Original Xbox Creator Praises Microsoft Following Xbox Live Gold Price Reversal

The fact that it took an online backlash for them to reverse their stance on increasing cost for Xbox live is troubling. Their whole message with Xbox Series X has been about the gamer.

But then they immediately contradict themselves by possibly pricing out potential new gamers in one of the worst times in human history.

Not a good look for Microsoft and one that will not go unnoticed when people go to buy a console in the future.

@Kingleo31 Agreed, I'm seeing theories that this was a PR stunt, but realistically this cost them more goodwill that it earned them

What an industry gaming has become.
Was much more straight forward in the 80s and 90s. Also none of this, messing around with in between generations and half generations.
Correctly we are supporting:
The standard 1.1L Ford Focus
The medium 1.5L Ford Focus
The Ford Focus ST
😂😂😂

Microsoft showed their hand prematurely. They retracted, but we now know where they intend to go. GamePass isn't sustainable without the install base to pay for the costs. The $7.5 billion ZeniMax acquisition doesn't help either. Microsoft doesn't need money, but shareholders will demand justification for the spend. Forcing people into GPU or a higher Live sub is where this is all heading...and even then GPU will see gradual increases. That ZeniMax buy is going to cost Xbox gamers a lot of money in the next few years. $240/year annual subscriptions are coming...so a console that costs you over $2,000 a generation.

I still don't see how they didn't see the backlash as an expected outcome? Who approved this? Who approved the Halo Infinite showing? Seriously they have some management issues, this did a lot of harm to them. I have no doubt they wanted to take the paywall away from F2P games for the launch of Halo multiplayer but instead they had to do it now to make up fir a clear greedy cash grab. I believe everything is tied to GP subscriptions for their metrics and bonuses but this wasn't the way forward. Not everyone wants Gamepass so don't make it mandatory.

It is about democracy! If you get something wrong and your users tell you so you either ignore them or you listen and act. Not many companies anywhere would do what MS have done here. Yes, they got it wrong but as soon as the backlash came they got on with changing it immediately. As far as I am concerned they did the right thing and too many area looking to crucify for them something that they dont need crucifying for. Its moaning for moanings sake. Everyone now comes out of this well and the winners are the gamers which is ALL that matters.

@lacerz To be fair if they actually manage their assets well (aka all these studios they have) the games that are made and sold and the subs they attract "should" make things work. But since things are pretty dry at the moment, these studios are solely absorbing money

I agree that this is bad news for Microsoft. If game pass was sustainable, they would have no reason to try to suddenly bump the price of gold. While Microsoft is staying the course for now, changes are coming. Those changes might be fewer games on game pass, or gradual price increases (maybe an extra dollar per month every year until they hit their target)

@NotoriousWhiz I disagree. Gamepass can be sustainable and there would still be good reason to try and increase profits elsewhere: Shareholders.

Companies will often give up goodwill or make bizarre choices as far as consumers/employees are concerned in order to get a boost in stock price or give standard/activist shareholders what they are looking for.

I think this is more about Microsoft being a publically traded company than about the profitablity of any particular facet of their XBox business

I could also be wrong, only time will tell

@Kingleo31 Yeah...,no! In a month, no one will talk about this anymore except the bickering fan boys.

The decision was mind boggling for sure...so is the super quick reversal. I see it more as throwing the ball and see what happens to test waters. They already had a response.
That being said, doing this test now when you just released a new console, you want new players and you are in a middle of a pandemic wasn't the smartest thing to do. I do believe they want to make a lot of changes to the whole GP and Gold this year to merge in 1 service, not tiers. I think it would of went through a lot easier if MS would of said they are ending gold only for new subs. People that have it can keep it. Everyone else on GP.

@Dezzy70 Nah, in the 80's we had Nintendo as a monopoly. That was ugly. And expensive. To put it in perspective, Nintendo had Sony's $70 games back in the 80's.....and with average income at the time that made it quite a bit more expensive than Sony's current pricing, 30 years later! Not arriving at that destination again is why the competition is so important.

@lacerz @Kingleo31 I think it's 2-fold. I think it's less about where they intend to go or showing their hand early than it would seem. The fact that it makes it appear that way is why it was such a disaster of a move to begin with.

First, I think there are two warring elements within MS. Remember when the CFO was going around doing interviews talking about increasing prices (Sony/Activision), monetization, the use of Bethesda, etc? Half of what he said contradicted things Phil said. It seems to me the CFO wants to go one direction and is towing the investor line. Phil intends to go another way. I get the feeling moves like this were "corporate" pushing on changes they designed more or less without Phil's OK. I think as long as Phil's there Xbox will remain flexible to what we want. The day Phil leaves, we take a hard right back to the Matrick days.

The other factor though, is even when this was announced I said that I don't think it actually had ANYTHING to do with raising revenues. I think it was a disastrously hamfisted attempt at boosting Game Pass numbers by shoehorning Gold subscribers forcibly toward Game Pass with the optically worst method possible. I think, reception actually would have been much BETTER, if they announced they were discontinuing Gold entirely, the F2P games would no longer need a subscription, and the other features would require GPU. Technically that would have been even more expensive for Gold-only subscribers. The groaning of the price increase would have still been a ripple on the internet, but discontinuing the low-value service in favor of the somewhat more expensive high value service, I think would have gone down better than declaring the low value service now costs almost as much as the high value service.

And Phil already said they're not looking to raise the price on GPU at the moment, he's "happy with the value."

It's just amazing that they couldn't see the optics this generated before they did it. It's like a little part of the XBone launch is returning.