it's no news to anyone that gaming consumers don't like the idea of not owning their games (being digital or physical), let alone be attatched to a monthly fee to access them, now if you think this is not enough, imagine paying 70 dollars for a license to STREAM a game of your library + 160 - 200 dollars annually on a subscription to have access to datacenters to stream your game, you think consumers would do that? (coff coff Stadia, coff coff) it's either the Netflix model (day one releases on the subscription) or nothing, and even the Netflix model for games doesn't work, cause most consumers don't like to be locked to a subscription/fee to access game content, you see, and i'll use Xbox as an example...
if you take the Xbox One base (50M) + the Xbox Series S/X base (25M) it results in 75 million Xbox consoles out there that can be potential GamePass subscribers, and MS just revealed that former Live Gold + GamePass subscribers reached a number of 34 million (on PC, Phones, Tablets, Smart TVs and Consoles), if not even half of the CONSOLE base for Xbox subscribes to GamePass, why do you think people that are outside of the console/hardcore space would? simple, they would not.
Xbox has been putting their games on PC day and date since 2016, almost 10 years ago and a lot of people still refuse to subscribe to GamePass on the platform, most prefer to buy the game on Steam, own it and play it when they feel like they want to play, without a hurry of being on a monthly fee to access it or being afraid of the game leaving the catalog of the service, and actually most people play one game at a time, that's why the 'all you can eat' Netflix subscription model doesn't make sense for games, it makes sense for movies (2 hours) and tv shows (40 - 90 min per episode), but a game can take up to 100 hours to complete, it's better to buy it than to rent it for the core audience, specially the ones that work during the day and only have a few hours to play everyday, an adult that works every day can take more than 1 month to complete a game like Starfield for example, let alone hundreds of games, it just doesn't make sense
the model Microsoft has been investing since 2017 when they launched GamePas is the wrong model, they realized that after their subscription numbers stagnated in 2022, many Xbox fanboys don't want you to know this, but Xbox GamePass actually lost subscribers post Covid Pandemic when people started to leave their homes again, MS had to rename Live Gold and call it GamePass Core and combine it with Console/PC and Ultimate memberships to boost subscribers and it still didn't meet their targets, after so many years of wrong decisions, only one could be made to save Xbox
third party publisher: that's what the future of Xbox is, games on every platform TO SELL, Microsoft lost the opportunity of making the right decisions in the Xbox One generation and gaining a large player base, they could've kept the old strategy of selling great AAA games, putting them on subscription services after 2 - 3 years and porting games to PC only after 2 years like Sony is doing, but no, with Microsoft is always 100% or nothing, just like they bet everything on the Kinect, forcing consumers to buy it bundled with every Xbox One, to then just 2 years later discontinue the device and never mention it again, they had to put 100% of the efforts in GamePass and end Xbox as a viable hardware platform...
the big reality here is that the vast majority of consumers subscribe to services like PS+, NS Online and GamePass to play games online, once this ridiculous barrier MS set in the 360 generation no longer exists, these subscriptions will all lose millions of subscribers cause people who care about their catalogs are the minority in the casual gaming space, you see, don't you think it's a little bit strange that Microsoft completed their acquisition of Activision Blizzard King half a year ago and they still didn't put these games on the gamepass catalog? with ballooning budgets, the GamePass model will get more than an unsustainable status, it won't be viable even to the richest company in the world and that's why subscriptions and cloud won't work for gaming, the model is not compatible with the desires of the vast majority of consumers (300M people on PS, Nintendo and a couple hundreds more on Steam)
if you take the Xbox One base (50M) + the Xbox Series S/X base (25M) it results in 75 million Xbox consoles out there that can be potential GamePass subscribers, and MS just revealed that former Live Gold + GamePass subscribers reached a number of 34 million (on PC, Phones, Tablets, Smart TVs and Consoles), if not even half of the CONSOLE base for Xbox subscribes to GamePass, why do you think people that are outside of the console/hardcore space would? simple, they would not.
Xbox has been putting their games on PC day and date since 2016, almost 10 years ago and a lot of people still refuse to subscribe to GamePass on the platform, most prefer to buy the game on Steam, own it and play it when they feel like they want to play, without a hurry of being on a monthly fee to access it or being afraid of the game leaving the catalog of the service, and actually most people play one game at a time, that's why the 'all you can eat' Netflix subscription model doesn't make sense for games, it makes sense for movies (2 hours) and tv shows (40 - 90 min per episode), but a game can take up to 100 hours to complete, it's better to buy it than to rent it for the core audience, specially the ones that work during the day and only have a few hours to play everyday, an adult that works every day can take more than 1 month to complete a game like Starfield for example, let alone hundreds of games, it just doesn't make sense
the model Microsoft has been investing since 2017 when they launched GamePas is the wrong model, they realized that after their subscription numbers stagnated in 2022, many Xbox fanboys don't want you to know this, but Xbox GamePass actually lost subscribers post Covid Pandemic when people started to leave their homes again, MS had to rename Live Gold and call it GamePass Core and combine it with Console/PC and Ultimate memberships to boost subscribers and it still didn't meet their targets, after so many years of wrong decisions, only one could be made to save Xbox
third party publisher: that's what the future of Xbox is, games on every platform TO SELL, Microsoft lost the opportunity of making the right decisions in the Xbox One generation and gaining a large player base, they could've kept the old strategy of selling great AAA games, putting them on subscription services after 2 - 3 years and porting games to PC only after 2 years like Sony is doing, but no, with Microsoft is always 100% or nothing, just like they bet everything on the Kinect, forcing consumers to buy it bundled with every Xbox One, to then just 2 years later discontinue the device and never mention it again, they had to put 100% of the efforts in GamePass and end Xbox as a viable hardware platform...
the big reality here is that the vast majority of consumers subscribe to services like PS+, NS Online and GamePass to play games online, once this ridiculous barrier MS set in the 360 generation no longer exists, these subscriptions will all lose millions of subscribers cause people who care about their catalogs are the minority in the casual gaming space, you see, don't you think it's a little bit strange that Microsoft completed their acquisition of Activision Blizzard King half a year ago and they still didn't put these games on the gamepass catalog? with ballooning budgets, the GamePass model will get more than an unsustainable status, it won't be viable even to the richest company in the world and that's why subscriptions and cloud won't work for gaming, the model is not compatible with the desires of the vast majority of consumers (300M people on PS, Nintendo and a couple hundreds more on Steam)
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