this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Gamepass as it currently exists will be gone within a decade. This is the Netflix or Amazon model at play. Run service cheaply until it hits critical mass, then start ramping the price up to turn it profitable. You won't be getting unlimited $70 games on launch for $15/month for forever.
Even if the above is wrong: a successful GP will fundamentally alter the way games are made. Content is aggressively and constantly tweaked or changed structurally in order to optimize profit. You know why search results on Google are garbage? Because people found a way to take advantage of that system to make the most money; doing so pushed out the good results. Same reason why all the biggest youtube channels have the content creator making a stupid face in the thumbnail with a clickbait title. Same reason why film has moved towards cinematic universes lately, or why so many IPs have moved towards the TV format (its for streaming).
Consumer oriented content changes when the revenue model changes. If GP is influential enough, games will change to optimize for whatever method makes the most money there — and that model will not be the one that exists currently. If Microsoft pays them by hours of playtime, games will become bloated with more and more empty content or arbitrary difficulty. If DLC continues to not be included, more and more core game content will shift towards DLC that becomes more expensive. Etc.
Cementing Gamepass is anything but a "tremendous" benefit for gamers.
Game Pass is already profitable, as said by Phil Spencer.
The goal with game pass is to have enough subscribers giving guaranteed revenue to finance all their first party games for the year along with the payouts for third party games. Once a person is subscribed and in the ecosystem, Microsoft then get 30% of every third party game and DLC they buy. That's where the real money is. Game Pass is there to get them hooked. With MS's goals of 4 AAA first party games a year, they need say $400-$600mil in revenue from game pass a year for that. They're already over half the number of subscriptions needed for the upper end of that revenue @$15/month. Adding COD will make that number explode.
That’s a lot of negative “what ifs”. We can only judge by current situation not by what something may or may not become in the future. This is not Minority Report video games edition.
Shift towards DLC and worst, season passes and micro transactions, already happened without GP. We live in that world. GP here is not to blame.
No matter how you slice it - right now GP is tremendous value for gamers. It finally forced competitors to introduce some form of their own subscription service. Sony/Nintendo fans like them, and without GP these services would not exist.
I’m lucky to have 3 main consoles and PC. In order of money spend per game its highest PS5 > Switch > PC > XSX lowest. Exact reverse order is # of games played on given platform. I spend less for GP than for Netflix and get way more entertainment out of it. The other consoles are just for very expensive exclusives.
GP model allows me to find and try games that I normally wouldn’t buy. Forza Horizon 5, Immortality or Pentiment are just 3 examples.