Johnny Awesome
Veteran
Yes. Even just The Medium, The Ascent, MS Flight Sim, Hades, Psychonauts 2, Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite will have easily made the service worth it this year, not to mention the back catalogue and all the indie gems.
Finally. The most basic of requirements
Find it funny how it's a scoop when it was already posted on B3D. Hopefully their article has more details.
Edit: it was nice to see them confirm it with Microsoft/Xbox.
I still remember the time I lost trying to manually delete the files of a Windows Store game I had supposedly deleted but its dozens of GB still lingered on my mass storage.Finally. The most basic of requirements
You mean through the Xbox App? Yes, you can turn on modding which opens up a writable folder to add your mod files. You still don't get access to the executable though so it's limited. I have no idea what this change means in respect to the entire game being accessible and whether that includes the executable.Didn't the Bethesda games support mods when downloaded through the Windows Store?
It was to be the major first experiment for Xbox Game Pass, the service that had been in concept as early as 2013. Codenamed Arches, Game Pass started as a rental service for video games, but as Netflix and Spotify proliferated the team settled on a subscription model. It was the answer to a shift in revenue tails in games. “Something like 75 per cent of a game’s revenue used to be made in the first two months of release,” explains Sarah Bond, head of gaming ecosystems. “Nowadays it’s spread over two years.”
Spencer and his team saw an opportunity.
They went out to publishers, but the idea was met with staunch resistance. “They were like, ‘no way, [Game Pass] is going to devalue games,’” Bond continues. Xbox asked instead to experiment with their older games, where the risk was low. Engagement surpassed all estimates, so a potentially even more audacious play came to life. Xbox would release one of its own exclusive first-party games onto Game Pass, on the same day it hit shops. Sea Of Thieves was first to leap over the barricades. It was a big point of differentiation for Microsoft. PlayStation and Nintendo players still have to spend upwards of £50 on a new title. Here was Xbox giving you its latest, most valuable product, as well as its existing back catalogue, all from £7.99 per month.
Craig Duncan remembers turning to Spencer and asking the big question:
“If every single person plays Sea Of Thieves on Game Pass, and we don’t sell a single copy. Are you kind of cool with that?’”
Spencer was categorical.
“Absolutely.”
In the end, Sea Of Thieves had a great launch, people still bought it and it was heralded as Rare’s return to form. But more importantly, it proved Game Pass could work. The economics were “100 per cent a success,” says Bond. Xbox’s business model transformed. Since then, every single Xbox Game Studios game, no matter the size or budget, has been released, day one, onto the service. Major publishers such as Electronic Arts, makers of FIFA, have partnered with Xbox Game Pass too. The 18 million subscribers spend 50 per cent more than non-subscribers. A game’s average engagement goes up eight times when added to Game Pass. And player experimentation within genres dramatically increases. Three years after release, Sea Of Thieves just passed 25 million players, and that continues to grow.
“Even today,” Duncan says, smiling.
How Xbox outgrew the console: inside Phil Spencer’s multi-billion dollar gamble
Phil Spencer saved Xbox. Now he wants to reinvent gaming. Ahead of Xbox’s 20th anniversary, we sat down with him and Microsoft’s gaming A-Team to discuss their wildly ambitious future including Game Pass, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Halo Infinite, The Elder Scrolls VI exclusivity and more
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/xbox-phil-spencer-todd-howard-interview
Tommy McClain
Codenamed Arches, Game Pass started as a rental service for video games, but as Netflix and Spotify proliferated the team settled on a subscription model. It was the answer to a shift in revenue tails in games. “Something like 75 per cent of a game’s revenue used to be made in the first two months of release,” explains Sarah Bond, head of gaming ecosystems. “Nowadays it’s spread over two years.”
Sea Of Thieves was first to leap over the barricades. It was a big point of differentiation for Microsoft.
Craig Duncan remembers turning to Spencer and asking the big question:
“If every single person plays Sea Of Thieves on Game Pass, and we don’t sell a single copy. Are you kind of cool with that?’”
Spencer was categorical.
“Absolutely.”
The economics were “100 per cent a success,” says Bond.
The 18 million subscribers spend 50 per cent more than non-subscribers. A game’s average engagement goes up eight times when added to Game Pass. And player experimentation within genres dramatically increases.
The first “disruptive innovation”, as Choudhry calls it, was with backwards compatibility. “After the Xbox One launched, I went to Phil,” he says. “I’m like, ‘I’ve been thinking, we don’t have the ability to play old games on Xbox One. I want to take a team of about 30 of our smartest people. And we’re gonna go work on it for a year, and only at the end of the year will I then tell you whether or not it’s going to work.’”
I think the model of 80 dollars a game will be a thing of the past sooner then later.
I don’t think anyone disputes what they say, it’s just without context it means nothing. There’s several examples, not least what constitutes a gamer who does no subscribe to GP? An example, a family share a console and one person has GP and buys all the games but the rest of the family (obviously) don’t.So, at least information from Sarah Bond appears to indicate that MS are very happy about the current economic situation with Game Pass.
Also, contrary to what other people might believe, subscribers to Game Pass buy more games (or at least spend more money on games) than people that aren't subscirbed to Game Pass. And not just a little bit more that might be lost in the noise of random variation, but a fairly significant ~50% more on average.
I suspected this was the case and had argued that this was likely the case in various posts, but it's good to see MS confirming what I suspected.
Also, if you haven't yet, read the article, there is so much good and interesting information in there that has nothing to do with Game Pass.
Like for example,
Regards,
SB