It's up to developers to make those decisions. MS and Nintendo provide support for the underlying framework to make it happen.
Honestly, I think a keyboard and mouse on a Nintendo console will never happen. Much less on a portable one!
So most games finish their sell in the first month of sales, and then there is a steep drop off entirely with very little ability to pocket additional revenue later in its lifecycle, especially with used games etc.
- When subscribed to game pass, because your model is more subscription based now, you can change the way you develop titles as well as how your budget. You can spend significantly less on marketing unlike the traditional models.
- Game Pass can help mitigate risk: Your profit arrives over time, you can deploy games earlier with less content or features and add more content over time instead of taking a massive risk to develop a huge game up front.
- Your games have much wider audiences, and many more people that would normally not purchase your title can try and play it now. Resulting in additional revenue that you'd never get.
- Game Pass doesn't require the labour of creating a demo.
- Data points suggest that those on subscription services are likely to spend upwards to $25 EU on DLC
- Most games are sold first traditionally, and they can now pick up trailing revenue on game pass after the initial sell.
Yes. Games sales drop a lot after a couple of months. But you have to consider that even so, you must give value for the money to the people who paid, Otherwise they will not buy. Even if games stop the huge amount of sales after some months, one should wait at least a year before making the same product available at 1/7 of the price. More if the game had patches due to problems!
About what you wrote next, I might agree on all of it. But I have questions on all of them. I warn all that read that I´m about to repeat some previous arguments.
Do note that these questions do not exist on a service like PSNow that runs in chain with normal sales, but only for a service like Gamepass that runs in parallel with it
"When subscribed to game pass, because your model is more subscription based now, you can change the way you develop titles as well as how your budget. You can spend significantly less on marketing unlike the traditional models."
Yes.. you can! Mouth to mouth works like a charm. But... When you have to chose what game to buy, that works wonders. When you have 100 available, will that really work the same way? And if it works, won't that damage the remaining 99 since you can only dedicate time to one at a time?
"Game Pass can help mitigate risk: Your profit arrives over time, you can deploy games earlier with less content or features and add more content over time instead of taking a massive risk to develop a huge game up front."
Is this a good thing??? Delivering content over time? Episodic content?
But lets accept you manage to keep a person locked to your game like that, the previous question arrises. Won't this damage the remaining games?
And if all games start doing this does your risk really decreases?
This point may have advantages to the game maker, but not to the general public. At least I see none!
"Your games have much wider audiences, and many more people that would normally not purchase your title can try and play it now. Resulting in additional revenue that you'd never get."
Eventually yes... Some day! But has anyone ever managed to know how many people would have to subscribe to compensate for the loss of sales?
Horizon Zero Dawn sold 10 million, God of War sold 7 million, Spider man sold 11 million. In here I have 38 million copies sold on a 90 million consoles market.
But how many real persons bought this games? 38 millions?
What if, at least 7 million bought all 3 games?
This is just an example. But the point is that not all persons spend the same. The market tells you the world has X consoles, and that it has sold Y games, and then you average things and enter the attach ratio concept. But in reality this doesn´t work like that. Some people buy a lot, others hardly spend a dime.
Subscription is very good for those that spend a lot. That's were the savings are.
So... how many will really enter that market? And how many are needed to compensate for this unbalance created for the loss of sales from the big spenders?
Can anyone answer that?
"Game Pass doesn't require the labour of creating a demo."
This is a good thing, but is a demo really a big labor?
"Data points suggest that those on subscription services are likely to spend upwards to $25 EU on DLC"
As I already stated, I doubt these values. Not saying they are fake, just saying I find them normal due to the fact that the big spenders are the ones more attracted to this. But add the small spenders, and I see this number normalizing with the one in traditional sales.
"Most games are sold first traditionally, and they can now pick up trailing revenue on game pass after the initial sell."
For now...
Then you continue:
The point is that MS doesn't care where you play your games.
They will lose some sales on Xbox yes.
But they will gain many more sales on PC since there are bound to be more people who own Sony or Nintendo consoles and PC but only want to play a game or two on xbox.
Microsoft should care were we play games. In 2013 Microsoft didn´t care for the console as a console. And the results are there.
Now they go even further, but the Xbox fans are console gamers. They want the console to be the focus. Not just one of many means to play their games.
Above all, all your message mentioned was the profits perspective. It was almost a list of the advantages producers find that will exist in these services. And I know that's what counts to companies. But that is not the point (al least for me). I know that if I charge double for something I will get double the money. And in the economic perspective I may find that very attractive. But what I have to wonder is how many people are really wanting to spend double for the product. Because if they don't buy it, I may end up loosing money.
That's what I´m questioning here. Microsoft is doing all this to gain more. But all of this seems to good in the perspective of more money. But is it good for those who pay for it?
I have doubts... real doubts...
Thank you for your time iroboto, and for debating this. I find this a very important question! I´m not trying to rebate you, just showing the other side of the coin so that arguments may surface.