83
...It'sKilling the Company
Wow, so Microsoft has zero profit this year, huh? How the mighty have fallen.
I was subscribed to them for months and forgot about it, but then they tried to charge me like $30 and all of a sudden, I remembered my password, and told them metaphorically where they can fuck off by unsubscribing myself permanently.
They would have gotten more from me had they not been greedy.
tl;dr: Rent seeking cancer of a company got too greedy and screwed themselves.
I can’t be the only one who actively tries to reduce the number of subscriptions I have. It’s terrible for the monthly budget. Gamepass lasted only a few months for me before I decided that I didn’t get sufficient value out of it. Something about paying monthly to retain access to a game that I can otherwise buy rubbed me the wrong way.
tja
I'm actually really surprised this didn't work. They had acquired such a large amount of quality studios, IPs and a huge back catalogue. They had enough money to keep the subscription low indefinitely. Getting added to the Game Pass was a huge deal for indie devs at one point, but I think those who did were disapointed with returns.
Granted the article says they dropped 300 million on Jedi Survivor and Suicide Squad... which gets to the point of how unsustainable subscription models are. It's like a smaller version of the Ai market. Just like how you can't break even on 300 million selling a $10 a month subscription, you can't break even on $30 billion investments with the same $10 subscription.
Still, how could you possibly mess this up. lol
It was great when I first got it, but I ended but getting fatigued with it. New releases wanted time investment, but the rising costs meant I felt I should play more stuff. In the end everything I wanted to play required time and I felt that I was no longer getting value out of it. It would have cost less to not have it and just buy the game for some titles.
I think that's how it went down for most people.
I remember getting free games with Gold back on the 360 and One. Eventually they became unplayable without the subscription. Kinda enshitified.
There's just something about your progression being tied to a subscription that makes you want to invest less in the game.
People are tired of subscriptions
Slopscriptions
There's some kind of threshold of # of subscriptions and $ of subscription people are willing to be tolerant of.
Like most people were ok with Netflix/Prime when they were the only two in town and it cost like $20-$25 for both.
Now there's how many different streaming services? You don't even have an easy way to know which provider has what anymore either.
Microsoft currently sells 4 different passes... and I have no idea whatsoever which gives me what... And the prices range from $14 to $25 CAD, which is the upper limit of what people want to pay in total subscription cost alone.
People get games with Netflix and Prime on top of their existing subscription and I'm sure most people don't play or even know about them. lol
There is a way to find who has what. I'm using JustWatch to find which movie or show is being streamed on which service. There's a website and an app.
Soo, what does Microsoft do well these days?
Advertise for Linux
Enshittify
GamePass is killing Microsoft? I don't think so. And Xbox is not a company. The company that own Xbox is Microsoft.
Xbox has its own CEO, it is its own company, wholly owned by Microsoft. Xbox then also owns other companies like Mojang, Zenimax Media, Activision Blizzard .. They own companies too... Its companies all the way down. This way if one fails, it's bankruptcy doesn't take down the whole chain.
it is its own company,
No that was exactly the point, Xbox is NOT its own company, it is a division within Microsoft. Something you could have easily looked up before posting false information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_(division)
formerly Microsoft Gaming, is the video game and digital entertainment division of Microsoft,
Look at you expecting quality journalism from IGN.
Gates is a pedo, Microsoft is a shitty company and i don't own an Xbox so go ahead and fucking die!
The Xbox this article talks about is much, much broader than the console. Xbox is the name of the division of Microsoft responsible for games. If Xbox dies, so do Bethesda, Activision, Blizzard, and World's Edge. We lose Elder Scrolls and Fallout, Call of Duty, Halo, and all three of the top real time strategy franchises: Warcraft, Starcraft, and Age of Empires.
I'll be honest, I don't really care about 99% of what Xbox does and it could go away in a heartbeat and I wouldn't care. But that last 1% would be devastating. Age of Empires 2 & 4 and Age of Mythology are my top 3 played games of the last decade. In fact, aoe1, 2, 3, 4, and aom collectively make up 9 of my top 20 games by playtime on Steam, thanks to various rereleases. I would be gutted if I'm that went away.
Plus, there's the wider impact. Half those mergers never should have been allowed, but now that they have happened, the amount of game devs who would lose their jobs if Xbox died would be devastating. That's all their lives impacted. Many would probably have to leave the industry entirely and hope they can find work elsewhere. Others would be in a precarious position with a glut of workers making it easier for new employers to exploit them.
There have been layoffs across the board and most of the talent that made previous games great is already gone so i don't have much hope for future games under Microslop because they will most likely be AI slop.
If Xbox dies, so do Bethesda, Activision, Blizzard, and World’s Edge.
IMO every dev/publisher acquired by MS was already tainted and on its way out. Most of the people responsible for the great games you associate with those companies are long gone. Let them die.
oh ok how’s that price hike going?
It was never going to work out in favor of consumers.
Also fuck Microsoft. At the very least they should be broken up.
🎻
Dear Capitalists,
Choke on your own subscriptions!
Gamepass never made sense to me as a product. Games make most their sales money in the first few months, but MS gave them away as day 1 additions. Games are heavily monetized with dlc, but a rotating catalog makes buying any less desirable since you could lose access unless you bought the game as well. The subscription seemed to push sales at you, but that's a turn off for consumers. The used game market was still a thing, a 6 month subscription is less value than spending the same on a handful of games to keep permanently.
I'm not sure how it could succeed unless they stopped selling games at all for Xbox, which would probably kill it faster.
this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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