I think these are reasonable assumptions we would make as people who purchase games, but I don't think the data collected by the studios/publishers support this argument, thus why I think this gamepass exists in the first place.
If I look at Shadow of the Tomb Raider, or Assassin's Creed Odyssey or a whole slew of other games, short after their release, we see shortly a near 20-30% price reduction.
I understand what you are saying. But I would not call this Good Business. I would call this greed!
I will give you an example:
Here in Portugal people know that after christmas stores make great promotions to get rid of remaining stocks. And more and more people are avoiding to buy stuff before christmas, getting it after, for a lot less money.
If companies who do not sell do not respect some time to give value for money to those who payed full price, more and more people will not buy full price. And the end result will become counter productive.
If you told me this was beeing done by the corner store, I would just say that they have no notion of reality and were greedy, and that their future would be compromised.
Coming from big corporations, I just don´t know what to think. They should have people with the know how that warn them against these kind of moves...
But ok, this was just a side note. Because I cannot find that reducing price so soon is the best way to increasse profits. It might be the best way to reduce losses, but not to increase profits. I personally look at those recent promotion as a sign that the game is not very good, and it is not selling well.
Most people that I know, have backlogs so massive that it's unlikely they'll ever finish them, and they'll unlikely finish them because everyone is trying to play the newest titles and most aren't going back to older ones except when you've dedicated a service specifically for playing 100 or so odd titles. Then you're likely to try more of them, but perhaps not finish them
True... But there are games and games. Some are just mindless games made for imediate fun, like Fortnite. But others are way more complex, and the game is not just for fun, but a way to tell a story. For instance, I look at Fortnite and God of War as completly diferent things. Two completly diferent experiences! One is the experience offered by a Multiplayer game, the other the experience of a single player game.
Not finishing a game like God of War after you start it, is loosing on the story it is trying to tell you.
So, having that line of thought, seems to be also a bet on multi, because that's the kind of game you can skip on the story, the kind of game, you can stop playing not loosing anything.
And that's an indirect way of telling people that single player games are not a bet.
Personally that's my favorite kind of games. The kind of games I want to preserve.
Sea of thieves has no micro transactions for instance yet, and they continually release new content. Sony does this with single player adventure titles. Most people in the industry would tell you that those types of games (in general) won't sell enough so that's why they stopped making them. But Sony can, and will continue to, to round our their library and drive audiences to their platform. I would like to almost compare it to, purposely try to make 'Academy Award Winning' movies. They know the very specific formula that will garner them GOTY winners.
I'm a bit lost... I do not remember any Sony released games that were incomplete or lacking content. I do remember some games that got extra content, but none that was criticized for having no content in the original release like Sea of Thieves.
Besides, the story about single player games not selling is something I already debated with several persons, and I look at it like a fallacy.
You can tell me Multi player is cheap to produce, you can tell me multi player has a diferent appeal, you can tell me multi player is easier to explore with micro transactions. But no one can tell me single player do not sell.
In February 2018 I made some reasearch and wrote an article about that subject. I went to Vgchartz and took a list of all the games that sold over 1 million copiesm using this as a sample of the most representative games in the market.
I assumed the following to separate those games into single player, and multi player:
- All multi player games are online, but not all online games are multi. Examples: Battlefied 4 is a online multi player game. Street Fighter is a co-op game, played online for extra features.
- Multi player games are those that have the multi player part as it´s main component : Examples: Halo 5 I condererd multi player because its multi player part is more relevant than the single player for the majority of players, Uncharted 4 has multi, but I considered it a single player game because the online is a mere extra.
- Games know to be good single player games, that have bigger or at least great or sucess on its online part, were considerer multi player. GTA as an example.
- In case of doubt, the game was to be considered multi player (So, I benefited multi over single)
I found 118 games with over 1 million copies sold in PS4, and 63 on Xbox One. And proceded to separate them as multi and single players going by the above criteria.
The results were diferent on both consoles:
PS4 had 75 single player games on the 118 with more than 1 million copies sold. 63% of the games that sold over 1 million were single player.
Xbox had 35. In Xbox, 55% of the games that sold over 1 million were single player.
Single player was the most wanted format... But what about copies sold?
What I found was what I stated above. Multi have more imediate atracction and sell more copies. Single Player Games sell less copies.
Even so, the sales on PS4 were the following:
181.88 milion sales were on Multi Player games.
182,4 million sales were on Single Player games.
The market was 50-50 on sales. So, Single Player games do sell.
On Xbox it was a bit different.
109 million sales were on multi player games.
44.7 million were on single player games.
Xbox had way more sales on multi. Something I found normal, due to the bet Microsoft is doing on multi player.
I then added both sales: I got 291.4 million sales on multi, and 226.97 million sales on single. The unbalance was 6.18% on the multi player side.
My final conclusions were that the market was ballanced, and if there is a dominant format it would be single player. Why? Because the remaining games on the Vgchartz list that I did not took into account were almost all single player. And if I added Switch, Vita and 3DS Games, they would mostly fall in the single player category.
So, Single Player does sell... Companies dont want to produce them for other reasons, or just do not produce quality games, and then, due to the lower risk of multi, they claim that they do not sell. But that just seems to be dirt in your eyes.
Create good Single Player games and they sell... And Sony and Nintendo are the best example of that!
That's fine, as long as you are okay with me not knowing any of the answers for real. I don't work for MS, and Gamepass economics is likely more closely guarded information than their next generation hardware. The best I can do is look at, comparable services like Netflix, recall some tidbits from interviews, and try to draw some inferences.
That's ok, we are just talking... But do not compare the uncomparable.
Netflix has no competition and is almos a monopoly. Microsoft will have plenty of competition, and hardly any monopoly in the near future!
Netflix infrastructure is just HDD. Microsoft requires HDD, RAM, CPU and GPU.
Netflix exclusive content is mostly episodic content, and that atracts people. Microsoft can be too, but will that atract people?
Netflix costs 11.99 euros. Gamepass costs 10 euros.
You can see a movie everywhere, stop it anytime. You may be able to play a game anywhere, but with different control schemes and results. You cannot pause it anytime.
You release a series episode each week. Added content for games takes several months to create and is not releases weekly.
MS will promote your titles each month as they come into Game Pass.
That's great. But the promotion will reach other games too. It will not be directed to any game in particular, but to the service. So will it be effective for anyone in particular? It´s not exactly the same thing, is it?
