The funniest part about this comment is that's how GAME pass has always worked. They offer it to titles for a lump cash payment in lieu of sales. Now that they own Activision, therefore BOPS6, they care about those lost sales.

When they didn't make enough software for the last decade for it to be a problem for their bottom line, they didn't.

But it sure as shit effected literally every game ever on Game Pass. It is and always has been a literal loss leader for every single game on it, they just now give a crap because one of those bigger games is finally theirs.

When Hi-fi rush exploded in popularity, it was because it was discovered on game pass. Where it then went on to be played by millions, while the team behind it made nothing, so Microsoft closed the studio. Literally because the game wasn't profitable enough after MS decided to force shadow drop it on game pass at launch.

But sure, BOPS6, "lost" them millions on Gamepass and they care about how Gamepass affects the sales of that title.

I've never seen a company speed run leaving the console market as fast as Xbox is. Gives me post Dreamcast Sega Vibes.

I think for a series established that well, they should have a good estimate of how many people would have bought the game. Especially with the PlayStation crowd as a control group. Though there are probably more PS5s out there than Xbox Series devices. So in this case I do think that yes, a lot more people would have bought it.

If your argument was fully correct, there wouldn't have been many games sold on PlayStation either.

They would probably have loved to lower those 84% for PlayStation sales using the logic if it was justifiable. But no matter what, you'll always have to admit a mistake: either that GamePass hurts sales, that the market share of Xbox Series is small compared to the PlayStation or that your number one IP that you acquired for a lot of money and banked on no longer draws a crowd. Neither of these options looks good.

I really don't understand why people like those games. I don't find them fun at all. And the micro transactions are so fucking obnoxious.

It’s unclear if MS is even winning considering they’re trying to hike the price 50%, and considering that Xbox sales are flat.

Especially when you aren't consistently providing a quality product. If every game is a hit, people will buy them all, but if your games are hit or miss, you keep making revenue regardless.

But they lost money

Wait untill you hear about loans and regular interest payments lol.

A more refined method of generating consistent, regular cashflow, rofl.

(Ahem, at least in theory, but then when that stops working, surprise! you get a bailout!)

... But yeah, the natural evolution we should expect is that MSFT (or Hulu or any other sub based service) will soon or at least eventually partner with something like klarna to offer 3-6 month payment loan options ... for every recurring monthly subscription payment.

Think about it.

What that means is that... well, if you cancel on month 5, you're still making payments through month 8, or month 11.

So ... should you really go 3 - 6 months paying for not having something?

Or just keep your subscription going?

Loans are literally the OG of 'dark pattern', MTX style bullshit, its a perfect match made in hell.

Hypercapitalism, away!!!

Actually remember seeing some numbers on this a while ago and I was pretty shocked at how few games the average person buys. Like median ps3 owner bought 7 games over the life of the entire console.

From looking around google quickly it looks like the average for ps4/5 is 6-10 depending on region.

So if someone stays subscribed to the service for the life of the console then Microsoft comes out way ahead compared to just selling games, I would guess

I'm not average I'm sure, but I buy 0 games a year at full price 😅

Also all this shitty mtx they pushed front and center in the game.

Isn't this something everyone should do with every game? No pre-order, wait until reviews are out. If not really needed, then wait until patches are out, maybe with a small or big sale on the game price too. Almost all AAA games launch broken or unoptimized.

This isn't the "good, this will fuck up Microsoft" you're looking for..They are perfectly fine with people paying through subscriptions instead of sales.