SeaDaVie

That makes sense, for some pretty big AAA games on day one I’d imagine it would go up to $100m

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Gamepass was almost $1b a quarter the last time MS gave information a couple years back. I suspect if it went over $1b a quarter they would have announced it at a shareholder meeting. Who knows though.

@Valhura It’s not like these 2 revenue streams are mutually exclusive. Not putting day one games on Gamepass does not automatically mean you no longer make this subscription revenue. From Sony accounts they made $4.5B from subscription services last year and still sold 303.3m units of software. The question is how much revenue is lost by downgrading the service. People still paid for multiplayer before gamepass existed.

Also, your attachment rate is out of date as the PS4 has sold close to 2b units of software, it was over 1.4b when they stopped splitting the figures in Q3 2020. You’re also comparing the average person(via attachment rate) to an extreme example of someone that subscribes to gamepass at full price all year long. That’s not the average gamepass player.

“The one you’re all wanting” is a good way to hedge when you don’t actually know anything at all.

Another key thing about gamepass is that it’s not just lost sales from first party games that need to be accounted for, but every third party game that is on the service will also lose sales and 30% of that revenue goes to Xbox. The service existing itself very likely leads to a reduction in overall game buying, so even games not on the service will lose sales, and again that is 30% of Xbox revenue.

Any analysis of Gamepass in isolation will always be skewed by one thing or another.

@Questionable_Duck It’s not uncommon for there to be massive growth in a franchise. God of War III sold 7.6m and God of War(2018) sold 23m+. Uncharted 3 sold 6.79m and Uncharted 4 sold 16m+. Dark souls 3 sold 10m and Elden ring sold 30m+. FH5 would probably have sold about 4-5X earlier FH games without gamepass.

The key point is the numbers are malleable enough that you can get basically any result you desire if you don’t need to publish actual accounts for it.

@Soup-Rules Seems like you clicked on the wrong article then, this one is about whether or not gamepass is profitable.

Saying they account for lost sales is meaningless when there is no accurate way to track lost sales, so it’s ultimately just a number they make up.

If Microsoft wanted to be transparent they could show full Xbox accounts but instead they obfuscate them behind the accounting practise of coupling them with unrelated departments. So, not even shareholders know if gamepass is profitable. Probably only about a dozen people in the world would actually know.

Just a reminder:

"Hi-Fi RUSH was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations," Greenburg said. "We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release."

@PsBoxSwitchOwner There's definitely an element of truth to this, which is why "record revenues" in and of itself is not particularly newsworthy. Margins have increased across the board though but without transparent figures from Microsoft all discussion is practically pointless.

Here's the thing, PlayStation revenue and net profit is massively up this generation despite Hardware sales being even to slightly behind. So why is this? It's because of the shift towards digital games, increasing digital content spending and growth of subscription service revenue.

In this context the baseline for Xbox should probably be about 20-30% revenue growth before the ABK purchase just to stay level. So when you take this into account then these "unrealistic expectations" are probably quite realistic given the market environment.

Xbox has massively underachieved this generation, and for a variety of reasons. The pivot to being a full third party developer was a good idea, and I feel they should have been given another year of that before any judgement came down. However, if MS is hellbent on some massive AI push then xbox is always going to be an easy target for redistribution of funds.

@FatalBubbles big games are around $3-5m. Some of the port costs for PS games were in the Insomniac leak and the PC ports were in line with this.

@MasterTanookiChief PS5 days are at 300m a year, which is the highest software sales rate in history

@MasterTanookiChief

Software sales(in units) for the last 2 financial years:

Nintendo: 155.41m, 199.67m
Sony: 303.3m, 286.4m
Xbox: [not disclosed by Microsoft since the Xbox 360 era]

This is just premium software, no f2p games or digital content. That’s almost 600m units of software in 2 years, bought by PlayStation customers.

@MasterTanookiChief according to the official accounts of Sony and Nintendo more PlayStation premium software was sold every quarter than the Switch. The PS4 sold more software than any console in history, even at the point they stopped splitting the software data in q3 2020.

@MasterTanookiChief I think you just don't get how good those sales numbers are. Again, there are only 4 Switch games that have higher than 20% attach rate.

The best selling Call of Duty games sell about 30m copies across PS, Xbox and PC. Probably around 10% of the total player base.

@MasterTanookiChief

God of War Ragnarok has stagnated as far as sales go, it’s already been stated it’s not expected to come close to the first games numbers hence why it was ported faster

You’re just making stuff up now. Please share a link to this statement. There’s zero evidence to suggest that Ragnarok won’t easily sell 20m+. It might even hit 30m.

AstroBot, Sonys GOTY, has sold a measly 2.5 million. Out of 75 million people. That’s sad.

How exactly is that “sad’? How many copies do you think a normal video game sells on a single platform? For some context, according to alinea analytics, Indiana jones sold 100k on its first week of sales on PS5, Doom: TDA was something like 200k on PS5. 2.5m would be more than any Yakuza game has ever sold across all platforms (except one game, which sold 2.8m). The first 6 Forza Gams(FM1-5 plus FH1) sold a combined 10m units by late 2014.

Platformer games are also very casual and sell a lot over time. Astro Bot will probably break 10m lifetime. Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy sold 2.5m units in it’s first Three months, and it’s now sold 20m units as of June 2024.

@MasterTanookiChief

and God of War Ragnarok saw a 10 million sales reduction on Playstarion.

Ragnarok sold 15m units in 12 months. God of War sold 10m in 13 months. You don’t seen to understand how time works? Or maybe you think comparing 5 years of sales to 1 year is perfectly reasonable.

Additionally, I don’t think you have any clue what a healthy adoption rate is(you realise Call of Duty games don’t even hit 20% on PlayStation, right?) and Sony’s first party sales percentage is in line with all historical data. The PlayStation division currently records record revenue and record Net Profit. I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say.

@MasterTanookiChief

Even their highest adoption rate is in the 20% meaning 70-90% of PS gamers are not buying PS games. Nintendo games have a very high adoption rate because that’s why most people buy the Nintendo console. Most people on PS are playing Fortnite and COD.

There’s exactly 4 switch games that are higher than 20% adoption rate, and that’s a console that most people buy primarily for First Party titles. So your metrics are completely out of whack.

God of War, The Last of Us, Uncharted 4, Spider-man, Horizon: Zero Dawn all sold 20m+ units. Bear in mind only one Halo game ever broke 10m and none ever got close to 20m, not even during the Xbox 360 era.

BTW Indiana Jones managed 4m players while being available on Gamepass, meaning it couldn’t even get 20% of people that could play it for free(no additional cost) to launch the game.

20% is a massive number.

@AverageGamer

Arkane Austin didn’t make crap

The studio head, Harvey Smith, was the Director of Dishonored, Dishonored 2, Deus Ex: Invisible was and was Lead Designer on Deus Ex.

Dishonored development was led from Austin, not Lyon, and it was only after the release of Dishonored that the studios worked on different projects at the same time. Dishonored 2 was developed in Lyon but Harvey Smith moved there to lead the development. Deathloop was made primarily by newer staff in the top roles. Lyon’s studio head is Dinga Bakaba who has way less experience(his first Director credit was Wolfenstein: Youngblood) than Harvey Smith.

So the idea that Lyon was the main studio and Austin a lesser studio is not really true, although it is oft repeated.

Yes, Redfall was bad but so was Wolfenstein: Youngblood for example, made by Machine games and Arkane Lyon.

@Lup You said it wasn't a good choice implying people won't buy it but there is literal evidence to the contrary

I think something like a Halo crossover is very likely(might have been part of the deal to port it over) and the anniversary is next year. A halo crossover would really drive some sales I'd imagine.

@Kraven The initiative has a very troubled history and they lost almost all their key staff years ago, their peak staff count was apparently something like 80. They just never got off the ground, which is why Crystal Dynamics was contracted to do a lot of the work. The coalition had also been drafted in to assist at one point, I think this game had been a massive resource drain across the board.

@Questionable_Duck They're apparently struggling with the Tomb Raider game too, I'd bet they'd prefer to prioritise that as it will be more lucrative for them. The Perfect Dark work for hire deal was made before they were sold and I wouldn't be surprised if they(the corporate they) were happy to get out of this agreement.

The initiative isn't worth saving and the IP belongs to Microsoft. Best case scenario is probably getting a different team to make a Perfect Dark game from scratch.

@Lup 15m people bought it in 6 months so a significant number of people do not think like you

It was still in pre-production? Wasn’t it supposed to have been getting worked on for like 5 years? I feel like it isn’t really some big mystery why this one might have been near the top of the list for projects to be cancelled…

It was a tech demo, just like the Witcher 4. The Witcher 4 was "in-engine" and an actually playable vertical slice. It's exactly the same situation. If you called the Witcher 4 a "gameplay reveal" that would be pretty bold.

This makes a Marvel Tokon release at some point a pretty strong possibility

@RagnarLothbrok the IP is 100% owned by Sony and Nixxes(Sony owned Studio) are doing the port, so it seems it is a Sony’s choice completely. Live service games getting late ports is potentially the norm now.

Xbox hardware will continue to exist as something similar to the Surface hardware. Surface devices exist to showcase Windows, and Xbox will exist to showcase Windows Gaming.