Business aspects of Subscription Game Libraries [Xbox GamePass, PSNow]

[Deleted member 2197]

Forza Horizon 4 will be delisted later this year - KitGuru

One issue which many video game developers have come across at some point is the need to delist thei

www.kitguru.net

Making the announcement on their blog, the team at Playground Games shared the unfortunate news: “Due to licensing and agreements with our partners, Forza Horizon 4 will be delisted from digital platforms (Microsoft Store and Steam) on December 15, 2024. This means the game and its additional content will no longer be available for purchase through online stores.”
...
While some achievements will become unachieveable, the team revealed that “players who already own the game and its content will be able to download and play it as normal, including its offline, online, and multiplayer features; physical copies of the game purchased after this date will also work and will be able to use online features.”

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Xbox Game Pass getting big changes, ditching day one releases for basic tier

Microsoft has confirmed sweeping changes - including price increases - to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service in th…

www.eurogamer.net

Microsoft has confirmed sweeping changes - including price increases - to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service in the run-up to October's launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which will include the removal of day one releases for its overhauled basic tier.

Price increases as high as 20-25% for some offerings. GPU increase is around 15%.
This changes the value proposition substantially. I wonder what will happen to the subscription numbers? Will COD still boost them, or will interest decrease?

Also, I'm somewhat confused by the offerings and 'Game Pass Console' vs 'Game Pass Ultimate'. I thought the original was all the games you want from the library, and GPU was streaming too? So people buying XBSX as a low cost all-you-can-eat system using GP, they now need to buy GPU for those Day 1 titles (new buyers anyhow)?

 

[metacore]

Microsoft console users (... wait I forgot "hardware" not console is now official nomenclature) again got short end off the stick compared to pc. Strange.

 

[Seanspeed]

Microsoft console users (... wait I forgot "hardware" not console is now official nomenclature) again got short end off the stick compared to pc. Strange.

GamePass on PC is a fairly compromised experience. Less games, doesn't work on Steam Deck, shenanigans with Windows Store, inability to mod games(or even properly access files). Obviously most of these will apply to console users as well, but PC users are not used to such limitations being put on them.

 

[RobertR1]

Unless its accompanied by notable hardware price drops around the same time, gonna be a rough q4.

 

[XboxKING]

Looks like gamepass was not sustainable, so they had to remove the day 1 released or charge more for it

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The price is now equivalent to more than three AAA $70 games a year, as opposed to the 1.5 AAA titles before. It's still great value for those who consume a lot of AAA games, but most players will probably save money buying 2-3 AAA they really want to play a year.

Well, we'll see in the subscription numbers...except I guess MS won't share those if they go down!

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Still great value. You pay half these prices just to play online multi.

 

[Seanspeed]

Still great value. You pay half these prices just to play online multi.

Great value on-paper still, sure. In practice, it's becoming less so, though. Especially when you remember that outside of 1st party titles, these games are just long-term rentals and limited time on the service actually makes quite a lot of people apprehensive about starting some of these games, particularly any ones that are fairly long.

You have to really be dedicated to making the best use of the service. Of course, we all know that half the 'model' of these subscription services is hoping that people just stay subscribed out of laziness rather than actively liking it.

 

[eastmen]

The price is now equivalent to more than three AAA $70 games a year, as opposed to the 1.5 AAA titles before. It's still great value for those who consume a lot of AAA games, but most players will probably save money buying 2-3 AAA they really want to play a year.

Well, we'll see in the subscription numbers...except I guess MS won't share those if they go down!

Don't you still need xbox gold to play online ? It's now named game pass core.

So if you are gaming online the step up to game pass ultimate is pretty cheap .

I'm prepaid till 2028 and get 50% off so it doesn't matter much to me

 

[Nesh]

Looks like gamepass was not sustainable, so they had to remove the day 1 released or charge more for it

We have been saying this for a long time and that's why Sony has been avoiding it. The Subscription growth hasnt been enough to fund the AAA day one releases. They had to make GP expensive enough to ensure the money invested in AAA titles are funded back and make it profitable.
The question how elastic is the GP demand in response to price increases? Or will it backfire both ways basically checkmating their ownselves into a pocket with holes?

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Great value on-paper still, sure. In practice, it's becoming less so, though. Especially when you remember that outside of 1st party titles, these games are just long-term rentals and limited time on the service actually makes quite a lot of people apprehensive about starting some of these games, particularly any ones that are fairly long.

You have to really be dedicated to making the best use of the service. Of course, we all know that half the 'model' of these subscription services is hoping that people just stay subscribed out of laziness rather than actively liking it.

Nah. I think you're ascribing your own reservations to everyone else out there. Most people don't care that much about playing games forever. They just move on to the next game. It doesn't take much dedication to finish 3 games per year.

 

[Seanspeed]

Nah. I think you're ascribing your own reservations to everyone else out there. Most people don't care that much about playing games forever. They just move on to the next game. It doesn't take much dedication to finish 3 games per year.

If this was the case, then Blockbuster would have never gone out of business, as renting games would have been so much more lucrative than selling them.

 

[see colon]

If this was the case, then Blockbuster would have never gone out of business, as renting games would have been so much more lucrative than selling them.

Renting never went away. In fact, I would argue that since Netflix, Disney+, Max, Hulu and the like are the preferred movie platforms now, renting is more profitable than selling them. Disney, who were in the prime years of forced scarcity selling VHS tapes for too much money, had revenue of about $12B in 1995. Inflation adjusted to today, that $24-25B. Netflix, who specialize in renting, had $33B in revenue last year. On this generation of hardware, PS+, Gamepass and Nintendo Switch Online all have tiers where you rent games. Services account for a significant portion of their revenue each year, driven by these rental options.

Despite what any of these companies say, they don't want you to own games. Therefore, they don't really want you to buy games. They want to rent them to you in perpetuity.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

Nah. I think you're ascribing your own reservations to everyone else out there. Most people don't care that much about playing games forever. They just move on to the next game. It doesn't take much dedication to finish 3 games per year.

Literally bought a 3 month sub to Gamepass ($35 for ultimate for 3 months off Woot) for this reason, playing Dungeons of Hinterberg now, will beat Siege of Dawn later, a bit miffed that Frostpunk 2 got delayed. Costs me ridiculously little to play all these game, Neon White, Little Kitty Big CIty (awesome, what Stray should've been) and to see that City's Skylines II still sucks versus buying even half these games.

The whales for other subscription media are the ones that effectively rent the same thing over and over again, the ones that subscribe to whatever The Office is on today and pay $15 a month just for the privilege, they don't even need to make new shows for those people, $15 a month for forever(long enough), most of which is profit! But if you're that type of person for a game, you're more likely to skip Gamepass and to buy it directly, it's cheaper after all and you do have that option.

 

[XboxKING]

Literally bought a 3 month sub to Gamepass ($35 for ultimate for 3 months off Woot) for this reason, playing Dungeons of Hinterberg now, will beat Siege of Dawn later, a bit miffed that Frostpunk 2 got delayed. Costs me ridiculously little to play all these game, Neon White, Little Kitty Big CIty (awesome, what Stray should've been) and to see that City's Skylines II still sucks versus buying even half these games.

The whales for other subscription media are the ones that effectively rent the same thing over and over again, the ones that subscribe to whatever The Office is on today and pay $15 a month just for the privilege, they don't even need to make new shows for those people, $15 a month for forever(long enough), most of which is profit! But if you're that type of person for a game, you're more likely to skip Gamepass and to buy it directly, it's cheaper after all and you do have that option.

If wales could sustain gamepass then MS wouldn’t have had to remove the day-1 releases going forward

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If wales could sustain gamepass then MS wouldn’t have had to remove the day-1 releases going forward

At first glance you'd think that'd be to make more money from subs. However, it might be to discourage existing subs from lapsing - the plan might be entirely because it is profitable so long as subs are maintained and not short-term.

Putting it another way, GP is at ~35 million subs, right? And reportedly not growing. So the changes in those 35M subs are what's going to affect GP far more than the changes for the new few million subscribers added this year and next. If the thinking is "we need more money", they won't be getting that much more money from new subscribers so it'd be a fairly weak business move. If they really needed more money per user, MS would need to 'force' existing lower-tier subs onto the higher priced GPU for those Day 1 games, which they aren't doing.

 

[XboxKING]

At first glance you'd think that'd be to make more money from subs. However, it might be to discourage existing subs from lapsing - the plan might be entirely because it is profitable so long as subs are maintained and not short-term.

Putting it another way, GP is at ~35 million subs, right? And reportedly not growing. So the changes in those 35M subs are what's going to affect GP far more than the changes for the new few million subscribers added this year and next. If the thinking is "we need more money", they won't be getting that much more money from new subscribers so it'd be a fairly weak business move. If they really needed more money per user, MS would need to 'force' existing lower-tier subs onto the higher priced GPU for those Day 1 games, which they aren't doing.

You should at “yet” at the end of your post. As MS also claimed there would be no price hikes due to COD coming to gamepass..

The FTC saw this long coming and even tried to warn us:

FTC Calls Xbox Game Pass Price Hike 'Exactly The Sort Of Consumer Harm' It Tried To Stop

The agency filed a letter in its ongoing appeal of the Activision Blizzard merger

kotaku.com

 

[fehu]

They are stuck in a cycle of one good and all the other horrible

 

[Cappuccino]

Don't you still need xbox gold to play online ? It's now named game pass core.

So if you are gaming online the step up to game pass ultimate is pretty cheap .

I'm prepaid till 2028 and get 50% off so it doesn't matter much to me

You can get GP Core (aka Xbox live) for $60 a year, same as it was years ago (when I was ten years old it was the same price). That’s $5 a month.

GPU is 4x that at $20 a month.