Lol.. so true. It doesn't matter what they want anyways cos MS will keep investing big time .. no signs of slowing down either. I applaud MS for creating something like Game pass. it is a great service.
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Phil Spencer: Putting AAA games in Game Pass leads to a significant increase in sales
- Thread starter Rychu
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I'm glad Game Pass is working very well for all parties, it's excellent and long may it continue. Two recurring subscriptions in my household now. With this news it seems like it should last too.
It's okay, I wouldn't say good. GRIP needs some polishing at the very least. Even bugs in the game manual/menus which isn't really acceptable. I'm glad it's on game pass though, wouldn't have played it otherwise despite the fond memories of PC Rollcage II. Potential is there so let's see what the devs do.
You mean that game barely anyone cared about until after it was canceled?
Player count = game copies sold in your opinion, probably
SOD 2 and SOT fell of the charts pretty quickly. I don't see some boost in sales here
Phil connecting Gamepass directly with boosting sales. So, yeah, SOT and SOD2 fell off the charts everywhere pretty quickly. In few weeks to be precise. That's not boosting sales.
Isn't SoD2 at like 4 million active players?
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It's called keeping the data to yourself so you can form a PR narrative which no one can fact check.
It doesn't make sense, but you can't outright tell Phil that he's bullshitting, because he can pull a, "Well I can see the numbers."
You can't compare Netflix and games... Just stop doing it. They are different thing. People shouldn't compare movies/tv-shows to gaming at all
People pay 10-20€ just to see 1,5h movie in theater.
Netflix is what like 7€ month? I don't wanna buy movies or tv-shows, I can watch them on Netflix.
Unfortunately we only have a monthly top 10 for NPD, but SoT remained in the UK top 20 (physical sales only) for a couple of months - not bad for a game with a 68 Metacritic score.
And I think I'll take Mat Piscatella's informed analysis on this, he's mentioned several times this year that Game Pass has increased sales. It's not just Phil making this connection.
It's not going to magically boost every game. Grip is fucking terrible.
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But Microsoft said both of those titles exceeded their internal sales projections.
Exactly. That's my point with singleplayer games. It might help sales with GaaS games
This was my intended plan. But as I am sure MS wanted I just decided to keep my sub as they have added games monthly and there has been at least one game a month added that I was interested in playing but would not have bought. I will likely buy Gears 5 & Tactics, just to support the devs, and use the sub for games like SoT and CD3, which I would not buy but will now be able to play.
Players count aren't sales. Surely bunch of those players are Gamepass subs. How it is easy to guess? SOD 2 fell of the charts everywhere in few weeks. I'm already boring myself repeating same thing over and over again.
NPD has been tracking digital since 2016. Sony and Microsoft started sharing exclusive numbers in April 2017.
But why wouldn't these people who see the game on Twitch or Mixer just subscribe for $10/month?
Is it a lack of awareness among more casual gamers that Game Pass exists?
Because I know when I was interested in State of Decay 2 I used a one month free trial for Game Pass, played it for about 20-30 hours, and then canceled my subscription.
In the absence of direct sales numbers the best we have is that the game is being played by a ton of players 5 months after release.
I mean, obviously a game not staying on NPD10 doesn't mean it no longer is selling or that the sales weren't boosted.
:)
It's incredible really. Especially when you consider 4 million new players play the game every 14 days to keep that active player count at 4 million. Must be around 48 million people who have played SoD2 by now with all those 14 day trials.
You're boring everyone else. Not surprising you ignored pswii60 linking you to evidence of it helping.
There are clear reasons why a game launching on Game Pass would lead to fewer sales in some cases and more sales in others: there are undoubtedly those who would have bought the game but instead just download it through Game Pass, and equally there are those who wouldn't have bought it, try it through Game Pass and then go onto buy it outright. As Phil alludes, games launching onto Game Pass also benefit from stronger word of mouth almost by default. It's like a small-scale version of the boost seen for Rocket League when it launched onto PlayStation Plus. It's quite possible that in some cases the extra sales outnumber the cancelled sales and, even if it didn't, Game Pass would still be a good bet for developers and Microsoft because of the subscription revenue and the additional players who can be monetised through the game itself.
I have a feeling that this kind of thing will shift quite radically over time.
Right now if a new Xbox exclusive comes out that I want, I'm going to choose between subscribing to Game Pass or buying the game outright. For something I expect to play long term, like Sea of Thieves, I buy the disc. For something I expect to play for a few weeks, like Forza Horizon 4, I subscribe to Game Pass. It's a choice of $5 to play for a month versus $60 to play forever. Yet if I become a long term subscriber, as I am with Netflix, the choice becomes much easier: $0 to play via Game Pass forever* or $60 to play via disc forever. Even if sales are holding up currently, I do think that sales will drop off as long term subscribers go up. In the end, I simply don't see the common sense reason that games can avoid the trend we see in other mediums where subscription services have become mainstream.
Be wary of the word 'active'. It's meaningless without considering time and, in the case of the 4M figure for State of Decay, it simply means there have been 4 million players since the game's launch. Normally 'active' user counts are daily (DAU) or monthly (MAU). Microsoft don't seem to provide either that often. Their Most Played charts however paint a clear picture about SoT/SoD2's actual active audience.
I have a feeling that this kind of thing will shift quite radically over time.
Right now if a new Xbox exclusive comes out that I want, I'm going to choose between subscribing to Game Pass or buying the game outright. For something I expect to play long term, like Sea of Thieves, I buy the disc. For something I expect to play for a few weeks, like Forza Horizon 4, I subscribe to Game Pass. It's a choice of $5 to play for a month versus $60 to play forever. Yet if I become a long term subscriber, as I am with Netflix, the choice becomes much easier: $0 to play via Game Pass forever* or $60 to play via disc forever. Even if sales are holding up currently, I do think that sales will drop off as long term subscribers go up. In the end, I simply don't see the common sense reason that games can avoid the trend we see in other mediums where subscription services have become mainstream.
Be wary of the word 'active'. It's meaningless without considering time and, in the case of the 4M figure for State of Decay, it simply means there have been 4 million players since the game's launch. Normally 'active' user counts are daily (DAU) or monthly (MAU). Microsoft don't seem to provide either that often. Their Most Played charts however paint a clear picture about SoT/SoD2's actual active audience.
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I get that, and I can see that happening sometimes.
But I see it like this.
Buy the game for 59.99
Or
Play it using my $10 monthly subscription to game pass where I can play all their newest games and older ones. Games pass is valued at the price of two new games a year.
If you buy more than two Microsoft games a year there is no reason not to have game pass and just play it there. Why would owning it be more beneficial?
I can see the example you gave being more of what's happening now before people really start seeing the value in game pass. More ppl playing it through game pass that wouldn't have, then friends without game pass are buying it. But once everyone realizes the value of game pass then I don't see this being the case, because your literally spending money you don't need to, to get the same experience. So right now, it make sense for the people who may not see value in game pass. But with all the new studios I don't see why you wouldn't want game pass once games started getting released frequently between all studios.
EA saying more people (subs) spend money on the game post launch makes more sense to me than what Spencer is saying.
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By sales they mean number of copies or revenue?
I know a few friends and me bought the ultimate upgrade pack for FH4 since we got the base game from GP. And I assume more people would spend on their "free game" for DLC
I know a few friends and me bought the ultimate upgrade pack for FH4 since we got the base game from GP. And I assume more people would spend on their "free game" for DLC
Oh I totally get your point. I would imagine gamepass logs the actual title the customer is downloading. So maybe the data will prove that in the future they see loads more subscriptions than they would normally?
They will have data on it all. Plus MAU is more important than actual sales now. Engagement is the proven driver if incremental revenue.
Was this a sarcastic post? I couldn't tell.
Three data points still isn't anywhere near enough. Especially when those games aside from SoT are sequels, which will typically outsell their previous series versions anyway. SoT is a new IP, so claiming GamePass made it sell better is weird when there is no frame of reference... I.e. sold "better" than what?
I only asked you how many they had sold as that is what your post implied. If you know fuck all we'll leave it there.
Most games fall off the charts. These games made more money while on the charts though.
What I don't understand is how do third parties make money from this? Do they get a cut of the subcription payment from MS or do MS just pay them a free and say it's free advertising for their game?
I'm not sure, they deliver quite different kinds of games, as someone who mostly plays single player games the risk is that something like this could kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. There's probably a good reason why models like this work for EA and Microsoft, and it doesn't necessarily apply to everyone.
Sorry, it's apparently enough for senior Microsoft leaders.
I'm not sure where you've been, but many sequels have been underperforming at retail in recent times. And right after the Gamepass announcement, the common assumption here was that retail sales would take a significant hit if people could just sub for cheap and play the games. Acting like the better sales for the sequels was expected is just strange.
Sea of thieves is a new IP, but it can sell 'better' compared to internal estimates.
Essentially, we aren't privy to all the data MS has, but when there's a consistent trend with Gamepass as a common factor, and when sales surpass internal expectations, one can draw a conclusion.
You know more than him im surprised you're not some professional stock market analyst tbh
If he was already a subscriber, why would he buy the game? If he kept his sub up for 6 months, he could have played and beaten GOW, Detroit and Spiderman, all for $60.
Biggest issue Xbox has for me still is its exclusive content which I know will get better in time but right now, When you Wiki the x1 exclusives there's not even a scroll function on the page.
So I take it that this means Sony is probably going to adopt this moving forward?
I mean, if it doesn't affect sales negatively...
I mean, if it doesn't affect sales negatively...
OK, so, there are both employees at companies and entire companies whose job it is to analyze trends and predict the success and potential sale of products.
In general, these people and companies are very good at what they do and with games can easily get within 100k sales on smaller titles and 500k on huge sellers.
These people at both Microsoft and NPD had estimates for games like SoT, SoD2, FH4, and some smaller titles from 3rd parties like Graveyard Keeper. They have historically been pretty close to actual sales to the point that if 3+ titles all greatly exceed estimates, it is most likely not that they screwed up 3+ times, but that an external influence has affected the potential sales in a way that they did not account for.
The only uniform external influence here is GamePass. All were day 1 on GamePass and all exceeded sales expectations substantially. Well outside the expected margin of error for the estimates.
You and many others here may not be able to comprehend how these people do their jobs, but you should be able to recognize that companies pay these people hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for their expertise. It's clear they provide value and know what they are doing. Yet, because of GamePass they were wrong in their estimates and are now having to figure out how to increase estimates to account for the GamePass influence.
Part of doing so is determining what aspects of GamePass is actually driving he sales increase. This could be things like Twitch and YouTube, friends lists, posts on Social Media, or in person word of mouth. Most likely a combination.
Then they will try to determine if there are ways to get these benefits without GamePass or if something like GamePass is actually almost a perfect storm of features and functionality for this type of sales growth.
Not at all
Subscriptions like this are for games which are forgotten quickly or do not have great sales on their own
Combining them for a value proposition becomes a good option
Combining games which are already selling very strong at full or near full price doesn't make sense because you're giving up what people are already willing to pay
When sales of games like God of war fall off then bringing them to services like PlayStation now or ps plus makes sense for the combined value proposition because sales are no longer individually carrying revenue stream
After games lose their legs these are great options
The alternative is origin premium which is a premium price for access to new games which is a larger guaranteed revenue stream for a publisher that can host new games upon release that are full 60 bucks standalone because the monthly cost is 20 bucks per month or whatever like for battlefield v and that is just as valuable if not more valuable to the publisher than a 60 dollar standalone sale
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