Xbox spends over 1 billion dollars on supporting third party games coming to Gamepass annually

[DForce]

Haven't they been on a 25 million subscribers plateau since early 2022 though?

If they already promised not to put anything from ABK on Gamepass for the next year, how are they ever going to grow a lot?

Phil said during the FTC trial that the subscribers are at 25m and it hasn't grown since. The only game I see giving it a large boost is Call of Duty, but I don't think Microsoft is going to be happy with the results.

I think many Xbox fans think this acquisition of ABK is going to help Microsoft achieve its subscriber goal and I just don't see it. The main Call of Duty players might purchase the base game instead of playing it on Game Pass because they play it throughout the year and it might be cheaper to purchase the game instead of playing $9.99 a month to play it.

Is there even any major game coming out of Xbox Studios in 2024?

I don't think most of their big releases are major in comparison to Sony's but I do believe it's major for them because it's their biggest games. These games are made to sell you on their ecosystem\platform

Hellblade 2, Flight Simulator 2024, and Avowed are expected to be released in 2024. Jeff Grubb believes Fable might be released in 2024 as well (probably unlikely but we'll see).

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Honest question, because if there was, by now we should have heard about Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake, Gears, etc.
I don't think Hellblade counts as a major game (at the very least from the first game it's not very mainstream(-able)), and Avowed isn't looking that great IMO, though I could be wrong on both accounts.

Game Pass launched in 2017.

April 2020 - 10 million subscribers
September 2020 - 15 million subscribers
January 2021 - 18 million subscribers
January 2022 - 25 million subscribers

I think this is worth noting because Microsoft reported that they saw an increase in subscribers when Starfield released. This is probably the biggest boost Game Pass receieved ever since 2021 when they released Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite (single player).

Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infintie (single player) are mostly popular on console and that's probably why we saw a huge increase in 2021.

It seems that the subscirbers on console have plateau and that's why we see little growth.

It took less than 2 months for Forza Horizon 5 to reach 15m players. In 3 months, it took Starfield to reach just 12 million players.

These two games were probably their biggest chances to increase the subscriber count within the near future outside of any future Call of Duty titles.

If Starfield is growing slowly, then I would expect Hellblade 2, Fable, and Avowed to perform worse. They acquired Zenimax, but a lot of their games underperformed and that's why they were shopping for time-exclusive deals.

My point is that their biggest games are going to be released more frequently compared to the first half of this generation. They might not be big in comparison, but they're big for Microsoft. Most of these games might underperform because millions are going to play the game on Game Pass while the subscription service remains stagnant.

 

[KiryuRealty]

Phil begging about how much money they spend on Game Pass rights leases is a prime example of Microsoft having no taste.

Also, it is clear the renaming of Xbox Live Gold to Game Pass Whatever is clearly to pump Game Pass numbers, and is such a clear desperation move that it REEKS.

 

[Cool hand luke]

It's a very predictable source of income and partially imune to bad releases. For example, one Redfall means a massive loss on game sales, but it won't make that much difference on a service already being paid.
Investors love predictability.

Considering Xbox's track record of quality game releases since Phil Spencer took over, this might be their only chance at pretending to be successful.

Recurring income and customer lock-ins are pretty big incentives. MS had articles back in the early 2000s about how they wanted to make Office some sort of subscription instead of chasing upgrade sales every few years.

Same where I work, they're pushing all clients to the SaaS instances of the software as fast as they can because this enable squeezing more revenues out of our dear clients instead of us trying to sell new versions with new features we add features that are billed separately. This is what every executives see in every software companies.

It does not mean that it makes sense for gaming, the files are very big and the money they make on units sold are too high for it to make sense as a rental service.

I'm aware of why companies are pushing subscriptions in general, but in a highly competitive hits-driven industry it only serves to decimate revenue. Especially with no lock-in for subscribers. Being able to play the latest game on release for far less than the price of a purchase and cancel immediately after finishing it typical of GP subs and has zero benefits for Microsoft.