this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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nope. consider this
they don't have the income from retail games any-more, if you're an Xbox player, you almost certainly have gamepass. which means you aren't paying for a single game they produce. A decade ago a new Halo would come out and that would be 100 million in revenue day one. Now it's nothing.
They have to pay for the entire cost of development of multiple game studios. I'll highlight the ones for relevance, these are studios they have to pay salaries for hundreds of people for every month, as well as all the other costs of development, and then get no payday. Gamepass has to (but doesn't) pay for all of these: Bethesda Game Studios, ZeniMax Online Studios, id Software, Arkane Studios, Machine Games, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Games, Roundhouse Studios, Blizzard, Treyarch, Infinity Ward, High Moon Studios, Toys for Bob, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, Beenox, Radical Entertainment, Rare, 343 Industries, The Coalition, Mojang. Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Undead Labs, Compulsion Games, Obsidian Entertainment, InXile Entertainment, Double Fine
Then they have to licence all the other games on gamepass, all the third party stuff on there currently that microsoft does not own. Again, this means that they don't make any money from game sales of those products, and also have to pay for them. Gamepass subscriptions currently probably covers this cost just about
Currently Gamepass can only exist thanks to microsoft azure and office 365. those to microsoft services pay for gamepass game development. This is why no other company does this, only microsoft can front the money from their other businesses.
Why wouldn't it scale? They're not stupid.
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/xbox-game-pass-has-over-30-million-subscribers-according-to-linkedin
30m last year, over $10 per month on average, $350m+ a month, plus game sales which, contrary to what you've said, still exist. New titles result in more console sales and more subscribers. They haven't shifted to this model to make less money.
They aren't losing money.
I want to be extremely clear about this, game sales functionally do not exist. We are not going to be discussing the validity of if xbox gamers purchasing Xbox games. We know they are not.
New titles are not resulting in more console sales and subscribers, as those have flatlined.
They have indeed shifted to this model to make less money so that they can be the one making money in a decade. It's extremely short-sighted to claim otherwise.
25m.> 30m subscribers is not flatlining. Where is a source about console sales and game sales stopping? "We are not going to be..." Uhh why?
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/xbox-series-xors-consoles-set-a-new-record-for-units-sold-in-december-2023-per-circana
Console sales higher than ever in December. BG3 just came out, which sells alongside COD: https://exputer.com/news/games/baldurs-gate-3-top-selling-xbox/
literally from your article.
from another ign article
33.3m, higher than I thought, and that's not including Core. 13% is great growth.