Xbox Game Pass - GUIDE TO BEST DEAL IN FIRST POST

[moosegrinder]

8 minutes ago, JPL said:

Which one’s the steak and which is the burger.

 

Nobody would really choose a burger over a steak, would they?

 

Depends on the burger. Depends on the steak.

[rgraves]

10 minutes ago, JPL said:

Nobody would really choose a burger over a steak, would they?

 

Is it a Zinger Tower?

[Mike]

17 minutes ago, 5R7 said:

NO!

 

it will convert at a much lower rate. like 3 months or summit.

 

Best thing to do now, is let it expire, then, stack ya 3 years of live, after its expired, and convert for the £10.99.

Ah so let it go, get a year or two then upgrade and it’ll upgrade for the full year or two and not just a month.  Cheers. 

[bradigor]

18 minutes ago, JPL said:

Which one’s the steak and which is the burger.

 

Nobody would really choose a burger over a steak, would they?

 

A GREAT burger is something to behold. We're not talking chain burgers here.

[Isaac]

Something about the Ascent has looked special for months now, so much so that I preloaded it as soon as it was available.

 

I'm really looking forward to it - not in the least because on PC the ray traced lighting looks to be the most beautiful thing since Cyberpunk.

[Isaac]

I mean just look at this shit:

 

 

[carlospie]

I hope the ascent had a 40 GB day one launch patch like flight sim. That was a cool idea. 

[deerokus]

A bad burger is better than a bad steak.

[Shimmyhill]

8 hours ago, moosegrinder said:

GTAV is disappearing again.

 

Aha, I’m almost glad given I bought it on the Series X but still haven’t played it yet….. added it to the 360, ps3 and PS4 purchases….

[KartoffelKopf]

@bradigor when's the embargo up? The game's out in a little over 24 hours. 

 

I just did a Blade Runner double bill, I need more dystopian cyberpunk in my veins!

[footle]

5 hours ago, carlospie said:

I hope the ascent had a 40 GB day one launch patch like flight sim. That was a cool idea. 

That’d be fine, it wouldn’t use the flight sim content manager.

[ScouserInExile]

15 hours ago, 5R7 said:

NO!

 

it will convert at a much lower rate. like 3 months or summit.

 

Best thing to do now, is let it expire, then, stack ya 3 years of live, after its expired, and convert for the £10.99.

Does that work out cheaper than buying loads of 7 day codes, as mentioned in Bargains (about £72 for the year) 

[Dudley]

Given Live is about 40-50 a year, very?

[Transient Curse]

16 hours ago, Isaac said:

I mean just look at this shit:

 

 

Looks great, I haven't really looked much as I knew I'd be giving it a go, but I hope it's not all shooting. This could be a cool environment for a detective/story driven game. It could be a 3rd person isometric Cyberpunk2077, with that look.  Maybe even a functional one too! 

[deerokus]

Shawn Layden says MS need 500m GP subscribers to justify making $120m games.

 

His maths seem to be out by a couple of orders of magnitude there. 

[Hitcher]

40 minutes ago, deerokus said:

Shawn Layden

Who?

 

EDIT: Sony guy, explains a lot.

[CurryKitten]

I have finally succumbed to game pass.  Mostly because I want to play MS flight simulator - although the overwhelming number of games I can now get my hands on frightens me in terms of playing what I have!

 

It'll take to morning on the 100+ GB for the flight sim, so I won't think  about it for now.

[footle]

5 hours ago, deerokus said:

Shawn Layden says MS need 500m GP subscribers to justify making $120m games.

 

His maths seem to be out by a couple of orders of magnitude there. 

It’ll be something to do with attach rates: how many of that subscriber base actually play that game.

8/9% of PS4 owners played The Last Of Us 2 in the first year or so (say 10 million copies from 115 million install base). I think he’s then just assumed the same number and multiplied the monthly difference in price ($10, $60 digital sale) and it’s pretty easy to get to 500m. Eventually it’s not just about covering your costs. You’ll see similar low attach rates for anything churned out by Netflix.

 

I don’t think that the maths are a couple of orders of magnitude out for a large single player game, if that’s the  reasoning - it’s purely an ROI decision.
 

Nate’s point in his newsletter that Microsoft use it as a loss leader / investment with a long tail is true, but eventually you do need a return. I suppose the argument is that you sticky people into your sub, so the lower attach rate is amortised over multiple months subs from the same people - but it isn’t going to be multiple orders of magnitude.

[Hitcher]

I'm pretty sure a company like MS know better than him.

[Harsin]

He's now ex-Sony I believe and as a rule people who actually work in the industry tend to be far less wrapped up in tribal console war nonsense than people on the internet and happily move between companies.

 

Not saying he's right, but the 'Wah, he used to play for the other team immediately discount anything he says' response is a bit childish.

[rgraves]

5 hours ago, footle said:

It’ll be something to do with attach rates: how many of that subscriber base actually play that game.

 

But that makes no difference - once they are a subscriber, if they actually play a specific title or not doesn't affect the revenue generated. One of the advantages of the subscription model is the (semi) predictable income model (it's not dependent on each game being a hit, more that each game captures a section of the audience and engages them enough to keep subscribing).

 

If MS really did hit 500m subscribers on GP - that would be a theoretical $5bn a month - I think that might just cover the cost of a $120m game or two.

[carlospie]

10 hours ago, deerokus said:

Shawn Layden says MS need 500m GP subscribers to justify making $120m games.

 

His maths seem to be out by a couple of orders of magnitude there. 

Or just charge 70 pounds for new games 

[RubberJohnny]

Yeah I saw the Shawn thing on ResetERA, his maths are fucked:

 

Quote

$10 a month is $120 a year, times a million subscribers is $120 million, the exact cost of his hypothetical AAA game, but he says that's not possible until a billion subscribers, literally a thousand times more!

For a real world example, Microsoft has 25 mil subscribers, at that $10 a month, they'd be able to do 25 AAA games a year (which is coincidentally how many studios they have). Obviously development takes longer than a year, so those are going to be staggered over a longer period, but releasing 4 or 5 big games a year means each will return 500% of it's development cost, which is usually the publisher threshold for considering a game a success. And those numbers only get better the more subscribers you get.

 

Unfortunately it's not just being wrong on a random point, it's literally the crux of his argument, so either he hasn't thought this through as much as he says he has, or is being rather disingenuous.

[Isaac]

I think he's just not a numbers person, clearly.

[gossi the dog]

Has Cross Code been removed from Game Pass?

[moosegrinder]

Since before the new consoles were announced it was obvious Microsoft isn't playing the same game Sony are, it's no surprise he's still in the mindset of making expensive games to sell at a premium.

 

I don't see a monstrosity like Microsoft going hard and deep on the Game Pass model like they have without having done a stupid amount of number crunching and research beforehand, even if they are a very, very, very rich company.

 

Then you've got the evidence that people who have Game Pass actually spend more money, not less.

 

@gossi the dog yeah, fairly recently.

[footle]

43 minutes ago, rgraves said:

 

But that makes no difference - once they are a subscriber, if they actually play a specific title or not doesn't affect the revenue generated.

Which is true, but discounts:

- That you need to retain subscribers and avoid churn (see Netflix). If they're not being retained by your $120m game, you'll need to be providing them with something else.

- That you need to encourage new subscribers (which costs a lot more money - £1/gold upgrades anyone?) to hit annual growth targets.

- That you have an opportunity cost - you *could* be selling that $120m game for $70/£70 a head to ten million people, and making $500m a time.

 

It's that last one that's probably core to most console wars arguments, simply because Gaming is a much more significant slice of Sony's revenue than it is of Microsoft's. Sony will have had hits like that, Microsoft outside of Minecraft at $20 a time, not so much.

 

[womble9]

15 minutes ago, gossi the dog said:

Has Cross Code been removed from Game Pass?

Yeah just a couple of weeks ago. Bit of a shame as it was a game that I'd wanted to try but never got round to doing so. 

[Isaac]

13 minutes ago, footle said:

 

- That you have an opportunity cost - you *could* be selling that $120m game for $70/£70 a head to ten million people, and making $500m a time.

 

 

 

$500m of revenue, not profit. 

 

On average, most consumers buy roughly two games a year (PS4 attach rate is 9.4 games per owner). At £60 a pop that's £120 per user per year, assuming they buy two AAA games at RRP.

 

Guess how much Game Pass Ultimate costs?

 

Assuming that your average user literally only subscribes to Game Pass for the time that they have the console that's still more lifetime value than their typical 2 game per year spend, financially.

 

Game Pass is extremely profitable. Sony are stuck in a blockbuster mindset partly as I think that their senior business people still think of videogames how they do films, which is also incredibly dated (notice how there's no Sony Movie subscription service).

 

Their whole business is still built around a 20th century blockbuster model.

[Dudley]

13 minutes ago, footle said:

It's that last one that's probably core to most console wars arguments, simply because Gaming is a much more significant slice of Sony's revenue than it is of Microsoft's. Sony will have had hits like that, Microsoft outside of Minecraft at $20 a time, not so much.

 

 

Minecraft isn't even the biggest selling Microsoft Studios title on Xbox one.