It might be a larger than 20%. Series has only reached about 1/3 of One's lifetime sales. Though I would imagine that Series owners would be more likely to have Gamepass of some level since Core is required for online play, there is a value add of game streaming for owners of older consoles.
Market/business performance of Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 *spawn
- Thread starter XboxKING
- Start date
Aren't the series consoles around 30 milion while the one has sold around 60?
Edit: I couldn't find official numbers, but on February 2024 they were probably at 27 milion, so they must be close to 30.
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Okay, in relation to your point I responded to you are right, but I was more arguing that we don't know what sales would have been if not released on GP and we can't quantify the difference GP makes.
That said, even the 'the vast majority of players of GP wouldn't have bought it' is a bit pie in the sky.
Depending on the concert. There'll be plenty of events that making free doesn't increase adoption that much because either people aren't interested or because the people who are interested already buy tickets and making it free doesn't tap a wider audience much. Will making COD free on GPU make it 10x more popular? Or do 90% of people who want to play COD already play it?
You yourself described HB2 as pretty niche, no? So seeing it on GP, what proportion of GP owners will give it a go and what proportion won't even bother as it's not their thing? Again, we don't know. Maybe everyone tried it and most bounced off? Maybe 5 million did, 4 million of whom played the original and would have bought HB2 if not on GP. Maybe people liked the videos but were put off by reviews, and only 1 million tried it.
All you can do as a content provider is provide content and hope it works. The only gimme's are established franchises. Games you know people want, or at least are very curious over, but they don't normally buy. In the Netflix space, content is decided upon by watches. Try a new series. Does it work? No? Okay, ditch it. Then franchise over several series. That doesn't really work for gaming as there's no first-series cycle to test the waters with. All MS can do is put content on there never knowing quite how much it'll attract plays and subs. However, big franchises like a unique Harry Potter title or a big Football game leading up to the Superbowl...stuff crossing into the wider mainstream...will probably drive plays.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
You're making a point, but there's risk in any game development endeavor. Sometimes people make out like GP is some huge risk compared to Sony putting $500 million into Spider-Man 3. It's all risky. GP can actually spread the risk out among many titles. Not to mention that a game like HB2 might be relevant to GP for 10 years. After all, one of the first things many new GP users do is download the 2014 Halo Master Chief Collection to play that Halo game they always heard about when they were 6 years old.
With a live service game, even one without the implied microtransactions of most LSGs, the risk to putting it on Gamepass must be small, right? If someone pays for a month and then drops out, it's not like they get to keep playing COD. If they want to keep playing, they either have to keep paying, or buy the game. If they are on Playstation, they either have to buy the game, or get Gamepass and stream it to something other than their PS5, or get an Xbox and gamepass. Where is the loss? The only potential loss would be if someone already has GP and plays COD, and that would lead to a loss in growth for Gamepass, but should also prevent some people from leaving the service if they play COD. But I'm doubtful that Xbox, with it's limited install base, has a large enough percentage of COD players to affect the big picture COD market negatively anyway.
Think about it this way, on average recent COD has been selling 20ish million copies. The best selling COD was about 30 million. The worst selling modern era COD was 2016's Infinite Warfare at 13 million. If we assume the the baseline is somewhere around 20 million, and the population is consistent with the trend of 42% Playstation, 26% Xbox, and 28% PC, that would put us at 8.4M Playstation copies, 5.2M Xbox copies, and 5.6M PC copies. Are Steam users going to abandon Steam to play on PC Gamepass? Not according to people using Hellblade 2 steam player counts to infer that the game was a failure. While I'm sure there will be some peel off, I doubt it will be as substantial as the loss to Xbox player numbers. Every full priced purchase at $70 is roughly the same revenue as 4.11 months of Gamepass Ultimate, so if they lost all 5.2M Xbox sales, they would have to sell about 21.4 million months of Gamepass. That's 10.7 million people for 2 months, or 7.13M for 3 months, or 5.35M for 4 months.... all the way down to 1.78M for 12 months. If roughly 1 out of every 3 people who play COD on Xbox don't buy COD on Xbox but play all year on Gamepass, they will have broken even on this move.
More math...
5.2M*$70=364M
Lets imagine a catastrophic situation, where they only sell 3 Million copies on Xbox (3M*$70=210M) and only gain 12 million months of Gamepass (So 1 Million for a whole year, or 2M for 6 months, or 4 million for 3 months, any combination) That would mean they would have lost 2.2M sales on Xbox - More than 40%! And only gained an additional (12 million months * $17) $204M in return, for a total of ($210M+$204M) $414M in revenue. Which is $50M more than the original $364M they got from sales. If they only sell 3 million copies, it would only take just over 9 million months of gamepass to break even. That could work out to 9 million people for one months, or 4.5M people for 2 months, or 3 million parents who put in their debit card once to get little Jimmy to STFU and forget to cancel for 3 months, or maybe a little of all those.
Something else to think about - If the game goes on sale for, say, $50, it would only take 3 months to exceed the same amount of revenue.
Some people will choose to buy a game even if it's on Gamepass and they have Gamepass. Some people will buy DLC for a game on Gamepass, and then buy the game later when the game gets removed. But if someone plays for a few months on Gamepass, and buys a map pack and then cancels Gamepass, they have spent money on a game they do not own, motivating them to buy the game, or re-sub to Gamepass. Plus, if you add people to your user base, the potential to sell them some DLC increases with the size of that player base.
Each copy of Black Ops 6 not sold, but rented, (or sold digitally) is a copy that isn't in the used section at Gamestop. Which means to find a copy of that game next year you will be more likely to have to buy it digitally, or sub to Gamepass again. Microsoft gets $0 from each used copy sold at Gamestop or wherever else.
Actually no. Apart from the fact that you are probably aren't paying attention to what I am saying and I value my time to just go through and re explain,what Sony does isn't releasing games as 100% paid. They are also aren't doing the irresponsible thing to release games (first or third party) day1 "free" as a sacrificial lamb to subsidize a subscription service in hopes to make that work. That's a flat unflexible strategy. Sony is using a case by case approach unlike MS. Games that are released normally in their market, give valuable missing information to Sony on how well a game does and then discounts, adds them to their subscription service and expands it's availability accordingly. Releasing all games day 1 on Gamepass is like a blindfolded monkey throwing darts on a board in hopes to land on the bullseye.
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So a game Sony (or anyone else) releases "normally in their market" isn't a potential loss? I understand what you are saying, you are trying to attach more risk to a game released on Gamepass day 1 when compared to a game not released on a subscription service. But looking at the market, I don't see the risk. Any third party game released into GP is getting some sort of payment for that game. That payment would be a asset against the liability of fiscal risk. Any first party game released day 1 into gamepass would have to recoup any lost revenue to make sense. But as I spelled out earlier, it takes 3-4 months to match the $50-70 retail price of those games. The trick is to get more people subscribing to GP. But once you have a sizable subscriber base, you have a more consistent revenue stream, and that is an asset against risk.
So 3rd party games launched into GP can limit their potential loss by the revenue gained from a Gamepass deal.
First party games launched into GP have inbuilt risk mitigation because of the more consistent revenue from the GP subscribers.
I think it's also important to remember the basically every first party Xbox game releases on PC, in Windows store, Steam, and Gamepass. Gamepass doesn't have any Gamepass exclusives. The game are still released "normally in their market" along with the Gamepass release.
Read the part you didn't quote
I don’t think it’s fluff to say that it’s unlikely that a large portion of gamepass subscribers would not purchase a title. It’s like a large majority of people would not pay to purchase the individual shows on Netflix. But they would be more than willing to watch them having paid for the sub service.
There is a separation in understanding there. People pay for a subservice
For the express purpose to play as many games as possible without wanting to purchase them. Why else would we subscribe? Conversely, people do not subscribe because they feel a smaller tightly knit library is more appropriate for them. Both markets play the same titles, but how they want to procure their content is different.
HB2 is niche, but it’s also not a well reviewed game. Many struggle to call it a game. It did poorly because it reviewed poorly. That isn’t game passes fault.
I don’t mind saying HB2 didn’t hit expectations, I whole heartedly agree with that. But mixing why it failed to hit expectations and using that to blame gamepass as the reason is something I definitely don’t agree with. The subscription model did not kill HB2, because if it did, it would kill all their titles, because they all have day 1 release in common.
Let’s look at COD. If you’re seeing the largest launch ever with the largest concurrent player base than ever, then we know it’s not the model that caused HB2 to fail. I will be playing BLOPS6. But I’m also confident I would never purchase it as are many of my friends on game pass.
There are very few games I want to “own” now a days. For the rest of it. Subscription is fine, certainly beats having to buy, play and sell it as quick as possible.
Just like very few people want to own movies or records now. Gaming is going to be moving that way; the biggest difference between gaming and these other mediums is that we have F2P games and they don’t have an equivalency. F2P is the current bane of the gaming industry. GP is trying to be a solution for that.
There are huge differences between game and movie in terms of production costs and production time, and time required by user to consume. They are very different products and thus one may suit better for a subscription service than the other.
Regarding calling Hellblade 2 a "niche" that's very subjective. We could call The Order 1886 niche too as they are extremely close in terms of what they wanted to achieve.
You would have a better argument if you said HB2 suits a subscription service better because it can be consumed in a single day.
Which leads to another problem. It took more or less the same years to produce as a bigger title and likely similar budget.
The way you describe GP is like it is a great solution for games that will eventually fail. Almost like a loss minimization tool. But nothing has shown that it can serve a $100-$200 million budget game, unless it is also destined to fail and thus a subscription will serve it better than not selling and not being played enough.
I think in some ways Gamepass is a loss minimization tool. First party games are spreading the risk across the library, and 3rd party games have a level of financial certainty if the deal they sign for Gamepass includes funding during development. We've head from some indie devs that launched into GP that the deal can include funding for development, an upfront payment, or payment based on usage. If you are developing a game, and can get a guaranteed payout, plus still be able to sell your game elsewhere, that's a pretty enticing deal.
And while it didn't launch into Gamepass day 1, I believe Todd Howard credited GP for saving Fallout 76. I don't know the budget for 76, but I think development costs + post launch support must be over $100M by now, right?
Fallout '76 was released broken and honestly it deserved to die to teach them a lesson you don't sell broken games to folk. Sadly publishers are still following that model these days. GaaS manages to keep pushing turds long enough that they get good. Thankfully there are more and more failures that they might actually get back to releasing properly crafted and QA'd games. If your incredibly huge game concept can't be completed in the time and budget you intend, reduce scope to a game you can make and grow it from there.
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Those are reasonable points, I don't think anything is black and white here. HB2 without gamepass (even with gamepass) would be considered a flop. The entire industry is going through this particular challenge. Boom/Bust is the original model, to that end, we have many more busts than we do have booms. And despite the fact that hte industry from a revenue side is growing, the reality is that the same top 15-20 titles that are largely GaaS titles, are sucking up that revenue. For everyone else, it's likely a bust. Like what do we call Alan Wake II for instance? A success by every margin except profit. It's a loss as I understand it.
The gaming industry is contracting hard post covid, where it experienced a nice explosion because people were stuck at home and couldn't do anything but play video games. But that just isn't the case anymore, and that growth in users has shed. Spending from gamers is largely stagnated, and yet the amount of content that industry puts out annually is significantly more than before. We have more games than ever, and more or less the same amount of spend by consumers. The bean counters have quickly figured out the only way more money is going to come into the system is by expanding the total addressable market (moving games to mobile), or by increasing the amount of spend per gamer (see microtransactions / season passes). Another method is through subscription services, which Game Pass is one. Gamepass likely kills the boom portion of things, which isn't all that often, but it certainly softens the blows from busting, which is all too common in today's industry. MS has 30M subscribers, largely sold on, no system seller first party games in the last decade. Consider where they would be with a significantly stronger library of titles. Their latest showcase should drive subscribers up.
Yes HB2 is niche, it's a 4-6 hour experience that costs $50 dollars or whatever it is with near 0 replay-ability. It is probably per dollar, one of the most expensive experiences there is. it's not a bad thing that it's 4-6 hours, the issue is that it's not replayable, and people once finished with it, won't want to give it another shot.
Layoffs are a separate issue of course, that is largely just greed. If the revenue isn't going to up, then cutting labour all the way down is a quick way to see profit.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
No it didn't. https://www.metacritic.com/game/senuas-saga-hellblade-ii/
Though I agree with the general thrust of your argument that GP is not responsible for anything that happens with Hellblade 2. If anything, GP meant more engagement, not less.
Not greed. Likely smart business.
I wouldn’t call it universal acclaim. But you’re right it didn’t quite review poorly, but the reviews themselves didn’t reflect the scoring. Reading the reviews does not make you want to play the game.
It’s greed. Smart business is just sugar coating it. Games make some profit, not all of them are losses. But if it’s not profitable enough, then cutting will get them there.
It’s common practice everywhere not just in games. Gamers are just waking up to this behaviour now. But imo, probably shouldn’t be used in games as much as it’s used in other industries. The knowledge of the workers in games is worth more than general layoffs in other companies.
When you cut workers in other places you typically have overworked and lose some process. Strong tools can make up for these losses. When you cut developers that know what makes a game good, testers, designers, coders that are all super experienced, there’s not really a replacement for that experience. You can’t just hire in juniors for cheap and get the same output.
It was within the scope of a standard Bethesda release in terms of actual bugs. The bigger issues were a lack of content and a lack of motivation from the consumer base to play a multiplayer Fallout game. They solved the first half of that by releasing content over time, and the second half by releasing into Gamepass, and making a full season of a TV show that got new people into the franchise.
HB1 sold 6 million though. How long to beat has the two game about the same length. One could argue HB2 is even less niche than HB1 because that had no previous expectations of fans, whereas HB2 was potentially building on established enthusiasm. An metascores are 81 for both titles. User reviews about the same, 7.4 and 7.8.
So really, every reason you state for HB2 to sell poorly applies to the first title that sold 6 million.
7 years have passed… and of course it is going to sell less if the game is not better at the core..
People might have bought it out of novelty first and realise they don’t want more of the same rock-papers-scissors combat but this time with even better graphics
Not only that, you can rent it an entire month for 15 dollars and you don’t even need a gaming pc or console
I've already made those arguments myself earlier when saying no-one can know how well HB2 would have sold without GP. My post isn't an argument against expected performance, but the claim HB2 is a niche title and so couldn't be expected to sell well. Everything that makes it a niche title made the first a niche title, and it sold well.
Hellblade 1 had a staggered release across PS4, PC (on Steam, Windows Store/Gamepass and GOG), Xbox, and Switch with digital only releases at first and physical releases on PS4 and Xbox later. It took a fair amount of time and multiple releases to get to 6 million in sales. Hellblade 2 has only been released on Xbox Series, Windows Store/Gamepass and Steam. I think it's a bit early to game HB2's sales success in comparison to the first game. I also think HB2 will eventually release on other platforms and get a physical release.