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Gears 5 breaks records - three million players in its opening weekend

CeeJay

Member
Damn can we keep it on the game pass topic?
And I thought this thread was supposed to be mainly about Gears 5?

Anyways I don’t care what you say about how much money ms has, that doesn’t mean jack about the business model of gsmepass being successful when there’s not a big enough install base to support it making a profit!
Investment now to hopefully earn profits down the road. It's speculative. Think about it, whenever any company invests money in anything they very rarely get an instant return and often takes years to pay for itself, GP is no different.

How is it possible to take a game that cost say $50mil and give it away for $1-2 and brag about 3 million players are playing game X?
It must be possible, they are doing it.

Where does the profit come from at this point for the devs? It’s like they’re making these games and Xbox just lays them the $50mil and tells them don’t worry about sales!

While other studios who sell their games at full price hit a sold 3 mil mark or lower get shuttered?
Unless a dev self publishes then they would never see direct profit anyway, it goes to the publisher first. The publisher has a deal with the developer about how much of the revenue they get (both upfront during development and from sales). It's even further abstracted when you are a first party developer and becomes more about how much value you as a developer add to the entire product, it's not something that us armchair analysts can ever fully quantify. Things such as the internal support that they offer to other 1st and 3rd party developers or even how much they contribute to the hardware design that are simply unknown. you cannot judge the total value of a first party developer simply by the number of sales they generate. Traditionally that may have been the best metric and generally correct but the approach that MS are taking is so radically different to anything that anyone in the games industry has done before it becomes increasingly difficult to analyse.

All I think most are saying is how is this a sustainable service when they’re not selling games and the number of games on the service have to get theirs too right? But at $2 a month?

I dunno I’m cool I’ll just keep reading

I think we all know the reason why a lot in this thread are taking the sustainability discussion and putting a negative spin on it, it supports a wider narrative that they want to perpetuate.

Why the fuck should we as consumers be worried about how sustainable GP is? I could understand it if they had shares in the company and were putting an investor hat on with their arguments but that isn't the case, it's all concern trolling. If I was an investor in MS I would be pretty happy with how my investment was going to be honest!

Even if the worst happens and GP gets canned we lose absolutely nothing. We still have our game saves and can go out and buy any of the games on there if we want to. As long as the service is running and remains the incredible value it is now then I will happily carry on subscribing and playing the great collection of games that are on there. As a consumer it's very difficult to find any negativity with GP which is why we are seeing the kind of discussions we are in this thread. NeoGAF members should be happy as they are effectively the ones getting the biggest wins with GamePass. GamePass is there to engage consumers more and gain a consistant and steady revenue stream from more of the userbase. Currently there are a top few percent who buy all the big games at full price day one, a middle who buy 1 or 2 big first party games each year and then a large majority of casuals who by having a rolling subscription will be spending more money, playing more games and engaging more with the eco-system than they otherwise would have done.
 

Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
I wonder if I'm lumped in with the haters for questioning the viability of Gamepass in the long term. I have a game pass subscription, an Xbox One X, a PS4 Pro and a gaming PC... the 360 and XBOX were the first systems I bought in their respective gens and the ones I played most, I could even link my achievement score if you want to look at that? There are serious questions about what's going to happen with Gamepass in the long run that can be asked here but I guess doing so is being anti-Microsoft?

Legit not a fan of system wars, since the original XBOX gen I've had every console each gen besides the Switch which I haven't yet grabbed. And since 2011 I've had a capable gaming PC (bought a new one years later, then upgraded the graphics card for the new one). I have legit anxiety about being able to play every game for every platform, not getting the best experience, missing out on stuff, etc. And I question the viability of Gamepass because of how cheap it is right now and similar subscription services either totally went bankrupt at such prices or upped their prices with time. Heck, I remember when XBOX Live was 50 dollars not 60. I was an early adopter playing stuff like Battlefield 2 and Halo 2. Thanks to Gamepass on PC I no longer subscribe to Gold and the only payment I have that I consider absurd is PS+ but I legitimately feel the quality of the games you get with it has been making it worth it lately, like getting Darksiders III, a game I wanted to try out. I do think such subscription services can be great, I use Humble Monthly Bundle, which to be fair normally has 1 or 2 AAA games and not brand new ones, I have Twitch Prime which is mostly in-game loot and indie games each month, and for some reason Epic Game Store gives me weekly free games. No other service is offering me a game like Gears 5 day 1 for a maximum of 5 dollars for the entire month.

The hope I have is it can stay 5 dollars for me and things like microtransactions will keep it afloat without ruining games. Like how I don't care about the MP for Gears 5 and the MTX doesn't affect my campaign experience. If it shifts to 10 or 15 dollars a month you can bet I'll probably start doing on and off months on Gamepass instead of just staying on it like right now. Isn't Uplay's service 15 a month? They don't have anywhere near the library Gamepass offers but want 10 dollars more? When I see that alarm bells go off in my head, maybe it's just Uplay being foolish but it could also be Microsoft taking a loss in the short term to become the platform people use in the long term, not unlike the original XBOX where every console was sold at a loss.

The $5 price for PC has been described as an introductory price since it's still in beta. I believe it's been assumed it'll go up within time.
 

Dane

Member
And I thought this thread was supposed to be mainly about Gears 5?


Investment now to hopefully earn profits down the road. It's speculative. Think about it, whenever any company invests money in anything they very rarely get an instant return and often takes years to pay for itself, GP is no different.


It must be possible, they are doing it.


Unless a dev self publishes then they would never see direct profit anyway, it goes to the publisher first. The publisher has a deal with the developer about how much of the revenue they get (both upfront during development and from sales). It's even further abstracted when you are a first party developer and becomes more about how much value you as a developer add to the entire product, it's not something that us armchair analysts can ever fully quantify. Things such as the internal support that they offer to other 1st and 3rd party developers or even how much they contribute to the hardware design that are simply unknown. you cannot judge the total value of a first party developer simply by the number of sales they generate. Traditionally that may have been the best metric and generally correct but the approach that MS are taking is so radically different to anything that anyone in the games industry has done before it becomes increasingly difficult to analyse.



I think we all know the reason why a lot in this thread are taking the sustainability discussion and putting a negative spin on it, it supports a wider narrative that they want to perpetuate.

Why the fuck should we as consumers be worried about how sustainable GP is? I could understand it if they had shares in the company and were putting an investor hat on with their arguments but that isn't the case, it's all concern trolling. If I was an investor in MS I would be pretty happy with how my investment was going to be honest!

Even if the worst happens and GP gets canned we lose absolutely nothing. We still have our game saves and can go out and buy any of the games on there if we want to. As long as the service is running and remains the incredible value it is now then I will happily carry on subscribing and playing the great collection of games that are on there. As a consumer it's very difficult to find any negativity with GP which is why we are seeing the kind of discussions we are in this thread. NeoGAF members should be happy as they are effectively the ones getting the biggest wins with GamePass. GamePass is there to engage consumers more and gain a consistant and steady revenue stream from more of the userbase. Currently there are a top few percent who buy all the big games at full price day one, a middle who buy 1 or 2 big first party games each year and then a large majority of casuals who by having a rolling subscription will be spending more money, playing more games and engaging more with the eco-system than they otherwise would have done.

It made me think of one thing, if they cared so much, then why complain about the 88/12 cut of Epic Games Store while the games are being sold at the same price, therefore more profit per copy for developers, shouldn't buying there be an extra support for them?

What about the Steam, GOG and console storefronts sales? They shouldn't be supported because that means lots of people are only buying with a discount.

"but its not profitable", well, Netflix debt is mostly composed of chunking original content, some people says that this is what actually can be a trouble because only a few manage to be a success.
 

DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
Removed from thread. Ignored warning to stay on-topic.
How does any other subscription service make money? How can Netflix afford to make stranger things then give it away for free with a free trial?

It's not hard to understand.
Netflix is getting deeper in debt. They're still planning to turn things around after all these years.
 

DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
The anti Microsoft sentiment on this board by people making all these big claims and trying to pass them along as facts ...
Yeah I guess you people know better than the marketing and PR team of a behemoth like MS lol

3 million players in an opening weekend is very impressive in this day and age, you can't buy publicity like that

Gamepass is a stroke of genius by MS and it will show in the next couple of years and a lot of you will look like fools for ragging on them for it.

I have both consoles, play mostly on my PS4 and think console fanboyism is some of the stupidest fucking shit ever btw, so I have no dog in this fight.

You claim people are trying to pass on claims as facts..

..but a few sentences later you're stating it will pay off for MS.


This is why people come on threads like this and that's because Xbox fans have acstrange habit of hyping MS products and services.

No one is saying game pass wil fail.


No one is saying gamgenius is bad for gamers.


Just about everyone thinks its a good deal.


So, whats the problem?


Before you guys call it "s stroke of genius," you guys need to wait to see how this plays out because their success is not guaranteed.
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Can you still get gamepass for $1 or 1 euro?
 

CyberPanda

Banned
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