electrolite77

In an ideal world, and I realise it’ll never happen, we’d get an Xbox Mini of similar quality to Nintendos mini consoles but with the added hook of being able to act as a box for Cloud Streaming.

Internet rumours are the best.

Interesting wording from MS though, even if anyone believes what they say about Xbox these days. Kind of says it all that plenty believed this to be true.

I’m not playing it on Xbox, I picked up the Switch 2 version with the pricing glitch, and it’s great. Seems to be getting a bit Ubi Soft-y with the map icons and collectibles but a lot are optional. Very good game.

@JumpingJackson

Games aren’t groceries or heating though. They’re an ephemeral entertainment product. They aren’t essential to anyone’s existence. Life’s essentials should be affordable to everyone and nothing to do with the market. That doesn’t apply to gaming.

If people are buying games that you personally consider ‘swill’ then yes, there’s a market for them at the price they’re being sold for.

@Fiendish-Beaver

I suspect you’re right that they’ve not read the room. However nothing here tells us anything about whether it’s profitable or not, though it’s likely we’ll never know. It could be that they’ve made a calculation that they’d rather have 12 million people paying £276 a year than 15 million paying £180. That would see the line go steeply up especially if their running costs have only gone up, say, 15% That they’ve abandoned their previous subscriber number targets and are aiming to monetise fewer customers more enthusiastically. Whether it will work is another issue but it’s certainly no indicator of a product that’s struggling to make a profit.

Between me and my kids we’ve two Accounts, one expires November 2025 and the other August 2026. Won’t be renewing either. At some point in the next couple of years I’ll get a PC to go with my Switch 2.

@Fiendish-Beaver

I think Game Pass is profitable, just not enough. Being mega profitable wasn’t enough to stop thousands of redundancies over the last couple of years or several games being cancelled. It’s not enough to have a straight line that says ‘profit’ the line has to go up constantly.

It’s another handy reminder for anyone who doubts it that Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, they aren’t anyone’s friends. They never were. If anyone ever thought they were they fooled you. They only exist to make money. No customer should feel any loyalty to any of them.

£276 a year? I can just buy several games for that

That might be me out. Mine expires next June. I don’t see Ubi Soft games and some stuff for Fortnite, a game I never play, being worth that kind of increase.

Got my eye on it but not bothered right now. I use my Switch 2 loads and have plenty of Retro handheld options (when I fly long haul next year I’ll take my old Retroid Pocket and modded DSi along). Maybe in the future when I’ve seen a few months of feedback and can justify the cost.

Whatever the driving force, this is not a move that sends out a signal saying ‘MS really wants to sell a lot of Consoles’

Not a lot really. A marginal upgrade. Seems to me this was more about the PS5 version, and making sure Xbox Consoles at least had parity.

They should absolutely keep the AA Batteries. They’re the ultimate flexibility option.

This always seemed unlikely. Next year, more plausible.

It’s reached the stage where I’m not bothering to watch any of Xbox announcements. There’s very little guarantee anything you see revealed will actually ever exist

Of course it is. Unfinished games getting cancelled and staff getting laid out was a feature of the industry long before Game Pass came along and will do so if Game Pass ever disappears. Correlation doesn’t equal causation.

So it maybe wasn’t as far along as we thought. Still think it would have been worth persisting with. The axe has swung very deep this time.

There’s a lot to be upset about this week, but this one maybe makes sense. Not even in full production, estimated release date of 2028, Live service game. It’s still very harsh on the devs of course but there’s a fair amount of logic here.

The Perfect Dark cancellation is particularly annoying and confusing. It looked really solid from what was shown. Even if it didn’t work as a PD game it surely could have been repurposed.

Really poor show all round from MS supported by the usual corporate doublespeak.

@Balaam_

Might want to have a look at previous LRG behaviour before getting too excited about them being a ‘good guy’

@Jenkinss

Third party games sell in ‘meaningful’ enough numbers to keep getting made for Xbox. So somebody is buying them.

Microsoft strikes a deal with a third party to do a physical release of a game that wouldn’t other wise get one. The response:-

“So pathetic “
“Scumbag Satya”
“Spencer is a chronic liar” etc

Got to love this place 😂

100% worth it. Got mine on launch day and have used it loads, certainly more than my PS5 though probably not as much as my Switch which gets a lot of gaming time with my wife and kids as well as the advantage of convenience. Series X is a great system though, it can pump out some superb graphics, the library (taking the excellent BC into Account) is utterly vast and GP is great value. It’s also really fast and reliable. I dread to think how many hours of use it’s seen.

Oh yes please. My favourite GTA. Great game that could really benefit from some digital spit and polish.

@Blastfemur

That same thing has occurred to me actually. Would be very Microsoft 😂

This just doesn’t sit right. I don’t understand making ‘play all our games Day 1’ one of the key selling points of GPU and then going against that. It’s illogical.

I hope these words translate into action because it’s one of their best ideas in recent years

1.8 million sales of a port of a 7-year-old game that’s already on PC is a great result

@BacklogBrad

They won’t stop making Console Hardware any time soon while they have Game Pass. What the industry will look like at the end of next Gen is impossible to predict, it’s 10/11 years away. But from where we are now there’s no reason for them to stop. It feeds Game Pass.

The only victims are the types of people who feel slighted by other people being able to play the same games as them. The type of fanboy who apply value to games based on whether it’s exclusive or not.

The industry’s changing, like always, and MS are trying something very confusing to those who get their validation from the multinational profit-orientated corporation they’ve chosen to support as if it was a football team.

Haven’t read the comments but I’m sure nobody is getting wildly upset over a 2021 Xbox game getting a PS5 port in 2025

Of course hardware isn’t going anywhere. It’s a crucial part of their future strategy and is where a lot of Game Pass users are found. There are a lot of users locked into Xbox hardware with their digital libraries and friends lists. It also creates other very valuable revenue streams like third-party licensing and peripheral sales.

@Markatron84

That’s true, Diablo III on Switch is great. They did a really nice job.

@TeiGekiLord

That’s just your opinion. I own all platforms and have enjoyed a lot of Xbox games.

@IOI

I hope you’re going to be consistent and chastise everyone you see defending a corporation. You’ve missed a few on this comments thread alone.

They absolutely should. If they want to add value to Game Pass making sure every first party Xbox game is playable now through backwards compatibility would be a start.

@GuyinPA75

“Considering the Switch 1 is more powerful than Series S”

Just no.

@themightyant

I’m not saying it’s right but I think the job losses would have happened even if GP subs were rising. There must have been a lot of crossover from all the buyouts.

Pushing their games onto other formats actually makes a lot of sense at the minute (my main issue is they need to come up with some kind of consistent formula to make clear what the value is of those games on Xbox). Long term, however, they hold all the cards with the amount of content they now have. They could abandon that any time they wanted if it suited them (say, Cloud take up increases greatly). By the end of next gen (10-12 years away) who knows what the industry will look like.

@Jenkinss

Hard to compare though since they rolled Live into it and ended the cheap sub options

@themightyant

Spencer described GP as something that ‘makes money’ here

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/phil-spencer-jez-corden-xbox-interview-2023

They definitely hit a plateau in sub numbers in 2022/23. The delays to, and disappointments with, some of their first party output along with Cloud uptake flatlining was probably responsible. That’s why the ending of cheap subs and increased third party publishing makes sense. Be interesting to see if Indy and COD made any impact, especially as IIRC new subscribers come on stream at full price.

@Jenkinss

100 million was their target, it wasn’t what was needed to make it ‘profitable and sustainable.’ That 100 million forecast, which I think comes from 2022, predicted a huge rise in Cloud players which has been much slower coming than they anticipated.

@abe_hikura

It’s down to the individual third party. Some will consider it worth it, some not, same as it has been since Game Pass started. Some would rather have the money up front and hope they get attention and publicity. Some would rather wait and see how sales go. The figure in this article is irrelevant.

@abe_hikura

Microsoft pay third parties to put their games on Game Pass to negate the hit to sales

@101Force

I think that’s how it will go. As more first party games go on the service the reliance on AAA third party games will fade away. I still think they’ll support Indies though.

@Coletrain

I’m not sure the revenue from individual games is that relevant to Xbox. The goal is building up their library of first party games to the point they don’t have to use third parties much. The idea is for these games to be ‘generating revenue’ by selling Game Pass long into the future. It’s a different calculation now.

The way this article is written is very odd. Everyone knows Game Pass will reduce one-time sales. That’s why MS pays third parties to put games on there, to compensate Devs for the last sales. Some developers think it’s worth it, others don’t. The tone of the article is very melodramatic over a business discussion.

This actually has potential. Get the likes of Daytona, Outrun 2006/Online, Afterburner Climax and Jet Set Radio back on there and I’m listening.

Make it cross platform with the Ages games on the Switch and I’m taking notes.

Offer it with working Saturn and System 3/Model 3 emulators and I’m throwing money at you, Sega

@RiverGenie

That was the issue, thanks.

@OldGamer999

I was looking at the wrong version. The free one is the Deluxe version

https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/plants-vs-zombies-garden-warfare-2-deluxe-edition/BWNN9M15W9V9/0001

Showing as £2.99 for me 😔

Quality analysis. Look at what happened last time and predict the same again.