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Take-Two CEO: "Subscription model doesn't really make sense for frontline titles”

anthony2690

Banned
Well yeah. Red Dead 2 sold like $750 million worth of copies in one month. GTA sold almost a billion. They cant afford to give it away for $10.

Red dead online 2 is literally £5...
GTA5 is frequently £12.50 with a hefty shark card included.
I think with how much money they make from the online stuff, they could pretty much give the game away and probably make more money than ever if they really wanted too from mtx.
 

Leyasu

Banned
they only need either FIFA or call of duty to really shake things up but i guess its harder than it seems otherwise they would have done it already. even the rumours of battlefield launching on it were not true. it seems like 3rd party publishers dont want to put their big ip on a subscription service at launch. maybe 6 months later at best. even that is unlikely though.
Or perhaps Microsoft are not trying to get them! We don’t know how much the publishers are/would ask for that to happen
 

Leyasu

Banned
The article says "His views are unchanged--subscription services make sense of catalog games but not new ones.", something that is common sense.

AAA need to make a lot of revenue to recoup and it's mostly generated with game sales and only on a few games, MTX+DLC. To put AAA at launch there isn't profitable at all. Once it's very old instead it's ok to put it on subscriptions as an extra.
Microsoft are undoubtedly using game pass revenue to pay their studios costs. The game is getting paid for by the subscribers before it has even launched. If the game flops outside gamepass sales wise, then it is not the end of the world, as they are not needing the sales to recoup the investment in the game. Alternatively, if it is a hit then even better. When everyone is saying that gamepass enables them to take risks with their games, it is because the production is being covered by the subscriber

I can’t believe that people don’t understand this
 
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Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Microsoft are undoubtedly using game pass revenue to pay their studios costs. The game is getting paid for by the subscribers before it has even launched.

I can’t believe that people don’t understand this
That point would be valid once it's proven that subscription services have become self-sustainable and profitable. Not when there are year-round conversion deals and/or companies subsidizing subscription services.

I think that's the reason why PS Now is also lagging behind, because Sony is unwilling to subsidize that service on a large scale.
 
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kingfey

Banned
No, that was the total revenue. So third-party sales + first-party sales + MTX + every other revenue. And the problem with subscription services is that you pay developers to get their games on those services. On the other hand, developers pay you to sell their software on your platform.

I wouldn't say that PS has bad management because PS+ already is the biggest gaming subscription in the industry. That's 2.5x better than Gamepass. PS is already the biggest gaming brand. If that is after the bad management, what does that say about management in other companies.

PS Now games (PS2 and PS4 games) are already downloadable.

We can do "would, could", but the fact is that subscription services in gaming haven't proven to be a success yet. GP has 18 million subscribers but that's just converting Gold subscribers at the moment by asking them to pay $1. What happens when they cross that threshold of their existing Gold subscriber counnt? Perhaps that's what we are seeing with PS Now with only 3-4 million subscribers.
Ps+ isn't even close to gamepass. That is just false.
You need to actually be present for those months to claim ps+games. Its very useful to old people, who have been with Playstation for long.
But its highly bad for new people, of you compare it to gamepass.

Day1 also changes the favor to gamepass.

As for the bad management, its their advertisement, or promoting their products. Especially the psnow. Its still baffling that it has 3.1m players, ever since it was made.
You have a bigger platform. Advertise it on your store. Let people know that you have this good service. Put some attention to it. Put your past 4 years old 1st party games, permanently on the service. At least try to make it more appealing.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Ps+ isn't even close to gamepass. That is just false.
I wasn't talking about the subjective quality of the two services. I was only talking about the subscriber count.

"I wouldn't say that PS has bad management because PS+ already is the biggest gaming subscription in the industry. That's 2.5x better than Gamepass." There I was referring to the difference in subscriber count, i.e., 47 million for PS+ and 18 million for Gamepass, which amounts to a 2.6x gap b/w the subscriber count of the two services.
 

Leyasu

Banned
That point would be valid once it's proven that subscription services have become self-sustainable and profitable. Not when there are year-round conversion deals and/or companies subsidizing subscription services.

I think that's the reason why PS Now is also lagging behind, because Sony is unwilling to subsidize that service on a large scale.
Without solid numbers on how many full paying subscribers they have or what is the average revenue per subscriber per month, either one of us could be right or wrong.

I get the feeling that Microsoft ain’t losing as much as people are thinking or hoping on gamepass if they are using the revenue purely for content
 
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farmerboy

Member
Much like Disney has premier access, I wonder if a gamepass type subscription could be 2 tier? The bulk of games on the subscription but new ones cost extra to play, say $35.

New game makes money for publisher.
Old titles still on gamepass.
Gamers can stop whinging about 70 buck games.
 

kingfey

Banned
I wasn't talking about the subjective quality of the two services. I was only talking about the subscriber count.

"I wouldn't say that PS has bad management because PS+ already is the biggest gaming subscription in the industry. That's 2.5x better than Gamepass." There I was referring to the difference in subscriber count, i.e., 47 million for PS+ and 18 million for Gamepass, which amounts to a 2.6x gap b/w the subscriber count of the two services.
The sub count is big between them. Gamepass is still at its infant as of now.
 

kingfey

Banned
$25b dollars (market cap + solid premium) might be too much, even for MS.
That is free 20m gamepass users. Next gta6 would bring absolute tons of users for gamepass. Especially a sequel for a game, which sold 150m copies. MS would absolutely want that. If they want gamepass to grow.
 

Haggard

Banned
That is free 20m gamepass users. Next gta6 would bring absolute tons of users for gamepass. Especially a sequel for a game, which sold 150m copies. MS would absolutely want that. If they want gamepass to grow.
Riiiight, because companies love to lose money by adding massive sellers to a cheap subscription service that users can immediately cancel after they finished the 500+ mil budget game for 10 bucks. /s
 
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kingfey

Banned
Riiiight, because companies love to lose money by adding massive sellers to a cheap subscription service that users can immediately cancel after they finished the 500+ mil budget game for 10 bucks. /s
I am still surprised now one is talking about uplay+ or ea play+. Both cost 15$ each, and have day1 games on pc. I can get far cry 6 for 15$ for 1 month, Same for battlefield 2042. These 2 service are from the most greediest publishers. EA and Ubisoft.
 

Haggard

Banned
I am still surprised now one is talking about uplay+ or ea play+. Both cost 15$ each, and have day1 games on pc. I can get far cry 6 for 15$ for 1 month, Same for battlefield 2042. These 2 service are from the most greediest publishers. EA and Ubisoft.
“Eat shit. A billion flies can’t be wrong”
 

kingfey

Banned
“Eat shit. A billion flies can’t be wrong”
fly GIF
 
Not sure why you put MTXs and even sub games MMOs in the same line. I mean, Gamepass just make it easier for devs to tempt gamers to spend even more on that.

Because my comment was about what gaming products and services generate the most sales revenue.... not what cherry-picked services products are my fanboy favourite.
 
Well yeah. Red Dead 2 sold like $750 million worth of copies in one month. GTA sold almost a billion. They cant afford to give it away for $10.

GTA has now sold 150 million copies. Most of them at around $30-40. Red Dead 2 is now at 38 million and I have never seen it drop below $40 even after three years.

Subscription model should work for MS now that they have 24 studios potentially pumping out games left and right but Rockstar makes like 1 game every 5 years.
I cannot wait to play the upcoming Xbox game exclusively on PS5. Deathloop 😎
 
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