes sense why would you not just play through the campaign and call it a day.
 
Zealuu

Zealuu

Member
Feb 13, 2018
1,184
If they wanted it to do numbers on Steam, they shouldn't have put it on gamepass. Despite the multiplayer offerings, Gears games have always been a "buy at discount for the campaign" kind of series for me. Gears 5 has a good Campaign but not a 70 euros good campaign.
 
STech

STech

Member
Sep 24, 2018
1,735
I would love to see the real interest for this saga outside the gamepass.
In my circles Gears has passed from one of the most anticipated games to complete oblivion.
 
Alexandros

Alexandros

Member
Oct 26, 2017
17,811
Besides the very real issue of the frankly absurd price in Europe, you know what these numbers tell us? That you don't need to make your games exclusive in order to compete. Microsoft released the game on Steam providing players with options, some of them bought it on Steam but many of them preferred Microsoft's own service because Microsoft went with enticing gamers with better value and an improved service instead of trying to force them. This is a genuine win-win-win for Microsoft, customers and Steam.
 

reKon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,736
I'm sure 2 years from now when it's discounted to $20 or below on steam, it will have some legs if the MP improves and stays strong
 
Rhaya

Rhaya

Member
Oct 25, 2017
888
it being the 5th game in a series who only now is making it's debut on PC proper with this entry probably did not help either .
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 58846

User requested account closure
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Jul 28, 2019
5,086
Alexandros said:
Besides the very real issue of the frankly absurd price in Europe, you know what these numbers tell us? That you don't need to make your games exclusive in order to compete. Microsoft released the game on Steam providing players with options, some of them bought it on Steam but many of them preferred Microsoft's own service because Microsoft went with enticing gamers with better value and an improved service instead of trying to force them. This is a genuine win-win-win for Microsoft, customers and Steam.
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You know what, this is actually a good point. This right here seems to demonstrate that it is possible to compete with Steam as long as you provide actual value and incentives to potential players, rather than creating artificial value by gating content.
All of this is on the assumption that the game has done well on Game Pass on PC, of course.
 

Deleted member 15395

Unshakable Resolve
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,145
Gamepass cannibalized the steam sales for sure but I think for MS its more about having its games everywhere regardless of how much they sell.
 
packy17

packy17

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,901
Rhaya said:
it being the 5th game in a series who only now is making it's debut on PC proper with this entry probably did not help either .
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Yep. I never had an Xbox growing up, so I'm not familiar with the Gears franchise at all. My friends are all into it but I can't pull the trigger on it.
 
Patent

Patent

Self-requested ban
Banned
Jul 2, 2018
1,621
North Carolina
MilesQ said:
Not just MS, developers also said it increased their sales. Maybe it only applies to Xbox One, but it's definitely weird we aren't seeing any boost in sales...at least right now.
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i believe them but it is counterintuitive to how i think it would work practically, i own gamepass to id never buy any of these games and if i wanted to play with friends id recommend the same thing
 

Deleted member 2840

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,400
Serene said:
not even

there's a promo right now to get two months for $2

so it's literally 30x the price to buy it on Steam. lol
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The price in Brazil is 200BRL
You can buy Game Pass for 1 BRL in the promo.
It's Literally 200 times more expensive to buy it than just buying a month on Gamepass.
That and the truckload of free keys people got from Alienware.
Hell, even if it was the normal price, 10$, it'd be an amazing deal.

What I would like to see is Microsoft somehow getting Valve to sell the Gamepass on Steam, now that'd be fun.
 

Garjon

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,998
Well you could either pay 50 quid for it or pay a fiver for 2 months of game pass with it on
 
Nzyme32

Nzyme32

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,245
Eggiem said:
70€ is too much money. Period.

Last time I bought a 70€ PC game was... never.
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Yep. In the UK, £39.99 is as high as I'll go for a game - and that is a rarity.

Buying a game outright is far preferable, so Steam in those cases is my main choice.
But with a game / series I am less interested in, or unfamiliar with, "renting" the game via gamepass is an obvious option
 
thediamondage

thediamondage

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,265
how does multiplayer work in gears 5 anyways? Is it all one giant pool - PC, xbox, steam, win10 store - or is steam on a seperate backend from gamepass PC which is seperate from xbox?

and yeah gamepass makes it really weird to buy G5 on steam, like why would you
 

Deleted member 42

user requested account closure
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Oct 24, 2017
16,939
Microsoft would rather have you on GamePass than purchase it for full price on Steam, trust me

The Steam releases for games are for people who have a preferred ecosystem, that's all. That's been Microsoft's company philosophy since like 2015

I would highly recommend ignoring those Steam numbers because if you just look at them without taking the upstairs into account, they are absolutely godawful numbers for a AAA release in 2019
 
Hamster Plugin

Hamster Plugin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,841
MilesQ said:
Not just MS, developers also said it increased their sales. Maybe it only applies to Xbox One, but it's definitely weird we aren't seeing any boost in sales...at least right now.
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The No More Robots interview that you're probably referring to mentioned that people saw Game Pass ads on the dashboard with their game on it, and then instead of buying Game Pass they bought the game that was advertised. So it was the advertisement that increased the sales.

Otherwise I see Game Pass only increasing sales if someone buys it for only a month, finds a game they like and then buy to keep it. This can happen with a very cheap free trial offer like the current $2 for two months offer.
 

Deleted member 5129

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Oct 25, 2017
2,263
Maybe the reason is that it's 69,99€ on Steam - which is more expensive than like, probably ever single new game that comes out on Steam.

It's ridiculous.
 
Serene

Serene

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Member
Oct 25, 2017
52,532
thediamondage said:
how does multiplayer work in gears 5 anyways? Is it all one giant pool - PC, xbox, steam, win10 store - or is steam on a seperate backend from gamepass PC which is seperate from xbox?

and yeah gamepass makes it really weird to buy G5 on steam, like why would you
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It's all cross-play
 
Braag

Braag

Member
Nov 7, 2017
1,908
To be fair a lot of people seem to be using stuff like XBox Gamepass, EA Access and other stuff like that to play games these days rather than buy them.
 

Deleted member 23212

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For me there's no reason to get it on Steam if it's already on XB1, which only leaves titles like AoE that aren't being released on the console.
 
J2d

J2d

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Oct 26, 2017
1,140
I'll get it on steam later on but you'd be crazy to pay 70 euro for something you can play for cheap now.
 
DigSCCP

DigSCCP

Banned
Nov 16, 2017
4,201
Alexandros said:
Besides the very real issue of the frankly absurd price in Europe, you know what these numbers tell us? That you don't need to make your games exclusive in order to compete. Microsoft released the game on Steam providing players with options, some of them bought it on Steam but many of them preferred Microsoft's own service because Microsoft went with enticing gamers with better value and an improved service instead of trying to force them. This is a genuine win-win-win for Microsoft, customers and Steam.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's kinda unfair to make this statement when one option costs 30 times less than the other.
It's really really cool that they gave players options and this should be noted for sure but arguing that you don't need exclusivity when a game costs 30 times on different front stores doesn't make sense at all.
 
Mórríoghain

Mórríoghain

Member
Nov 2, 2017
5,148
Oh wow didn't know it was 70 euro! I thought it was super cheap, considering it is 90 lira / 15 dollar in my region. I guess, thanks Microsoft??
 
KomandaHeck

KomandaHeck

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,355
Are they even trying with that article?

Halo will be a better barometer for interest in Xbox games on PC. Didn't they already say each game in the collection would be $10 or less?
 
Alexandros

Alexandros

Member
Oct 26, 2017
17,811
The One Who Knocks said:
You know what, this is actually a good point. This right here seems to demonstrate that it is possible to compete with Steam as long as you provide actual value and incentives to potential players, rather than creating artificial value by gating content.
All of this is on the assumption that the game has done well on Game Pass on PC, of course.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Exactly. Microsoft just shot down the argument that you can only compete with Steam with exclusives. Not only did they get most of the audience playing through their service, they also got a significant amount of sales on Steam that they would have never gotten otherwise.
 
'V'

'V'

Banned
May 19, 2018
772
70 Euros for the base game is insane. I wonder what's going on with that. Here in the UK it's £49.99 (~56 Euro) for the base game and £69.99 (~78 Euro) for the Ultimate Edition which is around about what you'd expect for a base game and an Ultimate edition over here. For comparison Borderlands 3 on Epic store here is £49 for base, £65 for Deluxe and £85 for Super Deluxe.

Is that a Steam issue or Microsoft issue? They're pushing away a huge market with those Euro prices.
 

TitanicFall

Member
Nov 12, 2017
8,273
To me it shows that Gamepass eats into first party sales and people will start valuing ownership of those games much less than they used to.
 
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