Hold on.
Your calculations depict a best case scenario for the gamepass. Not factoring in the big chunk of PC Gamepass subscribers that pay merely 3,99€/4,99$ a month, and even than not everybody is subscribed every single month to such a service. People take breaks, some just play on and off. If you're comparing averages than only compare averages. Not best case vs average.
Assuming that the average PS4 user accumulates only 5-6 games over a timespan of an entire gen(~7years) is rather low in my book.
Where did you pull that data from?
My bad made a mistake. The 5-6 games per PS4 is old data, it has increased a lot since then. It's up to 9.6 last we checked.
I also didn't factor the large chunks of gamers who do not buy games full price which is very common. I would have to work out how much the average user pays for their games. I didn't include the fact a rather large portion of the player-base doesn't pay $60 for the PS Plus but buy it on sale. I really just gave a best-case scenario.
Since it's been a year I increased the 9.6 to 10.
So it'd be (400) + (10*60) + (12*60) = $1,720 for the traditional model
And (400) + (15*12*7) $1,660 for the GP model
I also didn't include GP subscribers buying games anyway which they do.
I think your figures are off. PS4 software sales are 1.1 bn, more than 10 times the number of consoles sold, so the average owner buys 10 games rather than 5 or 6.
Secondly, you're assuming that the average game pass subscriber owns the console for all 7 years of its life: that's not an apples to apples comparison with the PS4's games bought per owner, which is an average across ALL users, even ones who only bought the console in the last month.
Let's roughly assume that the average gamer owns an Xbox for half of its life, so 3.5 years.
Suddenly the relevant estimates become $630 vs $600, disregarding other streams of income, and discounted games etc.
You might say, but game pass subscribers will stay subscribed on the previous box even before they buy a new machine, but then a lot of PS4 gamers would've carried on spending on PS3 games before migrating to PS4.
The point is to try to figure out a fair comparison of what consumers would spend in the two systems over a similar timeframe.
Yeah, 5-6 is based on old data. I also assumed the average price of the 10 games is $60 which is likely significantly above the average price. I was really doing a best-case scenario for both but I'd have to work out the number of several variables to give an accurate comparison and we probably don't have most of them.
That's a lot
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How many of those ten million GP subs were bought for a dollar, like mine was?
Also your idea of where the money is going for GP and it being “more profitable” is way off. Naughty dog is making a ton of money of if it’s games. If MS makes a grand off of a gamer over 7 years that money is going to MS who has to spread the money among hundreds of games, while keeping some for itself I assume. The model does not help creators that want to make big cutting edge titles. MS can subsidize its own efforts but again ... when do they start making money on this stuff?
And how many times have you bought a retail game full price? When was the last time you paid the full $60 for PS Plus? Sure, across a period of 7 years you might be able to get GP for $1 or free a couple of times but a lot of that was to promote GP and might not come back in the future. Furthermore, losing $15 here and there is a lot less damaging than games on sales that instantly take off $20, $30 or even $40 off the 60 and the 50% off PS Plus subscription that slashes away $30 of that $60.
As for the last part, I'd assume the distribution of revenues on Game Pass is based off the playtime of the games. You also have to factor Game Pass subscribers will still be buying games anyway.