I'll be happy if it even causes a small drop in console warrior ammo. lol
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Sonys ‘anti-consumerism’ days are over?
- Thread starter Remember_Spinal
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I'll be happy if it even causes a small drop in console warrior ammo. lol
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peter42O
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I agree with you on the quality aspect in general but compared to last generation, I do believe that their quality is better overall. Thus far, there's been no Ryse's or Crackdown's. I loved the Halo Infinite campaign. Not a multi-player guy so no interest in any of that, good or bad. Thought about playing Forza Horizon 5 for the campaign but im not a sports/racing fan gaming wise.
I'm not a Bethesda Game Studios fan and outside of a few hours in Fallout 4, I have never played any of their games so Starfield and all the rest in general, are a monthly rental for me too.
Halo really needed another delay which is crazy given it was already delayed a a year.
The £70 thing I think is overstated. My brother had a SNES in early nineties and games were going for £60 back then. Game development nowadays is way higher.
People can whine about it but sooner rather than later all big AAA games will be going at that price point. I personally prefer that to say the Nintendo approach where low-budget, technologically primitive games are sold for £50 - £60.
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peter42O
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I agree with Halo Infinite. If only they knew last Fall that they would eventually delay Starfield, they could have delayed Infinite. I do think the campaign is great and while the multi-player is great when it comes to the combat and gameplay loop, there's just no content for it. And Forge which I found out recently is a mode that allows users to create maps and whatnot, you would think 343 would have made a priority but they didn't. My only complaint for me personally is that who knows when the next story expansion gets released.
Yeah, I paid $80 U.S. for Chrono Trigger back in the day. $70 isn't the biggest deal in the world but there's a lot of games out there at $70 that just aren't worth the cost in my opinion. Gotham Knights isn't worth $70 in my opinion but thankfully, I traded it in today for $38 so it only cost me $32 to play it day one.
I do think that Microsoft goes to $70 for their games which I believe is the better decision out of the three (games, console, game pass sub) because I don't believe that raising the prices of the other two aspects would do more harm than good where as raising the prices of their games is the opposite because those who aren't hardcore will just go to Game Pass and if you're going to $70 on say Redfall or Starfield, that's 7 months of Game Pass and I would think that everyone would get at least a few games total out of those 7 months.
It's easy for Microsoft to not raise the price of games because they didn't release any next-gen games yet 
The "next-gen tax" was for next-gen versions of games from T2, Activision, Square, WB but people only talk about Sony like they started it.
The "next-gen tax" was for next-gen versions of games from T2, Activision, Square, WB but people only talk about Sony like they started it.
The Microsoft sponsored anti-Sony propaganda will never stop.
“anti-consumer”
Will always bother me I think.
Are we saying games should be free? That they should pay us even for the time we spend suffering thru them?
I find this quite ridiculous. People will virtue signal when a dev is shuttered and express sympathy… “oh sorry you lost your job. Hope you land somewhere nicely and keep fighting for unionization. We support you!”
But will you pay the cost of that game countless have people slaved over and depend on to feed their families? Each and every texture someone worked on. Man hours were spent for every patch. Some games need someone sleepless round the clock to prevent them from breaking. You internet provider costs are not enough… sorry.
Cost is not relative to subjective quality either. A game does not require a 90+ meta to be worth full retail price. That doesn’t matter.
Cartridges once cost 80-95$ during the days of OoT and Shadows of the Empire…
And all of a sudden Nintendo is pro consumer? They sold cardboard for 90$. Never put anything on sale ever. Put dlc behind rare action figures. And if we really want to go there… develop games at technical standards 10 years behind the rest of the industry. And don’t get me started on their dogshit online infrastructure and charging a sub to play ROMs.
I understand times are bad. I feel it too. The cost of my own living has skyrocketed. But I will still gladly pay to sustain my favorite games and studios. I want them to keep doing what they’re doing because I will gladly pay for more.
Will always bother me I think.
Are we saying games should be free? That they should pay us even for the time we spend suffering thru them?
I find this quite ridiculous. People will virtue signal when a dev is shuttered and express sympathy… “oh sorry you lost your job. Hope you land somewhere nicely and keep fighting for unionization. We support you!”
But will you pay the cost of that game countless have people slaved over and depend on to feed their families? Each and every texture someone worked on. Man hours were spent for every patch. Some games need someone sleepless round the clock to prevent them from breaking. You internet provider costs are not enough… sorry.
Cost is not relative to subjective quality either. A game does not require a 90+ meta to be worth full retail price. That doesn’t matter.
Cartridges once cost 80-95$ during the days of OoT and Shadows of the Empire…
And all of a sudden Nintendo is pro consumer? They sold cardboard for 90$. Never put anything on sale ever. Put dlc behind rare action figures. And if we really want to go there… develop games at technical standards 10 years behind the rest of the industry. And don’t get me started on their dogshit online infrastructure and charging a sub to play ROMs.
I understand times are bad. I feel it too. The cost of my own living has skyrocketed. But I will still gladly pay to sustain my favorite games and studios. I want them to keep doing what they’re doing because I will gladly pay for more.
Losing 50% of $150 billion is going to hurt Company A a hell of a lot more than losing 33% of $2.3 trillion is going to hurt Company B.
Not saying any of this because I want to argue in favor of price raises for any reason, just that there are understandable economics behind it which can be both macro (the general economy) and micro (just within the company's corporate structure) at the same time.
And also understanding that the same macro factors can have a worst impact on one company over another, leading to differences in how & when they adjust pricing structures for products and services they offer.
Don't kid yourself, MS is going to raise all three prices once the holiday period is over.
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peter42O
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Perhaps. I see game prices going to $70 which is just following everyone else and if anything, entices more people to subscribe to Game Pass instead which I don't see the base tier increasing from $10 but I do see Ultimate tier increasing to $20. They could add DLC/expansions to this tier for all their first party games and possibly the Ubisoft vault (ala EA Play) to the tier as well.
I don't see the consoles getting price increases at all until the mid-gen refresh which would just stay at $500/$300. Eliminate any actual price cuts for the older models by simply replacing them. Also, Microsoft has trouble selling the consoles at their MSRP now so increasing either would only make things worse in my opinion.
There will simply be a new spin. Other companies raised their prices because Sony paved the way or something like that. Aside from that, the term "anti-consumer" has become almost meaningless with the way it's used as platform war fodder.
I genuinely don't understand why they would increase the games to $70 across the board to push people to a service that ultimately earns them less money than what they'd get from the increased revenue in direct sales, unless it is simply to grow the sub count.
But I honestly question at what point does it become predatory pricing, versus still being considered a push for sub increase in the "growth phase" (growth phases can't go on in perpetuity).
If they don't increase the cost of consoles, then I expect them to cease the heavy price sale promotions and flash sales for Series S and shift production to Series X, which has the better demand of the two. If they actually release some damn games next year worth looking at or drawing attention of the mainstream (Pentiment and Grounded ain't it), maybe they would be able to sell the consoles at their actual MSRPs and even with a slight price increase, or gain more GamePass subs instead of missing growth targets for multiple fiscal years in a row now.
As always, it comes down to the games.
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peter42O
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Increasing the games to $70 is the lesser of the three evils. With a lot of publishers including Sony doing it since the generation started in November 2020, I don't see Microsoft getting much if any pushback for raising their game prices. As for sacrificing the money from game sales for subscriptions is simple, it's because they'll make more money off a subscriber in a year than they would buying a $70 game plus when you buy a physical game, the retailer gets their cut plus there's distribution, shipping and manufacturing costs which don't apply to digital or subscription. So a $70 game is actually much less than what people believe it is. Also, it's psychological. If you're spending $10 a month to have access to hundreds of games and there's a game that you love with DLC or micro-transactions, they will be more enticed to spend their money on those aspects because they believe that they're saving money by not buying the $70 game day one. For example, I will be playing Monster Hunter Rise on Game Pass for what will be for me a $10 monthly rental. Now, if I really enjoy the game, I'll be more enticed to spend the $40 on the Sunbreak expansion because I saved $30 from not having to buy the base game. Trust me, it works.
Also, subscription is about having recurring revenue every month for Microsoft. They don't release games every month or in a few instances, every year (lol) but with a subscription service, they'll maintain a high amount of revenue monthly and the costs let's be honest are minimal because day one games are usually AA/Indies and they barely cost anything. There may be instances like an Ark 2 that could be expensive but that's because Vin Diesel is in the game and the publisher would want to cut down the cost to pay him by getting more from Microsoft.
I wouldn't say it's predatory at all because at the end of the day, no one is forcing you to subscribe to Game Pass. Microsoft doesn't have a gun to my head or anyone's for that matter. Also, games are $70 so it's not like Microsoft is the only publisher doing this and in fact, is the last major publisher that will be charging $70 outside of Nintendo.
Growth phase is basically a decade or so. Or in this case, a generation+. It started in 2018 and we're about halfway there. Netflix took 20 years or close to it to get where they're currently at. Subscriptions are great because you can get so much more for less out of them as a consumer (like I do) and for the company, they're basically guaranteeing a very high amount of revenue every month.
While I expect them to cut down the rate of the sales/discounts for Series S, I don't Microsoft stopping them. You have to realize that this generation is all about Microsoft building Xbox brand, platform and eco-system for future generations. It's not about now. Now is actually secondary for Microsoft and as long as their quarter reports show that Xbox is making money and has high revenue, they can easily eat the losses if there's even any.
Microsoft has confirmed eight first party titles for 2023. Starfield (which I believe will be November 2023), Redfall (February/March), Minecraft Legends, Age of Empires 2, Age of Empires 4, Ara History Untold, Forza Motorsport and Ghostwire Tokyo. While some games aren't for me, if all eight of these games release in 2023, that would make 2023 Microsoft's best year for Xbox.
It does come down to the games and they're coming. Whether or not they're for you is entirely based on each individual and their personal preferences.
The games for XBox have been coming for so long that they’ve surpassed Tantric levels, yet somehow they never all seem to arrive, and few of the ones that do are worth the wait.
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peter42O
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Your idea of revenue from direct sales being sacrificed due to subs only works out (in terms of getting more money from a subscriber on that service) if a person is buying less in games (and MTX/DLC) than the cost of the service annually.
Which would work out well given most gamers probably do only spend about $120 - $180 or so a year in buying games, or getting MTX for F2P games, mixed in with a basic online gaming sub. But with GamePass, this becomes an issue because of how many ways there are to get a sub at a heavily discounted price, to where even mainstream & casuals would know.
And I know this, because every single big bag of Doritos has a GamePass trail slapped right on there. Other common grocery items do, as well. I don't think stuff like the $1 conversion, free trails or even MS Rewards redemption are as obscure to mainstream & casuals as some of us in enthusiasts circles want to think.
I do agree though with this to a large extent, the psychological angle to a sub service. Still, I think there are ways to do this for other companies which are more fitting to their business structure. Sony and Nintendo, for example, would never do Day 1 for their games into a subscription service the way Microsoft is, BUT I would be interested in seeing them do a per-game subscription model where you pay off for a game in low monthly installments, with different plans available that can have higher monthly installments if you want any available DLC or MTX bonuses wrapped in there.
You can do that for say the course of a year, for whatever individual game you're looking forward to playing, but I'm sure there would be a caveat like making sure you're connected online (or connect online periodically) to validate/authenticate access to the game while you're still paying off on it. And you'd probably need to use a credit card or debit card connected to a bank account (so, no pre-paid cards or those types of cards you can just load with raw cash at a 7-11 for example). All or many of these things I'm sure MS already implements for GamePass.
But, for companies like Sony & Nintendo, just on a per-game basis where you're effectively still 'buying' the game, it's just in installments. At least you get to play it Day 1 for, say, $5 upfront instead of $60 or $70, and with installments that would incentivize maintaining launch MSRP pricing longer (practically forever in Nintendo's case), because there isn't really an excuse to not be able to afford the game anymore if you can get it for $5 a month.
I think that's the compromise Sony & Nintendo can take to doing 'Day 1' in a subscription service for their games; it's treating the payment option as a service, not the game itself, and not the game itself being rolled into a sea of 100s of other games for a sub costs that can't realistically be sustained (for Sony or Nintendo) over the long-term like it probably can for a company like Microsoft.
Dunno man. A sub service can only retain subscribers if enough regular new content keeps coming big enough to warrant them sticking around. We see the high churn that other sub services experience when there's a lack of content. Potentially, a gaming sub service like GamePass can nullify some of that thanks to having enough of a backlog where if there's a game or two a person is into playing, and considering the average game (even indie game) is longer than the average film or short TV series, combined with the psychological angle of to that sub they're only seeing it as "$15/month" instead of $180/year (since they're paying month-to-month),...supposing those games are played over the course of a few months, then maybe that becomes valuable recurring revenue for Microsoft after all.
But how likely is that to really be the case? MS obfuscate a lot of their GP numbers, we don't know the daily churn rate for example, or quarterly sub count results, either. This is in spite of GP supposedly being so important to their overall gaming strategy (at least until recently, going by Phil's statements of GP accounting for at most 15% of gaming revenue going forward).
Even supposing, however, that subs stick around in light of lacking new content, if that means they're only around because they forgot they are subbed (it happens a lot; the day comes up where you're auto-charged for the next month and you forgot, and it's not easy (maybe even impossible) to get a refund so you just have to remember to cancel before the next charge to your card or account), or doing so out of sense of obligation without maximizing what they get out of it...that doesn't sound like great value for money to me WRT those type of subscribers.
Actually MS already have $70 games; Psychonauts 2 had a physical release in September at $70 for at least PS5 and Series consoles. So they are already toying with the concept of increasing game prices.
You're right that no one's forced into GamePass...unless you sub to something like a Verizon mobile plan, and something like GamePass is baked in. You're effectively auto-subscribed in that case. But the thing about predatory pricing is that it enables a company like Microsoft to price aggressively low if they WANT to and feel there's a NEED to do so to beat out rivals. Since, again, MS wouldn't need revenue off the service nearly as much as a company like Sony or Nintendo would, and have other corporate divisions to bring in the money for them. They don't need the service itself to generate a reasonable amount of money on its own as if it were something they depended on to sustain themselves as a company, therefore they can price it aggressively low compared to rivals.
So I still genuinely believe there's a concern of predatory pricing involved with something like GamePass in particular, and I'm interested how that could see integration into discussions going forward from a groups of bodies.
I genuinely don't understand in what way a subscription service needs 10 years in "growth phase" to fully establish itself unless it is backed by a massive corporation which can afford sustaining revenue losses for that long just to drive sub counts up. Conversely, platform holders making console hardware would never describe a "growth phase" of 10+ years because those types of sustained losses for that long would make most any of them bankrupt (except for, again, a Microsoft thanks to the profits they generate from other divisions like Windows and nowadays Azure & Office to offset those kind of losses); I mean we saw Sony almost go bankrupt due to PS3's struggles and that was just in the span of a few years.
So that would suggest that sustaining a subscription service platform is inherently less expensive than a console hardware platform. I get that side of things, and theoretically would suggest that any company that can sustain a console hardware platform, can theoretically sustain a subscription service platform...but how many can do both simultaneously? I think that's the part of Sony's contesting to leaning so heavy into a sub model that some people don't understand; there are only a very small number of companies globally that can sustain operating BOTH models simultaneously and Microsoft is one of them, and that ability has NOTHING to do with their revenues or profits from the console gaming industry!
And that's before even getting further into it, like if for example it costs less (theoretically) to operate & sustain a subscription service model vs a console hardware model, why do some of the companies heavily pushing the former need to justify buying major publishers just to have regular content in a subscription service to keep sub numbers up? Is it because a subscriber can technically cancel their subscription, versus a console buyer whom after paying for a console, can't just "cancel" that payment as it's a single-time transaction? But then IMO that asks ANOTHER question: how many companies can realistically operate on a business model where the customer can choose to end payment any given month, let alone that AND simultaneously support a business model where billions of dollars have to spend annually on producing hardware at volume for customers to purchase? That one, of course, just feeding back to my idea that only a very small number of companies can do both simultaneously, Microsoft being among the few.
You can probably guess how this links back up to my ideas on such financial capability (which, let's not be meek here, was built up on a history involving at least in some capacity monopolistic and shifty business practices on Microsoft's part, to which current-day Microsoft continues to benefit from in numerous ways) can enable practices like predatory pricing, but no need in bringing that back up here.
Right, and I'm asking you, how do you THINK they're able to eat the losses? I've already mentioned it several times: their other divisions (Windows, Azure, Office) make so many magnitudes more money than Xbox (both in revenue and certainly profit), that MS can sustain any losses on pushing/subsidizing GamePass and Xbox growth (simultaneously, not just Xbox the traditional console like it was in the past) and still be perfectly fine.
And, it's through that capability, why they can have the option to aggressively undercut rivals in the subscription services space (and even in the console hardware space) to the point where concerns of predatory pricing can be legitimately brought up. And all of this is empowered through financial and market gains achieved in earlier decades where companies like Microsoft absolutely engaged in at least some forms of questionable anti-competitive pricing, product/feature tie-in and exclusion, predatory pricing, shifty backroom corporate deals etc. that even though they may not do those things today (more or less), as they exist today is in thanks to what they as a corporation did in those prior decades. You can't just handwave that away.
Now at least on some of those, I'm not trying to designate a clear good/bad connotative argument. It simply is what it is. MS being able to heavily subsidize losses on Xbox & GamePass due to their revenue streams elsewhere is simply what things are, it's a benefit they have that they should leverage where sensible. However, getting into the why, of how they reached that particular point, especially when you go into their corporate history from inception and when they blew up with MS-DOS on the IBM PC, then yes we can start to quantify good/bad connotative arguments and I would personally quantify bad ones.
Does that act as a fair argument to enable some check on what limits companies like MS should have on them WRT business ongoings in markets today? Well, that's probably up for each individual to determine.
Microsoft's best year, or Xbox's best year in general? Best year... in what way? Number of games released? What if they all suck? Sales revenue? What if they all bomb? Reviews scores? What if they're non-genuine or just for promotion?
There are probably some Xbox diehards who would say 2004 or 2007 is MS's best year ever due to Halo 2 or Halo 3, for example. Singular games, but games with massive impact for them, and big impacts in general. If we're expanding to Xbox in general, then that 2023 lineup may only seem lukewarm to someone who say saw 2008's 360 lineup and thought it was amazing and still thinks it's amazing.
Agreed.
Sony wasn't the only publisher selling their games at $70 and PlayStation isn't the only platform where next gen games are sold at $70. I assume MS will do it once they release their first next gen only big AAA game. Nintendo already did it in the SNES. People forgets that when counting inflation AAA games are now cheaper than in any previous generation.
I think blaming Jimbo for it is unfair and doesn't make a lot of sense, specially when the alternative is to fill the game with microtransactions, season passes, dlcs and so on. Maybe som Sony GaaS may end being like that, but they said that they'll keep having their big non-GaaS single player games.
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