Market/business performance of Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 *spawn

[Johnny Awesome]

There's nothing that says GP growth can't offset costs off AAA production either. Depends how many subs they sell. The same things were said about other successfully subscription services when they were growing and Netflix is still going strong.

I've demonstrated with $ how it could work, many times, in many threads on many of these forums, but you ignore all that because you have an axe to grind against MS and GP.

It's simple: 50 million subs = $7 billion in annual revenue - 6 AAA games at $500 million per game ($3 billion) - $1 billion in delivery costs - $1 billion in extra 3rd party content = $2 billion in profits + MTX + PS/Nintendo games etc...

They have to get to 50 million subs. I believe 6 AAA games and $1 billion in annual 3rd party content will get them there over time. Some people don't agree. It's not that hard to see really, so please stop pretending you can't do math. It's tired.

 

[see colon]

MS's wording and transparency regarding it's profitability in total and in relations to AAA games has been shady. Profitable? Maybe as a total. With a big question mark. Profitable as per costs as per first party AAA production? Highly unlikely. AA is in line exactly with what I stated earlier. It is more suitable for smaller projects and smaller length games.

That's the whole point of a subscription service, to spread the risk across the service instead of on one game. If it's profitable as a total, that's really what matters. And I have to keep saying this, but Microsoft have shown that they will release games on other platforms if they want/need to. Sony is using PS+ as a second run for their games, Microsoft is using Playstation as a second run for it's games. And yeah, a game that people may have purchased on a discount months/years after release will likely get fewer sales if it's released on a subscription service, but if a game is already on a subscription service, and then released for sale on another platform, that "new" game on Playstation only shows the value of Gamepass. Hi-fi Rush ($30), Grounded ($40) and Sea of Thieves ($40) released on Playstation for a combined price that would have paid for 6 months of Gamepass Ultimate. The reason Microsoft is going Gamepass first is to prop up the service. They view the service as more important than any single game.

Gamepass's ability to profit may require changes on the production side of the equation if the revenue side doesn't increase. But I think the upcoming COD release isn't the risky gamble that Forbes seams to believe. I do think that the value proposition of Gamepass may motivate some to subscribe but not enough for a massive jump from Playstation to Xbox. I think the game will likely be profitable from Playstation sales alone as well, and Xbox's limited install base is actually an advantage for Microsoft, because they could essentially lose every Xbox player and still release an profitable game each year. I don't really see how Xbox loses by putting COD on Gamepass, especially if you are looking at YOY revenue. If every copy of COD that was sold on Xbox before the acquisition generated $21 (30% of 70), and a month of Gamepass is $17, then they would only need 1.23 new gamepass subscribers to sub for 1 paid month per potential copy of COD sold to break even. Or, perhaps even easier, half that number for 2 months.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The bit I don't get is pages and pages of the same thing without anyone bringing anything new or different. Why do people persist in arguments they cannot win because the people they are arguing with have already made up their minds? At what point does the sanity check, "okay, let's do something else with my time?" kick in and people walk away from an entrenched, looping discussion?

Seriously everyone, consider not posting the same idea or POV again. Saying the same idea again isn't going to change the other's mind this time where it didn't last time or the five previous times you expressed it.

I'm not going to close the thread as people have free will to do what they want with, but I moved on from this talk, and the whole "is GP profitable/sustainable?" talk everywhere else it rears its ugly head (every tech thread that mentions MS ) long ago...