Xbox Game Pass Model Wouldn't Make Financial Sense For PS5, Says CEO Jim Ryan

You know what else is not sustainable Jim Ryan? €80 for first-party PlayStation games. Next generation is going to be extremely expensive for PS5 owners.

@LtSarge wait for it... M$ will not lag behind. It's hawful, but at least $ony is being honest...

@whizzkidd Of course Microsoft are going to up the costs for first-party titles as well. The only difference is that you aren't forced to pay €80 to play them on day one. You only have to pay €15 for Game Pass Ultimate and you'll be able to play them on release day. There's not an alternative like that on PS5.

Making games that cost over $100m isn't sustainable either.

I know Sony doesn't live in the same world as everybody else, but one bad gen would bring that house of cards right down.

I agree with him, Sony spend the most money on exclusives every year and pump mega money into their games and marketing to make sure they are the best around, a gamepass style subscription wouldn't bring back enough profit to cover the costs of development and marketing of their games. And in a year or two you will notice the dip in quality and quantity of xbox first party exclusives because of the gamepass model

Also the £70 price is for digital games off the store, so retail will be around £15 cheaper

@TheNewButler if your buying retail then you will be fine £60 max for a game and every gen the prices go up officially but online retailers always lower the price

They said similar things about letting EA Play into their platform. and about their games only being on PS5.
PS in 2020 = Xbox in 2013

Honestly I don’t understand how GamePass is sustainable other than Xbox taking the loss.

PS5 games at £70/£60 or even less in stores, will make more than enough of the money back and people are going to buy games, enough of this ‘nobody will pay that much’ crap.

GamePass is insane value for the consumer, no denying that, but I agree it doesn’t really seem sustainable and i’ve questioned that all along. But what Jim has said here makes complete sense to me.

Maybe time will tell.

@Jacko11 It is sustainable in the same way that Netflix spends 200million dollar on a movie to put it on Netflix and it all is sustainable.

When you get enough people on board it just sustains itself. Also Microsoft lost Halo for launch but thanks to Gamepass they can just shout "We have Gamepass" so they don't have to worry about not having a AAA at launch. It works wonders for them already!

Plus, they are selling gamepass on PC and Android (cloud gaming) too. Sony can't do this (yet) unless they port all of their catalogue to PC.

@TheNewButler I agree that they should of shown more for sackboy and destruction all stars especially as they are launch games, maybe they will show some more of them before launch.

Also I think the sackboy game is going to be a pure 3d platforming game this time with no creation mechanics

@BrilliantBill but Netflix isn’t making a profit? Their expenditures match their income. Is that what Xbox want, to be skating the line?

Forza, Halo, Gears much be closing $1 billion production costs for next gen. Not to mention all others games on GP at launch. Is the GP price tag really covering all of those costs?

I don’t know, I failed accounting first time round at uni so i’m probably wrong. I just don’t see it personally

@TheNewButler yeah you’re probably right. And Phil is right cause I don’t usually concern myself with the economics of GP, which is why I never saw it as sustainable 😂

This where Sony are in a different situation from MS.
Sony make mostly superb single player games. Many stand out in the generation. However, they are mostly 'one and done' games. They don't offer multiplayer.

Imagine if Sony did a Game Pass.
You would subscribe, smash games like God of War, Spiderman, The Last of Us etc, and then cancel until another big game came along.
With MS, the games might not be as highly rated right now, but you have lots of games with great multiplayer that people keep coming back to.
Stuff like Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Halo MCC, Sea of Thieves etc.

@TheNewButler so £10 a month and 29 million subscribers brings home £100 million which is then shared between all gamepass games? If so then that's a small cut even if say a small percentage of subcribers go onto to buy the game (which will be less people for 1st party games as they will be on gamepass for ever)

I really don’t know why having a subscription model doesn’t make sense. It’s a steady flow of income. It’s the dream of shareholders. Very reliable info.

They don’t want it because the price of the model would be higher than XBox’es price. And that would make m look bad. Maybe that’s it?

Bottom line. Sony can't afford to do it.

@TheNewButler @playstation_king also, Xcloud released last week. And apparantly runs really well.

Can you imagine the massive potential install base all of a sudden for Game Pass? China, Asia, those territories? Without a box and tv, you’re still able to play triple A games wherever you go. Subscribers will increase, and with it, the games.

Microsoft is playing the long run. They know they have to invest now but will ultimately have the best service there is.

It's basic maths... Currently Game Pass is no doubt (I would assume) losing Microsoft money, however there will be a tiping point on the subscriber count where it becomes profitable...
Be that 15 million, 20, 25 or 30 million subscibers... This is why it's on PC as it's another avenue to up the subscription base, a service across platforms..
Eventually if enough people sign up to the service it should make them money.. Then once this happens it's a regular profit stream (providing subscriber count dosen't then go down afterwards )...
There are other aspects which need to be carefully managed such as expense of adding the new games, keeping the quality or content up to a standard and the basic managing of the service/advertising for it etc...
It's a long game strategy and we all know Microsoft have deep pockets so can afford to do this, however they will want to be turning a profit at somepoint down the line no doubt...

@Jacko11 The info I found showed Netflix had a net income of $1.8B in 2019.

Sony isn't wrong. It's the benefit of having a highly diversified portfolio. Microsoft has about a half a dozen departments and can afford to try new things with Xbox. Sony has 3 departments and Playstation accounts for 33% of its income. PS is their lifeblood, changes would be extremely risky.

A hahahahahaha what a load of crap from the liars known as Sony, I expect a Game Pass clone in 2 to 3 years time, they copy everything Microsoft do.

@S1ayeR74 you mean gamepass who cloned ps now? You do know ps now came a few years before gamepass right?
I agree gamepass is way better in terms of benefits buts it's library is way smaller than PS now

@Friendly playstation do have a subscription model in playstation now and has over 700 games so they are still raking in money from that, but he is just talking about new 1st party exclusives as they alone generate hundreds of millions, so Sony are making money off ps now and selling 1st party titles that aren't on ps now

@S1ayeR74 haha this .
xbox nailed it. future is subscription flow. no physical no counting hairs.

its bold and strong to include first party games from xbox. i rather have a reliable ON then some tiresome shopping of $80 games.

@playstation_king ps4 and pc isn’t mobile.

@Friendly true anf that's one massive advantage gamepass has being on mobile, can fully see ps now coming to mobile once sony beef up their cloud servers though and stadia will also come to all mobiles

If Sony didn't spend so much on advertising their games everywhere, then the costs would be around $40m-$45m to make. They certainly don't need to advertise their games on TV, billboards and many other 'high' cost areas. They have a console platform and social media to use to advertise and showcase new games.

If you are going to spend big on advertising something, advertise more than 1 game, showcase a range of games to get more bang for your buck - like when you advertise the hardware or subscription service....

So, what Sony is really saying is that it doesn't make Microsoft money to sustain a Game Pass model. NOTE: Joke

@playstation_king "...once sony beef up their [Microsoft Azure] servers..." Fixed that for you!

Sony is resting on it's laurels so far with the entire PS5 and certain people in this comments thread show there is a brand loyalty to them which some follow like a cult. The great leader tells no lies and does no wrong. They haven't done a player-friendly thing in years. Sony has no profitable business other than the PlayStation division, and it's starting to show how much they need it to survive as a company.

This is good news for MS imo though I do worry about the sustainability for Xbox. I’m worried that MS’s games won’t have very big budgets and will either be short or released in a way where there’s been other cuts made.

Jim is quite right that his games aren’t sustainable at that subscription point which means MS’s games won’t have those budgets. That is a concern for the quality for MS but they will have quantity on their side.

@BrilliantBill And they also said that they didn't support cross-play because PlayStation is the best place to game on.

But $70 and potentially $80 games, even on the digital side, will be sustainable? This guy is a moron and as a hardcore PlayStation fan who wants to see the brand continue to succeed, I have absolutely no clue why Sony thought it was a good idea to turn the entire PlayStation division over to him. He's trashed backwards compatibility, cross-play, cross-generational games, said the company believes in exclusives and has had to back track on all of it. I won't even get started on the ridiculous anti-Japanese dev censorship policy that this idiot put in place. Now he's trashing Game Pass. I guess the good news is, aside from the censorship policy, he's had to reverse course on everything else, so the chances of a PlayStation Game Pass are pretty high.

To be honest I get where hes coming from. I do have my doubts about its sustainablility at least in the short term but i also think that £70 or realistically £60 for new games on the next gen isnt palatable either. Especially considering the current financial climate and that most games require patches day one due to various issues. Thats also not even taking into account the ever costlier season passes which are sold before a game has even released. Man the PS3 and 360 days were so much simpler and cheaper.

@Gamer83

Exactly. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Jim Ryan has proven he is a lying, arrogant buffoon on many occasions. Why would anyone believe what this guy says?

And let me translate what he is really saying.... “We don’t have the $ to do Game Pass. And our business model is stuck in the early 2000’s.”

And people worrying about Microsoft’s $ are hilarious to me. Microsoft didn’t become a trillion dollar company by being stupid. Like Phil has said, just enjoy Game Pass & let them worry about their own $.

@playstation_king but in a year or two we'll actually start getting the big games from the new studios so i don't think we will be seeing a dip in quality. You also need to remember that Jim Ryan was also talking about Sony making more smaller games more frequently...so lower quality by your thinking?

Anyways I'm not sure why anyone would believe anything the man is saying at the moment. He litterly lied about everything this gen so why stop now? I'm personally happy i decided to get the Xbox as i started out this year thinking I'm getting a PS5. We'll see if roles swap again next Gen as it seems they take turns butchering it but without a new leader at the helm Sony isn't going to be for me.

Another reason Game Pass wouldn’t work with Sony’s 1st party games is they are all single player, one and done games with either crap multiplayer or no multiplayer at all. And they take forever to make. People would just sign up for their service, beat the game quick, & unsubscribe.

Microsoft having a very diverse library with fun single player AND multiplayer is one of the reasons Xbox can have Game Pass.

They also release their games on PC, bringing in even more $. Sony refuses to do this because they listen to their hardcore fanboys who say, “the game is not exclusive to my plastic box I worship!!!” which is ridiculous.

The Ponies are their own worst enemy. Why would Sony give them a great value service, like Game Pass, when their fanboys would (for some unknown reason) complain about it?

Microsoft just needs to keep doing what they are doing. Let Sony continue to live in the early 2000s & shoot themselves in the foot like they did yesterday.

Showcase got me excited, but with the announcements of Horizon and Spiderman on PS4, I’ll prob hold off till a PS5 Slim, and get Xbox SS instead. Game pass sells it for me + the great price.

@KelticDevil

Killzone: Shadow Fall, Drive club, The Last of Us, Bloodbourne, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Knack 2, Gran Turismo Sport, Farpoint, Hidden Agenda, little big planet, dreams, destruction all stars, ghost of tushima, Street fighter 5 and quite a few exclusive indies all had multiplayer....

And sonys games are coming to pc 😂😂

Go do some research you clown

Is this the same guy that believes in generations and giving you preorder notice in advance?

PS Now 2.0 launching with GoW Ragnarok Holiday 2021, then?

I love both platforms and spent the entire night into the wee hours of the morning trying to get my PS5 preordered. But honestly this guy makes me half wish I hadn't. I makes PS5 feel like the place to play only if they've paid off the publisher and you can't play it on XBox. I say that as one of the lucky few that theoretically now "owns" a PS5 (until the pre is cancelled?) and doesn't know if I he'll "own" an XSeX yet and win on the preorder lottery. But the console I already "have" on preorder is definitely the B-side, more and more, every time he speaks. Their vision of megabudget expenses and megabudget monetization makes them feel more and more like "EA but with a console to sell."

@KelticDevil
You hit on the most important aspect here. Despite PS4's massive success, Sony as a whole is not in great shape and certainly is not comparable to MS in terms of what it can take on in $ losses before it makes a gain. If we don't get a PlayStation equivalent to Game Pass it won't be because 'it's not sustainable' it'll be because Sony simply can't afford to take on the financial risk should it not work out.

Sony can't afford to put all their eggs in 1 basket regarding a subscription service like Microsoft can..

@NEStalgia

If God Of War Ragnarok makes that 2021 release date, I’ll eat my shoe. Lol.

@KelticDevil Ragnarok 2021_-ish was clearly promised in the trailer.

But the most important part is that Game Pass isn't sustainable, but a 40% price increase in 3 years at the onset of the second great depression is!

@LtSarge
Not really. I buy all my games new. This generation I on average pay €20. You don't have to buy day one you can wait for a sale or price drop.

@Darthroseman
"They haven't done a player-friendly thing in years"
Except of course make great video games, something MS seems totally unable to do!

@tinCAT-zero Oh okay, so the first thing I'll do when I buy a next-gen system is that I'll wait a year for the games to go down in price and not play anything on it until then. Thanks for the helpful advice!

@tinCAT-zero "It's an open world game in location and you play as character" Every PlayStation exclusive worth anything from the last gen.

@LtSarge
I wasn't giving you advice. Early adaptors will get hammered no matter which console they buy. I'll be getting a PS5 in about three years and games will be a lot cheaper by then.

@Darthroseman
If I knew what you were talking about it would help.

@tinCAT-zero Mate you clearly didn't understand what my point was with my first post, so let me break it down for you.

If you want to buy and play first-party PlayStation games on release day, you'll have to pay €80. That's your only option.

If you want to buy and play first-party Xbox games on release day, you can either pay €80 or pay €15 For Game Pass Ultimate. You have two options, a cheap one and an expensive one.

The point was that Xbox has a cheaper option and in general more options to choose from than PlayStation. It's obvious that games get cheaper over time after release, that's not the point though.

@tinCAT-zero That's the joke. Horizon, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima are the same game with a different setting, but functionally very similar and none do it as well as Zelda for my money, though I really enjoyed Spider-Man.

I own all the systems and a decent enough PC, I have no horse in this race, but Sony folks love running into other sites and starting fires. There's plenty of games to play on all the systems, but the reason I buy a PlayStation is for MLB, which isn't exclusive anymore.

Talk about the games in Xbox's showcase and saying you didn't think they looked good, but they're all available via Game Pass, so I don't have to make a large initial investment to even try it. I've put hundreds of hours into games I would never consider buying/playing before Game Pass, it's revolutionary. I need to find 1 game I really like every 4 months to make it a value with the cost of games rising, and I generally find a few a month I really like.

At the end of the day, if people are enjoying the games they're playing, what's it to you? For my money, the PS5 is not a next gen console based on the type of output it's giving. Can't play launch titles at 4K/30FPS is a very scary thing. Assassin's Creed is running at 4K/60FPS on the Series X. What types of concessions will they have to make for games in a couple years? They'll need to release a "Pro" version by 2022. No one has actually SEEN a working PS5 or the OS or anything. There's SO MANY red flags for the system right now, I'm not touching it. You're welcome to buy it and play God of War Ragnarok to your heart's content, won't make me enjoy Hellblade 2 less.

@LtSarge is it €15 or €12? I'm in the US so I've been trying to find the cost and only thing I saw was €12. Not a huge difference, but it does add up.

@LtSarge @Darthroseman
Fair point. I've no horse running in this race either. I'm buy Sony and MS consoles. I'm not here to light fires but I'm reading this article and all I'm seeing is people kissing MS a*£ and beating up Sony. I say what I see. I can't understand how people believe Game pass is as great as they say. I had it for a month and thought it was terribly. Any of the AAA games that we're on offer I already owned and I had very little interest in anything else it had to offer. The only thing I got out of it was that I didn't like Ace combat which I may have purchased when it had gotten cheaper, so I saved some cash there.
What I'm seeing is MS have managed to dress up that they have no games to offer and it's all game pass and backwards compatibility. Whereas Sony are going to keep doing what they are doing, ie; turning out exclusive games that sell hardware, which is the model the games industry has being built on since the NES.
I would not spend €80 on a game. My plan is buy into this next generation in 3 years time and then I'll see what is happening. My backlog can get me there no sweat.
If you did spend €15 a month on game pass, over the consoles seven year lifespan you will spend a total of €1260 which at the end of it for that money, you own zero games!
This generation on PS4 and Xbox one I haven't spent the colour of that and I have a stack of games. As far as I'm concerned I'll be buying PS5 games and probably series x games in the future for €20 brand new. Touch wood, I'll still be here to do that.

@tinCAT-zero "all I'm seeing is people kissing MS a*£ and beating up Sony"

For good reason! Have you not been keeping up with the news lately?!

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/09/sony_believes_in_generations_but_confirmed_a_bunch_of_ps5_games_for_ps4

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/09/sony_confirms_ps5_games_will_cost_more

Sony held a presentation showcasing games for PS5 and then right after the presentation they stealthily announce all this stuff, trying to brush it under the rug like scums. They outright lied to consumers about making next-gen only exclusives and Microsoft caught a lot of crap for announcing that they would make cross-gen games, while Sony tried to appeal to the consumers by saying that they wouldn't., but they lied. Not to mention charging €80 for video games with no cheaper alternative. This is all due to the leadership of Jim Ryan because all the previous leaders that made PS4 successful, such as Shawn Layden, Andrew House and Shuhei Yoshida, have either left the company or been delegated to a smaller role. Sony is an absolute mess right now and it's only going to get worse from here on out. Phil Spencer on the other hand has mostly done great things with the Xbox brand such as buying up studios in order to create more first-party titles, introduced Game Pass, added EA Play to Game Pass Ultimate, introduced Project XCloud on mobile devices and more. It's obvious which company is mostly pro-consumer right now and which one is mostly anti-consumer.

You should follow gaming news more if you want to stay up to date with things, instead of going into a random Xbox article's comment section and starting arguments with people based on only what we've written without any prior knowledge. It's saves you a lot of time by not engaging in stuff you don't know anything about. You don't see me going to a PC gaming site and starting arguments with people when I don't know a thing about PC gaming and I don't follow PC gaming news either.

@LtSarge
"trying to brush it under the rug like scums" - would you listen to yourself.
I don't have to read and breath all gaming events to obtain an opinion and know what I know. Everything I said it true to what I believe.
I don't go near PC gaming sites as I know nothing about PC gaming but I know a hell of a lot about console gaming since I've been console gaming since the late 80s. I'm not brand officiated, I play Nintendo, Sony and MS for every generation. This time I missed the Switch because I have a Wii u and felt I'd give them a break.
And it's not a random Xbox articles. I'm a member of this family of sites for over seven years and you're a member for one month and talking like your opinion is gold and any counter opinion mustn't have a clue. 😂😂😂
"Phil Spencer on the other hand has mostly done great things" - lol yeah like say that exclusive games "are completely counter to what gaming is about". Maybe he needs to "keep up" and get some lessons from Nintendo on how to sell consoles.

Sony's behavior lately is becoming more and more shady by the day. When Microsoft decided to be honest and say that they intended to make their first few exclusives available on xbox one as well, people were ALL OVER them. Sony, who i promise KNEW THEY INTENDED TO DO THE EXACT SAME THING, were intentionally deceptive, saying "We believe in generations". this is essentially a lie by omission. games going to $70? don't mention it as part of your show, drop it afterwards in a press release (Even 2K was more forthcoming about their plans to do the same.) PROMISE to give gamers plenty of time to get their preorders in, then open them (or give retailers permission to open them, so you don't look bad), within an hour of the show, primarily to create scarcity. Buy up exclusive games to keep them off other platforms, which yes every console holder has done, but it sucked when they did it too. They continue to resist Cross play.(i'll take a moment to say that i have all 3 consoles in my home, lest i be accused of being a fanboy lol). i just don't like how Sony is BEHAVING right now. it feels like they're actively trying to FORCE or trick people to get a PS5. i feel like i need to wait on getting one for the time being.

@armondo36
There's nothing wrong with waiting a while before buying a new release console. It also gives the manufacturer time to iron out unforseen issues. In fact it's the smart option.

Your comment made me laugh "When Microsoft decided to be honest". 🙂