Microsoft is exploring offering free Xbox Game Pass streaming with ads

John Elden Ring

John Elden Ring

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Xbox’s chief financial officer Tim Stuart recently told attendees at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit that the company wants to bring Game Pass “to every screen that can play a game”.

One potential method of expanding the service’s reach that he floated included offering ad-supported game streaming to players in emerging markets.

The vision I like to talk about is we have xCloud game streaming, so you can subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate and you can stream hundreds of games to really any endpoint that has a browser experience,” Stuart said

For models like Africa, or India, Southeast Asia, maybe places that aren’t console-first, you can say, ‘hey, do you want to watch 30 seconds of an ad and then get two hours of game streaming?

Africa is, you know, 50% of the population is 23 years old or younger with a growing disposable income base, all with cell phones and mobile devices, not a lot of high-end disposable income, generally-speaking.

So, we can go in with our own business models and say — there’s millions of gamers we would never have been able to address, and now we can go in with our business models
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Via TweakTown.
 
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Snes nes

Snes nes

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I’m surprised they didn’t try making gamepass a free service. Im sure that will work.
 
Yurinka

Yurinka

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If true we can almost confirm that there won't be a next gen Xbox because this would their finances even more: people don't need to buy their console to play their games. They don't even have to buy them. And now, they wouldn't even have to pay the subscription.

Having only 25M subs, some of them moving to this and considering how low are the prices for ads, sounds like another finantial disaster.
 
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AllBizness

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What will happen the Gamepass core I wonder? This is a perfect excuse to add a 3rd tier to Gamepass and increase prices. Microsoft needs to show YoY growth in subscriptions and this is how they'll get it.
 
arvfab

arvfab

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Watch a 30 seconds ad every two hours in order to be greeted by an in-game ad during loading times.

Now Starfield's release makes sense.....
 
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thicc_girls_are_teh_best

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TBH it's not an inherently bad idea as long as it remains an option. Subsidized sub service tiers via ads has been a thing for a while now. It's the method of implementation that can be called into question.

If MS figure a way to make the ads not screw over a player's input (I'd assume they'd have to create a save state of the very moment before the ad plays, then resume afterwards. Like Quick Resume, but not as a buzzword), I can see it working. More platform holders, even Sony/SIE I'd imagine, could potentially look into subsidized subscription models via ad support.

I also imagine that these platforms will try offering incentives for users who actually engage with the ads (i.e buy a product) through the service acting as an affiliate, like free reward points or gift cards towards other games, or entering sweepstakes, etc. Again, it's just another option; if you don't want the ads just sub to a tier without them and be done with it.
 
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