Microsoft generated $2.9bn from Xbox Game Pass last year, regulatory docs suggest | VGC
Brazilian regulator reveals financial figures for Game Pass on consoles…
www.videogameschronicle.com
Thread: Microsoft generated $2.9bn from Xbox Game Pass last year, regulatory docs suggest
www.videogameschronicle.com
That's a good data point. Way more useful to know the revenue of a service instead of just user count to understand what level of content it can provide. (User count matters, but for different reasons)
synchronicity
Member
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While Game Pass is surely a great value, I question whether it's ultimately good for the industry, and hence gamers, in the long term.
And that broader discussion aside, personally I prefer to own my games, digital or otherwise, so that I can play at my leisure without trying to squeeze one in before it's pulled. And I also like revisiting old games/saves sometimes. I know you can purchase on Game Pass at a discount, but it's easy to find better deals.
I've only subbed once on a 3 month for $1 promotion, and I played a bunch of good games, but still for me, it's not how I prefer to engage with this medium.
And that broader discussion aside, personally I prefer to own my games, digital or otherwise, so that I can play at my leisure without trying to squeeze one in before it's pulled. And I also like revisiting old games/saves sometimes. I know you can purchase on Game Pass at a discount, but it's easy to find better deals.
I've only subbed once on a 3 month for $1 promotion, and I played a bunch of good games, but still for me, it's not how I prefer to engage with this medium.
That's pretty much what you get by assuming they have about 25m subscribers averaging $10 a month. I don't know why everyone seem to be acting as if this is some revealing information. Not to mention that we don't know how precise this is or how it was calculated (how does it handle people converting their subscription or paying in advance?). By the looks of it, it just seem like a direct conversion of the number of subscribers to the $10 monthly value.
From this number, Gamepass makes less revenue than PS+ does even if everyone paid the minimum possible price ($60 for 12 months) and had the lowest tier.
The revenue of Gamepass was always easy to estimate, the real interesting number is the cost for running the service (internal development, marketing, xCloud, third party licenses, etc) and the opportunity cost (decreased game sales and how much money they would be making regardless if they just had stuck to Live Gold).
With MS fully committed to Gamepass it still took them about 5 years to get to about 25m subscriptions and that was when they had very little competition while making massive investments and being very aggressive with promos/marketing. This whole business model is still far from proven and it's hard to make a case that it was disruptive to any other company besides MS. 2022 was a terrible year for Gamepass, if the biggest appeal of the service is getting first party games day one they can't go an entire year without big releases.
From this number, Gamepass makes less revenue than PS+ does even if everyone paid the minimum possible price ($60 for 12 months) and had the lowest tier.
The revenue of Gamepass was always easy to estimate, the real interesting number is the cost for running the service (internal development, marketing, xCloud, third party licenses, etc) and the opportunity cost (decreased game sales and how much money they would be making regardless if they just had stuck to Live Gold).
With MS fully committed to Gamepass it still took them about 5 years to get to about 25m subscriptions and that was when they had very little competition while making massive investments and being very aggressive with promos/marketing. This whole business model is still far from proven and it's hard to make a case that it was disruptive to any other company besides MS. 2022 was a terrible year for Gamepass, if the biggest appeal of the service is getting first party games day one they can't go an entire year without big releases.
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Nobel 6
Hyper Lethal
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The $2.9B doesn't include PC game Pass or Xbox Live Gold only subs, whereas PS+ includes everything.
Game Pass most likely makes more than PS Extra and Premium combined which are the only Sony subs comparable to Game Pass. The lowest tier is not comparable to Game Pass, it's only comparable to Live Gold and most likely makes up the bulk of Sony's subs and sub revenue. It was the majority of Sony sub revenue before they decided to call everything PS+.
PS+ was close to 50m subscribers already before they restructured it. Gamepass has absolutely no shot to be making more money than PS+. That the problem with people that always take MS spins at face value, you end up believing stuff that have no basis in reality.
The table provided by CADE doesn't explain how they arrived at that number yet you already seem to know all the details.
I speak Portuguese you can tell by a weird phrase like "Assinaturas para multiplos jogos para consoles" that a lot of thought wasn't put into this. It could easily include Live Gold as well and most likely does (regardless if the numbers for Live Gold are relevant or not these days).
How are you deducing from the "Multiple Game Subscription Services for Console" that is don't include Live Gold? What exactly did Sony had in 2021 to account for 50% of the market then if PS+ wasn't included? There was no PS+ Deluxe or Premium so they include PS+ but not Live Gold? PS Now certainty didn't have 50% of the market. PS+ around that time had about double the subscribers of Xbox Gamepass.
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Nobel 6
Hyper Lethal
- Platforms
Prior to restructure PS+ with 50M subscribers was not vaguely comparable or similar to Game Pass, it was comparable only to Xbox Live Gold. PSNow with 3M subscribers was the only Sony service comparable to Game Pass neither is PS Essential comparable to Game Pass.PS+ was close to 50m subscribers already before they restructured it. Gamepass has absolutely no shot to be making more money than PS+. That the problem with people that always take MS spins at face value, you end up believing stuff that have no basis in reality.
The table provided by CADE doesn't explain how they arrived at that number yet you already seem to know all the details.
I speak Portuguese you can tell by a weird phrase like "Assinaturas para multiplos jogos para consoles" that a lot of thought wasn't put into this. It could easily include Live Gold as well and most likely does (regardless if the numbers for Live Gold are relevant or not these days).
How are you deducing from the "Multiple Game Subscription Services for Console" that is don't include Live Gold? What exactly did Sony had in 2021 to account for 50% of the market then if PS+ wasn't included? There was no PS+ Deluxe or Premium so they include PS+ but not Live Gold? PS Now certainty didn't have 50% of the market. PS+ around that time had about double the subscribers of Xbox Gamepass.
Are YOU claiming that all 50M PS+ subscribers upgraded to PSExtra/Deluxe? That seems unlikely since Sony was only able to get 3M subscribers in EIGHT YEARS. If not I'm sure PSEsential makes more revenue than Live Gold but PS Extra/Deluxe is not likely making more than Game Pass and it's likely it makes considerably less.
Changing the name of those 3M PSNow subs to PS+ Extra/Deluxe and throwing them in with the 50M PS+ subs does not mean they suddenly have 50M+ subs that are comparable to Game Pass.
That's the problem with people that always take Sony Fanboy spins at face value, you end up believing stuff that have no basis in reality.
teezzy
Let me have my wanks
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GamePass has personally been invaluable to me as a player
So much so that I instantly bought a year of Playstation's service as a result, and can't wait for Nintendo to follow suit
Sign me up for life plz
So much so that I instantly bought a year of Playstation's service as a result, and can't wait for Nintendo to follow suit
Sign me up for life plz
quickwhips
Member Forever
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Are you even looking at the table? How can Sony have 50% of the market if PS+ Extra and PS+ Premium didn't exist? Clearly they were taking into account PS+ so what makes you believe they were not including Live Gold as well since they were pretty much exactly the same?
Seems like you like to speak a lot about something you didn't even glance at.
I don't think we have any information about PS+ tiers split but that doesn't have anything to do with this table or what I said.
MS refusal to ever share Live Gold numbers or to promote it suggests that the numbers are probably insignificant, specially now that they don't charge for F2P multiplayer anymore like they did for most of last gen.
Nobel 6
Hyper Lethal
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Changing PSNow's name to PS+ to hide its embarrassing numbers does not automatically convert the 50M PS+ subscribers, a play online sub into subscribers of a Game Sub Service that actually competes with Game Pass.
You keep going on about your table, I don't see anything that indicates Sony's Game sub service has more than 2.8B in revenue, Just that all Sony Subs combined is 40-50% of the total sub market. Here's a bunch of articles stating Xbox Game Pass has 60% of the Game sub market:
gamingbolt.com
www.axios.com
www.vgchartz.com
You keep going on about your table, I don't see anything that indicates Sony's Game sub service has more than 2.8B in revenue, Just that all Sony Subs combined is 40-50% of the total sub market. Here's a bunch of articles stating Xbox Game Pass has 60% of the Game sub market:
Xbox Game Pass Has 60% Market Share of Subscription Services, Analysis Reveals
Subscription services collectively amount to 4% of the revenue generated by gaming in key markets such as North America and Europe.
Gaming's Netflix or Spotify moment is still a long way off
Game Pass leads, but subscription services are still a tiny part of the market
Xbox Game Pass Accounts for 60% of the Gaming Subscription Market
Gaming subscription services account for around four percent of the total gaming revenue in the North American and [...]
www.vgchartz.com
For Microsoft and people who want to overpay for things they'll never own, it's fantastic news. For everyone else, it's the beginning of the end of their favorite hobby.
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I mean your right my question though was that others in this thread were saying it was failing though
I think @nominedomine was hitting into it pretty well with questioning the costs associated with earning that $2.9B in revenue.
You can have $2.9B in revenue but if you had $5B in costs, the argument about failure could be raised. Or they could say it's loss-leading to invest in consumer mindshare, that it's a long-term play to one day be the one and only spot for most people to go to like Amazon or Netflix did.
Then all the losses today are about getting to the future of major profit. But none of us know because we don't have the balance sheet. We don't know truly how much money Microsoft is throwing around right now in the early days to take over the future of consumers owning nothing that every company is so desperate to be at the top of.
How much of it do they have to give third party publishers with games on there, not to mention EA? That's the real question.
Stifler's Mom
I've got some Scotch
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Same here.
From now on I will buy games again. Mostly through deals in their online store.
Does this mean anything other than it being a big number?
What's the overall profit, $:user count, highest expense etc?
Is there another service we can compare and contrast these numbers to as a guide to show if this is fantastic news, ok news or bad news?
Can we compare revenue generated by game sales pre gamepass? I'm sure the 360 pulled in 5+ billion in some years.
Either way, it's whatever. Streaming and mobile games are the inevitable future.
What's the overall profit, $:user count, highest expense etc?
Is there another service we can compare and contrast these numbers to as a guide to show if this is fantastic news, ok news or bad news?
Can we compare revenue generated by game sales pre gamepass? I'm sure the 360 pulled in 5+ billion in some years.
Either way, it's whatever. Streaming and mobile games are the inevitable future.
I'd also like to know how many new players it attracted and brought into the MS ecosystem. Because I think that's the end goal for MS here. Even if Gamepass itself does not make a profit, it brings people over who buy their consoles and buy games there, giving MS that 30% share of each purchase.
It's also not just third-party, all internally developed MS games go into this service (at the cost of a lot of game sales) that includes every Bethesda and MS games from now on and in the future Activision and Blizzard games as well, those games are not being created for free. MS also spends a lot of money promoting this service.
We can tell that from the number of subscribers to the service and from Xbox Series sales. The sales trajectory for the Series consoles seems to be pretty similar the Xbox One (strong start but Sony ends up outselling them and increasing the lead over time), perhaps a little better this time, but they also have two models including a much cheaper one, so it's not a direct comparison to the Xbox One console.