ONMSFT: Microsoft has a hit on its hands with Xbox Game Pass, and analysts are starting to notice

gordofredito · Oct 31, 2018

Trago said:
Game Pass is the best idea to come from this generation. I said this when it was first announced, but Sony and Nintendo need to copy this idea asap. playing Sony or Nintendo games day one on a subscription would be insane.

I think while a brilliant idea, it's something Nintendo and Sony would and should never do, at least not with their exclusives.
Microsoft can do this because in all honesty, their exclusives are not even close. Some of Nintendo's worst first party titles are better than anything Microsoft has put out this generation that isn't Forza. Sony is on a similar streak, if not an even better streak.
They should allow their own Game Pass thing but I'd be fine with no exclusives in there. The quality of Nintendo and Sony games are up to par with their asking price, Microsoft's? Not so much

Troll · Oct 31, 2018

Sony could have a real winner if they rebrand PlayStation now and start releasing a first party games on day one. The name is poison as it stands now.

jroc74 · Oct 31, 2018

Adam802 said:
When services like Game Pass become common in the next few years just remember MS was there 1st, and will probably still be best.

Lol, never change ERA.

I think EA was there before MS. Unless overall you mean with EAAccess too.

I remember all the fuss over EAAccess too.

I would mention another service that was there early on too but that's going to derail the thread so...

Cocolina · Oct 31, 2018

The exploitation of this is games appearing on the service for one week, then transitioning to full price again. If publishers begin to treat it as a glorified trial service it's fucked.

Ivanovic · Oct 31, 2018

Sony is on course to sell over 100 million PS4 this gen, completely destroying the xbox one yet somehow all we hear is how they should copy Microsoft next gen. um what?

SuikerBrood · Oct 31, 2018

Cocolina said:
The exploitation of this is games appearing on the service for one week, then transitioning to full price again. If publishers begin to treat it as a glorified trial service it's fucked.

Why would MS allow that tho? I think they'll get quite some bad reputation if they do this.

Having trials on Gamepass isn't a problem, if it is communicated accordingly.

Ivanovic said:
Sony is on course to sell over 100 million PS4 this gen, completely destroying the xbox one yet somehow all we hear is how they should copy Microsoft next gen. um what?

Both companies can learn things from each other. That's why competition is a good thing.

Prine · Oct 31, 2018

gordofredito said:
I think while a brilliant idea, it's something Nintendo and Sony would and should never do, at least not with their exclusives.
Microsoft can do this because in all honesty, their exclusives are not even close. Some of Nintendo's worst first party titles are better than anything Microsoft has put out this generation that isn't Forza. Sony is on a similar streak, if not an even better streak.
They should allow their own Game Pass thing but I'd be fine with no exclusives in there. The quality of Nintendo and Sony games are up to par with their asking price, Microsoft's? Not so much

Gears 4, Halo 5, Halo MCC, Ori, Sunset OD, Quantum Break, Cuphead, Killer Instict are below Nintendo/Sony worst games? How is this not trolling? Hyperbolic nonsense and objectively false (critical reception and sales).

Cocolina · Oct 31, 2018

SuikerBrood said:
Why would MS allow that tho? I think they'll get quite some bad reputation if they do this.

Well they'll take the game off the service and offer a GamePass discount. If they transition slowly enough we wouldn't really care if a game is up for 5 months like Fallout 4 or 4 months, or 3 months...

Prine · Oct 31, 2018

Cocolina said:
Well they'll take the game off the service and offer a GamePass discount. If they transition slowly enough we wouldn't really care if a game is up for 5 months like Fallout 4 or 4 months, or 3 months...

Not sure what point your trying to make. No game has sat there for a week. Do Netflix remove shows after a week? MS are following thier model, there's nothing that suggest this would happen .

Cocolina · Oct 31, 2018

Prine said:
Not sure what point your trying to make. No game has sat there for a week. Do Netflix remove shows after a week? MS are following thier model, there's nothing that suggest this would happen .

A week is an extreme example

SuikerBrood · Oct 31, 2018

Cocolina said:
Well they'll take the game off the service and offer a GamePass discount. If they transition slowly enough we wouldn't really care if a game is up for 5 months like Fallout 4 or 4 months, or 3 months...

Ah, like that. Currently the minimum seems to be around 3 months. It's way too short for my liking, but it's far from a trial.

If they do 1-month deals.. I'd really dislike that.

Tetrinski · Oct 31, 2018

Ocean said:
Gamepass is amazing value. I picked up an X a few months ago and the experience was totally different from when I got a Switch as a gift. After getting a Switch, feeling like I had "something to play" involved a few hundred dollars' worth of software. I picked up BotW, Odyssey, Mario Kart, Splatoon, Bayonetta and Tropical Freeze.

On the other hand, when I got the Xbox I just accepted the Gamepass trial and "needing something to play" was never an issue. Straight away, I had a bunch of amazing titles to play: Halo 5, Gears, Doom, Forza, Fallout, Sunset Overdrive etc.

I've gone on to suggest Xbox as the best choice for friends who are "late" to this console generation. It's like... you either buy a console with just a few expensive games, or you pay for Gamepass/EA Access and get a huge catalog for a few bucks a month.

Exactly.
I think they could use this to get a more powerful console than Sony for, say, 100€ more. The value of Gamepass, coupled with backwards compatibility, is unmatched right now. If Sony doesn't add BC, MS could destroy them (marketing wise). Thousands available from day one with hundreds on Gamepass. It's a though decision for Sony.

aspiring · Oct 31, 2018

I think its a great idea for families. Kids who cant afford many games, or only get a few, sign up and play heaps. Makes perfect sense.

Its not for me, i like owning my games, but know its potential for this kind of market!

Saint-14 · Oct 31, 2018

The Living Tribunal said:

I'm not sure what he's talking about, SoT and SoD2 dropped so hard that claiming GP helped them is hard to believe.

Aokiji · Oct 31, 2018

gamepass works for games that lean heavily on MAU metrics, which is why it lends itself to microsofts strengths. the other two platforms heavily selling games don't. so im not sure why people think they should (or even will) attempt to imitate this service.

Deader2818 · Oct 31, 2018

Seems odd to say Sony really needs to put their first party games on ps now when they released 2 of their most successful games this year alone.

zzzyz36 · Oct 31, 2018

Game pass is great when you have kids, they can try new games on a regular basis.

SuikerBrood · Oct 31, 2018

Saint-14 said:
I'm not sure what he's talking about, SoT and SoD2 dropped so hard that claiming GP helped them is hard to believe.

Both games were not really getting critical acclaim either. I can't imagine these games having huge legs without Gamepass.
5+ million people have tried Sea of Thieves. I think that's a decent statistic. According to Spencer the game beat their sales expectations by quite a margin.

Deleted member 25128 · Oct 31, 2018

Still don't understand Sony.... with PSNow they should add content from movies and music and make it a single subscription service. Games wise I think adding new games after 6-10 month would be fine... single subscription, get rid ofPS+ no need for it and make ps5 backwards compatible with Ps4, all good.

rokkerkory · Oct 31, 2018

Future of games as a service

Darkmaigle · Oct 31, 2018

Saint-14 said:
I'm not sure what he's talking about, SoT and SoD2 dropped so hard that claiming GP helped them is hard to believe.

I think those games might have been DOA without it though

Ushay · Oct 31, 2018

Game Pass is a phenomenal value proposition, the only thing it lacks in order to keep players engaged is highly rated 1st party games. MS has already acquired various studios to feed into that, and continues to do so.

This'll be a game changer in the coming years, will transform the way people purchase and use content.

Saint-14 · Oct 31, 2018

SuikerBrood said:
Both games were not really getting critical acclaim either. I can't imagine these games having huge legs without Gamepass.
5+ million people have tried Sea of Thieves. I think that's a decent statistic. According to Spencer the game beat their sales expectations by quite a margin.

Mat's tweet was hinting at GP helping with sales and not player numbers, the two examples we have currently don't really give confident in that, as for beating expectations, it's hard to tell without knowing what they were expecting to begin with, does GP only help with launch numbers? Does it hurt legs of older games? There are a lot of questions unanswered.

CaptNink · Oct 31, 2018

Aokiji said:
gamepass works for games that lean heavily on MAU metrics, which is why it lends itself to microsofts strengths. the other two platforms heavily selling games don't. so im not sure why people think they should (or even will) attempt to imitate this service.

Yeah, cuz why give consumers options and choice right?

Prine · Oct 31, 2018

Also people need to also consider 3rd party games are also available. Yes not the latest, but lots that are critically acclaimed. Like Netflix, I assume, where you'd feel safe to take a chance on a game that may not be on your radar.

Saint-14 said:
Mat's tweet was hinting at GP helping with sales and not player numbers, the two examples we have currently don't really give confident in that, as for beating expectations, it's hard to tell without knowing what they were expecting to begin with, does GP only help with launch numbers? Does it hurt legs of older games? There are a lot of questions unanswered.

But thats irrelevant, if Spencer says it beat expectations, it means continued support and investment , like any other successful game. So the outcome of that succesa is the same, regardless of how you get there.

Kill3r7 · Oct 31, 2018

Darkmaigle said:
I think those games might have been DOA without it though

This can't be true as SOD2 was the best selling game for the month of May NPD and SOT was #2 in March. SOD2 is especially impressive considering its price point.

SuikerBrood · Oct 31, 2018

Saint-14 said:
Mat's tweet was hinting at GP helping with sales and not player numbers, the two examples we have currently don't really give confident in that, as for beating expectations, it's hard to tell without knowing what they were expecting to begin with, does GP only help with launch numbers? Does it hurt legs of older games? There are a lot of questions unanswered.

Agree. We don't know a lot, so it's hard to draw any conclusions. We just know that first month NPD was fine and that Spencer has said that the games have beaten expectations. We don't know if they expected 'legs' and we don't know how many of these 5 million people that have played are buyers.

Dave. · Oct 31, 2018

cakely said:
I'd really like to know what the current count of Game Pass subscribers is. Even a ballpark estimate would be fine.

There are numbers (enough to compute a ballpark estimate) in the article, but I haven't been able to track down the source to determine the parameters:

A recent Newzoo survey found that both Microsoft and EA's platforms are gaining ground with Xbox One gamers in the US, UK, Germany, and France, with 8% of gamers subscribed to Xbox Game Pass and 9% subscribed to EA Access. Both platforms are popular with families --14% of family gamers are subscribed to Game Pass, and 15% are subscribed to EA Access -- because the subscriptions are more economical than buying individual games.

if EA Access give numbers, that's an easy option. Otherwise, one can probably assume "Xbox One gamers in the US, UK, Germany, and France" are consistent enough with RoW (and hugely dominate the sample anyway).

So, let's say there are 38M X1 gamers * 8% = ~3M Gamepass subs.

The_Land · Oct 31, 2018

rokkerkory said:
Future of games as a service

Bring it on. Love The reactions to positive MS threads.

Curufinwe · Oct 31, 2018

Troll said:
Sony could have a real winner if they rebrand PlayStation now and start releasing a first party games on day one. The name is poison as it stands now.

Lol.

When your first party stable has games like God of War, Spiderman and The Last of Us 2, giving them away in a subscription is a bit different than giving away Sea of Thieves and Forza.

SuikerBrood · Oct 31, 2018

Curufinwe said:
Lol.

When your first party stable has games like God of War, Spiderman and The Last of Us 2, giving them away in a subscription is a bit different than giving away Sea of Thieves and Forza.

… or Halo Infinite and Gears 5?

Brown Intruder · Oct 31, 2018

Papacheeks said:
Are those paid subs or the trial subs? ANd if there are trial subs accounted in that sum, how many let it relapse, and not resub after the trial period.

According to this place 1.99M are just trials

christocolus · Oct 31, 2018

Interesting article. Good to see game pass doing well. And I'm glad MS is upping their 1p output. This can only mean great things for exclusive on the service.

Imitation Of Life · Oct 31, 2018

JimmyRowe1994 said:
Hoping that Sony are hard at work making PlayStation 5 backwards compatible with all previous generations, including digital PSP and PS TV-compatible PS Vita games, so that they can offer every game on PlayStation Now via download. Then take a page out Microsoft's book and make it cheaper, launch it in more countries, and put all SIE-published games on the service day one. (OK, take 3 pages, then.)

No way in Hell Sony will devalue their first party titles like that. PlayStation and Xbox are not clones and don't need the same business model.

Iwao · Oct 31, 2018

Troll said:
Sony could have a real winner if they rebrand PlayStation now and start releasing a first party games on day one. The name is poison as it stands now.

With the amount of subscribers required to cover the costs of putting their extremely high production value AAA games on a service like this on day one, and with efforts required to sustain these subscribers, I can't see them being in a position to make losses like this on their first-party slate any time soon. Especially if they're not multiplayer games with the opportunity for additional in-game purchases. It would be a disastrous move for the brand regardless of how PlayStation Now is perceived.

It's more realistic for Sony to offer a service like this via PS3/PS4 backwards compatibility on the PS5, than it is to see all of their fresh big budget games being offered at their launch for $10 a month.

AcademicSaucer · Oct 31, 2018

When are they gonna start making deals with ISPs?

Andri · Oct 31, 2018

Suzushiiro said:
Ironically enough, the thing that makes Game Pass (particularly having their AAA FP titles on it day one) make more sense for MS than Sony/Nintendo is that MS has a significantly weaker FP lineup than Sony or Nintendo and thus is leaving much less money on the table by making them available through a $9.99/month subscription. Nintendo's "evergreen" FP titles in particular tend to have a ludicrously long tail despite rarely dropping in price much.

Don't get me wrong, I think they'll go with the basic idea at some point (Sony already kinda has with PS Now,) but they'd need to charge more than $9.99/month (or focus much more on DLC/MTX/etc.) for it to be worth it. And in turn, once MS' first-party library improves they'll probably either hike the price of game pass or stop putting every FP title on it day one.

Yeah, just think about how much money Nintendo would be leaving on the table if they had a Gamepass sub.
A game like MK8DX sells 300k a month, still at 60$ which translates to 18m a month, or the equivalent of 1.8 million people on Gamepass.

At 9.99 $ Gamepass is great value, but i just cant see it being worth it for MS to put FP exclusives if there are more than the few MS currently has at its disposal.

Darkmaigle · Oct 31, 2018

Kill3r7 said:
This can't be true as SOD2 was the best selling game for the month of May NPD and SOT was #2 in March. SOD2 is especially impressive considering its price point.

True true

Imitation Of Life · Oct 31, 2018

TrebuchetGames said:
Still don't understand Sony.... with PSNow they should add content from movies and music and make it a single subscription service. Games wise I think adding new games after 6-10 month would be fine... single subscription, get rid ofPS+ no need for it and make ps5 backwards compatible with Ps4, all good.

So many armchair analysts.

khamakazee · Oct 31, 2018

Ge0force said:
"Valve are left in the middle to fret about Microsoft or EA pulling their games from Steam to prioritize their very similar distribution platforms."

Very similar? This guy has no idea what he's talking about.

Yeah poor Valve... They only have 96 million monthly active users left... :(

So, nothing really to add about Microsoft then eh? Game Pass offers great value, no denying that, and whoever gets the bulk of third party titles to be part of a monthly subscription is going to be laughing. Launch titles will still be sporadic and barren but as subscriptions build they will either join or create their own service. We are also seeing big titles start to ignore Steam such as Black Ops IIII, Destiny 2, Fortnite and Fallout 76.

Imitation Of Life said:
No way in Hell Sony will devalue their first party titles like that. PlayStation and Xbox are not clones and don't need the same business model.

Devalue their 1st party? That makes no sense, it's either a good game or it isn't. The hardware is more relevant to what you're suggesting and I find it quite odd how it sounds like you oppose such a thing. Reaching out to more people is a good thing, not devaluing things.

Shpeshal Nick · Oct 31, 2018

Captain Tuttle said:
Any data to support this or just a complete guess?

Uh.....is the answer not in the part you bolded?

LordBaztion · Oct 31, 2018

I don't think Sony needs to copy MS, they are doing very well right now, just like MS doesn't need to copy Nintedo to be succesful. Also, Sony seems to be readdy to poise PSnow as their subscription alternative, ready to take off when game streaming becomes more accesible.

Troll · Oct 31, 2018

Curufinwe said:
Lol.

When your first party stable has games like God of War, Spiderman and The Last of Us 2, giving them away in a subscription is a bit different than giving away Sea of Thieves and Forza.

Gamepass is actually increasing single purchases of games released on the service, not the other way around. This is a fact. Sony is working against their own best interests and yours too at this point.

Shpeshal Nick · Oct 31, 2018

Curufinwe said:
Lol.

When your first party stable has games like God of War, Spiderman and The Last of Us 2, giving them away in a subscription is a bit different than giving away Sea of Thieves and Forza.

What a peculiar viewpoint.

So...what happens if Microsoft starts putting out 85-95 Metacritic games next gen? Although Forza Horizon is already well in that range.

What happens to your theory there? You think GamePass exists because of the Metacritic of their first party games in the last couple of years? Because even Gears and Halo are still in the 80s.

knuckles · Oct 31, 2018

gordofredito said:
I think while a brilliant idea, it's something Nintendo and Sony would and should never do, at least not with their exclusives.
Microsoft can do this because in all honesty, their exclusives are not even close. Some of Nintendo's worst first party titles are better than anything Microsoft has put out this generation that isn't Forza. Sony is on a similar streak, if not an even better streak.
They should allow their own Game Pass thing but I'd be fine with no exclusives in there. The quality of Nintendo and Sony games are up to par with their asking price, Microsoft's? Not so much

This is ridiculous. I loved halo 5 , gears 4. They need more, but not worth the asking price? I don't know how this stuff is allowed tbh.

iareharSon · Oct 31, 2018

It's easily the best value in gaming right now. And with Microsoft significantly expanding their first party capabilities with Playground Games, Team Ninja, The Initiative, Compulsion Games and Undead Labs - with a potential for more studio acquisitions down the line... that value is only going to increase. We're approaching a future where $120/year, or less than the price of two brand new AAA games, grants you access to all first party titles from Microsoft.

Andrew Lucas · Oct 31, 2018

CaptNink said:
Yeah, cuz why give consumers options and choice right?

Let me show my platform bias you silly.

Man God · Oct 31, 2018

I bought an XBOX 1 X because of the incredible deal and maybe the second thing I did was get a free month of Gamepass. It took me a long time to figure out where the games are (XB1 has the worst system UI of all time) but it is fun to just pick up a game for five minutes and then move on to something else. I've always found most MS first party games to be rather disposable outside of a few big ones. I also finally got around to playing Ground Zeroes...which was okay. I stopped repeating payments on Gamepass (it wouldn't let me do it on the console itself without an error message so I did it on the website) and for whatever reason instead of ending at the end of November it gave me until the end of December.

Horizon was fun for about five minutes before I realized that nope, I still don't like realistic driving games, especially those without realistic collisions. It is by far the best looking game on the system though.
Sea of Thieves was useless to me as I wasn't going to pay for Gold.
Halo 5...don't like the single player much.
Master Chief Collection...this I actually did play quite a bit of. I love Halo 1.

It's a neat service but I became bored of it faster than I did with the old ass NES games on the Switch online, which is worrying. If they really went hard in on adding old original XBOX and 360 games that I liked I could see coming back from time to time.

SuikerBrood · Oct 31, 2018

Man God said:
I bought an XBOX 1 X because of the incredible deal and maybe the second thing I did was get a free month of Gamepass. It took me a long time to figure out where the games are (XB1 has the worst system UI of all time) but it is fun to just pick up a game for five minutes and then move on to something else. I've always found most MS first party games to be rather disposable outside of a few big ones. I also finally got around to playing Ground Zeroes...which was okay. I stopped repeating payments on Gamepass (it wouldn't let me do it on the console itself without an error message so I did it on the website) and for whatever reason instead of ending at the end of November it gave me until the end of December.

Horizon was fun for about five minutes before I realized that nope, I still don't like realistic driving games, especially those without realistic collisions. It is by far the best looking game on the system though.
Sea of Thieves was useless to me as I wasn't going to pay for Gold.
Halo 5...don't like the single player much.
Master Chief Collection...this I actually did play quite a bit of. I love Halo 1.

It's a neat service but I became bored of it faster than I did with the old ass NES games on the Switch online, which is worrying. If they really went hard in on adding old original XBOX and 360 games that I liked I could see coming back from time to time.

This is fair. But I'm sure for most people there is something to play with the diversity of games they are offering. There are almost 200 games on Gamepass as of now. Just like PSNow it also offers quite some third party stuff.

RedRum · Oct 31, 2018

Heisenburger said:
Would love to see how it translates to revenue later on with the lack of exclusives.

Where have you been since E3?

ONMSFT: Microsoft has a hit on its hands with Xbox Game Pass, and analysts are starting to notice

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