For the best part of this generation, Sony’s been pressured by a vocal part of the gaming community to borrow Xbox Game Pass’ unproven business model with PS Plus. The platform holder eventually decided to take a half-step, merging PS Now with its existing subscription but resisting the urge to add day one first-party software to the service. It’s described this strategy as unsustainable.
For a long time, Microsoft ceased to share updates on Xbox Game Pass’ total number of subscribers, although it’s insisted the service is profitable without actually elaborating on the accounting. However, we’ve heard from analysts like Circana that gaming subscriptions have generally plateaued in the United States, and are failing to attract subscribers in the same quantities as video streaming services like Netflix.
During its business strategy podcast earlier this week, Microsoft announced that it had increased its previous total of 25 million Xbox Game Pass subscribers to 34 million, although it’s since clarified that this dramatic increase is largely due to Xbox Live Gold’s rebranding as Xbox Game Pass Core. There were almost 12 million Xbox Live Gold members prior to the change.
This would largely support theories that the service is failing to grow at a significant rate, although according to boss Phil Spencer the number of Xbox Game Pass Core members is a “pretty small” section of the overall total. He also insists its subscribers are all “fully paid” members, although conversion tricks which make the subscription more affordable than it should be do still exist.
Still, all of this would suggest that Sony has ultimately followed the right path with PS Plus, as it’s successfully increased the overall revenue of its subscriptions without damaging the full-price sales of its first-party games, like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 which topped 10 million units this month. Considering the significant amount of pressure it faced to follow Microsoft’s lead earlier in the generation, it probably deserves some credit for holding its nerve and forging its own way.
[source gamefile.news]
Comments 100
Cor, Xbox getting a fair bit of promotion over here at the PlayStation news site!
Anyhow, I think what might be a nice addition and somewhat of a middle ground would be for PlayStation to pop first day releases on to PS Plus Extra for a whole month (in its entireity). Will allow some hardcore people to finish it and others to enjoy a decent chunk and taste of it before committing to a discounted purchase of the game.
Allows for additional subscriptions as well as not hampering general game sales too much.
This is why Sony and PlayStation brand are successful. They know what they are doing. We may disagree at the time, but, still history tells all……
Yeah I think Sony made the right choice there. Maybe the new routine they'll settle in to is releasing stuff day and date on pc then releasing on PS+ Extra (and maybe Xbox??) about 2 years later.
"without damaging the full-price sales of its first-party games"
This is not true. PlayStation's projections are that it lost $85m in retail revenue by putting Horizon: Forbidden West on PS+ Extra last year.
Well gamepass latest numbers are 34 million but 11 million of those were converted over from Gold when it changed "gamepass core", so without that it would of been at 23 million yet their last revealed figures in 2022 were 25 million. So if anything gamepass is doing worse than it was two years ago and thats with some heavy hitters like Starfield and Forza being released. It makes sense why they are now turning to other platforms for revenue.
Microsoft relied heavily on cloud gaming taking off but that hasn't happened, no one wants to play console games at 720p on a mobile phone with touch screen controls and lag. The main bulk of subscribers are on Console and PC and if those platforms don't get more players then of course the subscriber count will stall.
Stating the obvious eh?
As a user, I don’t see much difference between PS+ and Game Pass.
I get free games every month and can download from a huge catalog. I’m happy with both services.
But it’s clear they’ve gone for different strategies.
The difference in the effectiveness of the strategies right now is most gamers prefer to buy and own their games forever. And they want to play specific games rather than have a random selection they may not want to play. So for now, PlayStations strategy is working for console. But I think Xbox will start seeing a wider benefit when they attract new people who don’t own consoles into the platform they are building. And of course, when CoD drops day one on Game Pass.
Hopefully both can be successful.
@StrickenBiged Imagine how much it would have lost if it was day one, then.
It's not that disgruntled PS Plus subcribers to the higher tiers want Sony to follow the day-one first party business model: they just want PS Plus to have some decent games. TLOU Part 1 on PS5 (itself a remake of ab 11-year old game) has been out 18 months and is still not part of the catalogue, GoWR,14 months still not in the catalogue.
When Sony rebranded created the PS Plus collection for new PS5 owners it seemed generous. When it rebranded PS Now, it was liberal with putting lots of early hits in the extra catalogue around a year after they came out. In fairness, most of them ae still there. But it turned out to be bait-and-switch.
But the third-party fare is either low-selling AA, live service games that are DOA and shovelware to make up the numbers, month-in, month-out. Occasionally there is a half decent AAA game that underperformed in sales. Those of us who were foolish enough to stack our memberships have to ride out the remainder of it. But the reveals are reliablty depressing, tbh.
Of course, the truth is the cupboard is bare: Sony dont have another AAA title until a year from now. My PSVR 2 is a hunk of plastic in its box. There are STILL almost zero VR games in PS Plus even though a small selection would probably tip the balance in value.
Sony has to sweat its games from two years ago and not put them in PS Plus because, despite having all these studios, and being in the 4th year of this console's cycle it doesnt have enough product in the pipeline.
I'm kinda baffled with these types of articles. Instead of requesting as much value as possible from corporation, people are cheerleading getting less value for same price as competition.
truly strange.
insert "but what about a corporation" meme
@Fyz306903 they will never release on Xbox I don’t think
@Godot25 if you’re looking at it through fanboy googles than I could see how you perceive the article to be that but it’s just showing that Sony made the right business decision not to do day and date
@stu123 yeah so rich that they now need to release their exclusives on ps and switch smh. Just because the company MS is rich doesn’t mean the Xbox gaming division is
Even with Sony's current subscription model they are getting £4 billion per year and thats with the 47.4 million subscribers paying for the lowest package (£6.99). Without adding day one first party and paying for third party day one games that's an impressive sum.
@liathach no they don’t have an established triple aaa game not that they don’t have none period smh people really need reading comprehension lessons
@Godot25 Xbox and PlayStation are direct competition….MS and Sony are not. Gamepass has the backing of a 3 trillion dollar company that can afford to add day one games and make deals with more third parties. Sony is worth about 118bil which means you could fit roughly 25 Sonys Into MS and have some change (when you actually look at these numbers written down the difference is staggering….a trillion is equal to one thousand billion and has 13 digits!!).
Yes, as a consumer I would love every single 1st party game to arrive on PS Plus day one. As a rational human being I understand that this isn’t possible. If Sony were making promises they weren’t keeping with regards to PS plus I would be annoyed but they have been pretty honest about what they can and can’t do with the service from the get go. So simply put if people don’t think they are getting good value from either Plus or Gamepass they simply shouldn’t subscribe but we can’t expect the exact same service from two vastly different companies.
@Kienda MS is slowly but surely going into becoming the biggest third party publisher in gaming since their console sales have cratered two gens in a row so I feel after next gen they will be probably quit making consoles
I remember being told Gamepass would kill Sony at the start of this gen and yet here we are
@StrickenBiged yes that taught them a lesson so they won’t repeat that again
Duh, there is zero chance it's profitable, it was always a stupid idea unless your plan is reel in 50+ million subs and then triple the price.
My best friend and I both used the trick to get three years for pretty cheap.
After that, I’ll treat it like any other subscription service. I’ll unsubscribe for a good while, sub for 1-3 months to play what I want, then unsubscribe again.
StrickenBiged wrote:
This is true, but only tells part of the story. It didn't account for how many subscribers, and revenue from them, they might have gained from it's inclusion on PS+ Extra, only the loss to retail sales.
If for example half a million subscribers had signed up for a year in the US because of this they would have made $67m back immediately. As subscribers tend to stick around this might have been worth it if only half that number stuck around for a second year etc. It's very hard to balance these different costs out, but ultimately they want more subscribers and this was a test to see if it moved that needle.
You must appreciate Sony for being open about the numbers, even when they are not great (as over the last few days). The fact that Xbox is being sneaky about their own, and tries to manipulate the opinion by cherry-picking just the ones they feel strong about (34 millions of subs), makes me believe they are doing far worse than Sony.
As for the strategies, and I don't want to offend anyone, it's easy to put your first party releases to the service day-1 when they are of questionable quality and are releasing to a smaller potential "buying" audience. GP started strong with 3rd party releases, but over the last half a year (probably more) it's been mostly disappointment for me. I still am subscribed to the service, but because I took advantage of extremely charitable exchange rate early on. No way I would subscribe full price, as a value for a casual gamer like me is just not there. (I tend to play smaller number of games, and I don't need to play them day-1, but I want them to be 9/10 and 10/10 experiences. Similar to how I don't watch every 6/10 movie, and concentrate only on pieces I'll remember/will leave lasting impression)
Good. A future where all games are locked behind subscriptions and streaming sounds like a nightmare to me.
Gaming world was so much simpler in the old days.
There seemed to more big AAA high quality games and you just paid for them, physical or digital and that was that.
Even the PS3/xbox 360 and PS4 days seemed so much better than now.
The only company that it keeps out of this and seems to be keeping it simple is Nintendo.
Will be interesting to see if they start joining in all this even more with Switch 2.
As the Switch 2 games costs will go up in development if they are to produce games at PS4 graphical quality like HFW with say Mario and Zelda. That worries me as it takes them an age to release a TOTK or a 3d Mario. So if they need more development time to graphical leap to PS4 standard we might never get a game out of Nintendo.
So much console warring going on during the last few weeks. It's exhausting.
@GeeEssEff Okay. I'm not arguing that Sony have to do "day and date" first-party games. But. If they are not willing to do that, it would be nice, if price of PS Plus Extra reflected that.
Currently, PS Plus Extra is 13,99€ in my region, while Game Pass Ultimate is 14,99€. For one € extra I have access to "day and date" games.
I'm currently subscribed to both Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PS Plus Extra and it's not even a contest between those two services. Not only through "day and date" first-party games, but also third-party games that are coming to Game Pass day one/EA Play inclusion and access to streaming.
Only reason why I'm not fully regretting subscribing to the PS Plus Extra is because I managed to snag a deal for 12 months of PS Plus Extra for 72€. Which is exactly the price where you can say "it's worth it." But I can't imagine to continue my subscription for full price.
@themightyant True, and a very good point. I did some back-of-the-fag packet maths:
There were 46.4m PS+ Subscribers in Dec '22, and 47.4m in Mar '23. H:FW joined the Extra Games Catalogue in Feb '23. Let's be generous in our assumptions and say that the additional million, only joined PS+ Extra rather than the cheaper Essential, and they all joined to play H:FW. Let's also assume that they all bought a year's worth of extra from scratch, rather than taking advantage of one of the upgrade-your-subscription deals. PS+ revenue would have increased by just under (because of the pennies) $135m. Putting H:ZD on Extra lost them a projected $85, so they netted just under $50m.
Like I say, that's being very generous in our assumptions though, and just small tweaks to the assumptions (like if some of the new 1m subscribers were only on Essential) make millions of $ of difference to the outcome. PlayStation will have better stats and know better whether putting H:FW on Extra was a good idea overall.
The rest of us will find out by observing what they do with their other tentpole exclusives over time.
To be honest I am not a subscriber to any ps plus tier and I have no reason to, but if they had Horizon and Spiderman there day one I would subscribe and I think I am not the only one.
@Godot25 I think the monthly prices are higher to tempt people into yearly subscriptions which are much better value, particularly if you can get them on a deal. I’m in the UK and I have picked up premium for around £80 a year before in a deal and for what is essentially £6 a month it’s a good deal.
The thing with PS plus extra and premium is I don’t think you’re going to get massive amounts of value if you buy a lot of games on release or you are subbed to gamepass as well. For people new to PS or those who are happy being a few years behind on releases it’s incredible value even at the monthly fee.
Hmmm…. For a PlayStation website, there sure is a lot of Xbox news. I think a particular writer is a little too obsessed. There’s plenty to write about PlayStation news without having to bring Xbox up everyday.
@itsfoz not likely, it came out in the Insomniac leak when they dropped Horizon Forbiden West on the service half a year after release, it sank sales majorly and ongoing. From that I assume they won't try something similar again.
@GeeEssEff Well.
Since new CEO of PlayStation is finance guy and since PS Plus already hit it's ceiling (so much so that Sony stopped reporting PS Plus numbers), I fully expect that they will go to the second phase of lifecycle of service "pulling more money from one customer" so I don't expect that those "good deals" lasting very long tbh.
I'm one of the rare gamers for whom neither PS Plus nor Game Pass have enough value to bother subscribing to, as I don't play online and the idea of renting games is something that belongs in the past (when I was a kid). I have the Nintendo one though as it's the cheapest and allows me and gf to easily game together, plus she loves all the N64 emulation, so much so I bought her a CRKD Deck in GameCube purple so no more stick drift as she only plays portable.
Personally I mostly prefer to wait until games are on sale around the £10 to £20 mark and just buy outright, with the exception of Lies Of P recently I paid RRP for because it's just that good and I didn't want to wait.
I would guess Game Pass numbers have stalled partly because they discontinued the 1 month or 3 month trial at £1 per month. I had it when it was cheap because it took mere seconds to make a new account, set the home Xbox and game stream, but when it was full price I realised I wasn't using it enough to pay as much as I do for YouTube. There's too many monthly subscriptions anyway, video and game services vying for your attention alongside bills that go out monthly, so it's worth weighing up what's worth it and what's not otherwise you're just wasting money you could use to fully own games and save the rest.
@UltimateOtaku91 "no one wants to play console games at 720p on a mobile phone with touch screen controls and lag"
Similar thinking behind why the PS Portal sold well initially, but by the end of this year will be basically forgotten about. Flash in the pan.
For Sony maybe, for the players hell no, Game Pass is win win for the consumer.
@liathach From what you've said I'd actually agree and point out both Xbox and PS5 are suffering from a lack of good first party games, and their online subscription services are a bit disappointing as a result. I would point out that there is arguably more value on Xbox if you like previous gen games, due to sales on them, some being free on GP and a better selection whereas Sony has done very little in terms of additions to the PS2/PS3 Classics roster over the last few years. If they want to sweat their back catalogue for value that would be a good place to start - the way I see it, they're behind both Microsoft and Nintendo there.
For me both models work. Gamepass saves me a significant amount of money on Xbox games and some big day 1 3P launches. That saved money can be used to buy PlayStation and Nintendo games. The 3 different ways of each company doing business is a huge win for multiplatform gamers like myself. Right now there is no right or wrong strategy although I think long term Sony will follow suit with Microsoft because they usually are the first to make the hard moves (like day to PC a few years back).
@itsfoz what a terrible idea.
i love game pass but i have no issues buying 1st party games from Sony.
@Godot25 "I'm kinda baffled with these types of articles. Instead of requesting as much value as possible from corporation, people are cheerleading getting less value for same price as competition.“
It's a pretty dystopian world we live in where people champion practices that mean to extract the highest corporate profit at the expense of the common folk doing the championing. Yet their response is that YOU are the one that is wearing fan boy goggles by questioning it. That's rich.
It's a common occurence here. As the corporations that run this site and the one they have for Nintendo, and Xbox serve as basically marketing arms for the platforms. However to see the regular gamers defend getting less for their time(money), is frankly just sad.
A few quotes come up every time I see this bizarre defense of a system designed to take as much as they can from you with as little investment, durability, and value possible.
"You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it." Morpheus (The Matrix)
"It is no measure of good health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society" J. Krishnamurti
@Darylb88 I agree Sony will follow in a few years, but I kind of wish they didn't. There are downsides to GP day and date model (quality, release cadence, amount of varied content) that people are mostly ignorant to, that Sony would surely inherit if they switched to similar service, simply to make it financially feasible. While there is a large population out there that is not phased by these concessions, me personally would rather opt out of such future.
@stu123 😂 money alays comes into it don't be daft
@Glorioso why two wins ?
Careful with the wording, @get2sammyb. Microsoft never said Game Pass was profitable because they can't lie to shareholders. They've said "sustainable" and "financially viable," which are not the same thing.
"although conversion tricks which make the subscription more affordable than it should be do still exist."
You really think these "tricks" couldn't be shut down if they wanted to?
Trillion dollar tech company doesn't know how to close perceived subscription loophole, seriously?
Give your head a shake.
To add, they recently made adjustments so the conversion rate isn't quite as favourable.
@OldGamer999
I think out of all manufacturers the only one you don't have to worry is Nintendo, they have a pretty steady pipeline and their hardware is always developed around what they can do.
Should we not be championing the consumer and not the corporation? Sometimes I wonder how we got in this mess, it's crazy.
@KundaliniRising333 @Godot25 well said
I don't understand this argument that Gamepass is much better value because it has a very limited number of day 1 games. I have subscribed to both and I got way more valuable from PlayStation Extra as it just wasn't worth losing all the PlayStation exclusives for the small number of underwhelming x box exclusives and an extremely limited catalogue of day one releases. When I heard day one releases I thought great but after a year with Gamepass it was is this it ? Virtually every interesting game that came out I would check and sure enough it wasn't coming to Gamepass just a few games I hadn't heard of and the occasional big new title. Personally I find Extra far better value because to me it has far more high quality games as Xbox has nothing close to Extras exclusive library on it. Extra also obviously has a much larger game library than gamepass, but one thing Gamepass has is a much much bigger advertising budget while Sony tends to let the games on their service speak for themselves and this tactic obviously works very well for them but I suppose it's different courses for different horses and all that and value is obviously subjective but I cancelled Gamepass and have stayed with Extra.
@liathach You’ve articulated some of my thoughts there. There’s been a substantial drop off in “newish” first party PS+ inclusions. I was just lamenting that I had expected GoWR to be on the service by now so I haven’t bought it yet, it being still full price to boot (when it’s not on a temporary sale). There’s some comments here that say apparently they extrapolated losses by putting HFW on PS+ too soon. (Loss of $85 million?) I don’t know how they could possibly calculate that… maybe by seeing how many people played it on PS+ Extra and then calculate from there? But I don’t know how reliable that metric would be since not all those would have bought it. Also, certainly having access to the base game on PS+ has boosted Burning Shores DLC sales? Maybe this is why they felt obliged to give the GoWR DLC for free since they are still charging full price for the base game. Anyways, as you, I’d like to see some of the older first party games come to Plus, but indeed the cupboard is bare so they have to stretch these out.
I will just say that I only partially agree on the notion that the third party content on PS+ and PS+ Extra is subpar — yes, there’s a lot of garbage on there, but there’s some quality titles still being included. A Plague Tale: Requiem was fantastic, imo. Also Disco Elysium. Both I recently played. I see AC Valhalla is coming this month which is a huge successful AAA game (albeit quite old at this point). Others I’ve enjoyed recently from the service like Humanity, The Quarry, Power Wash Sim, Stray, as well as others I still need to get to like Nier Replicant, Gotham Knights, LiS True Colors, the aforementioned HFW and ACV all are either successful or highly rated.
The real blockbusters on service I’ve mostly played already because I bought them. The real value of the service does seem to lie in those interstitial games that you don’t quite feel like you have to play asap, and can either wait a year, or just discover on a whim. It works for me and I absolutely still get my value. I count 9 games I’ve played from the service in the last year. Not too shabby for $100 (bought and stacked my sub on sale).
And I guess many may interpret my positivity as “corporate cheerleading”, which is fine. I’m not offended per se, I’m just saying I like the service. Am I supposed to lie? 😅 Of course I would like to get TLoUP1 and GoWR and other first party games. Or even get Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin on day 1, but I mean, I’d also like to win the lottery but I can’t let it ruin my happiness with what I already have.
Simple logic - MS, that is on the stock exchange, will hide such profitable business plan and not use it to increase its stock value ... yeah, right. They hide it because it was a bad idea and Sony did great to look at their game and go by their plan which has proven itself for many years.
@UltimateOtaku91 Did they confirm 11M of that is from gold? The article says Phil noted a small number are core. I wouldn’t consider 33% small.
As long as these greedy companies keep raising prices, subs will not only plateau, but start dropping off. Which will prompt them to raise prices again (see Netflix, Disney, etc). Classic death spiral.
Another Colin was right moment
@FatalBubbles Well before the switch to core there was 11.7 million Gold subscribers, assuming the majority were members purely for online play then I can't see a reason they would cancel their subscription after the change to core.
@UltimateOtaku91 Ya I follow that thinking. Just seemed at odds with what Phil said regarding a small amount of them. Who knows I guess.
Good thing Xbox is a division of Microsoft. Otherwise they'd have gone the way of Atari and sega by now
I'm fine waiting a year or so for big games. It's understandable. What I would like to see is more good indie games in place of cookie cutter AAA games like Assassin's Creed.
@itsfoz this would honestly be the only way to keep me on the higher tiers. Either that or making ps3 games run natively as the cloud streaming options runs like trash on a wired 3gb/s connection. My premium lapses on the 28th and I’m downgrading all the way to essential, but that’s mainly because the games on extra I’ve either already played extensively, bought day one (most of them are several years old), or just don’t care for. Extra is still a good value for many people, just not me. If premium streaming is improved, then I’d rethink it.
For me there is a massive difference between owning and renting your game's, I don't find any value in renting game's other than treating the game's as demo's. Game's are not two hour long films, I like to take my time and don't use guide's when playing my game's and a lot of game's I play I put 100+ hours into them or 50-80+ hours in others obviously depending on the game. Doing everything the game has to offer, and I go back to replay games again. And then you have the sale's, you can buy Crysis trilogy 1-3 under a £10, Lego Marvel Trilogy with all DLC £7.99 if that's not vavlue for money I don't know what is, not only that games prices fall super quick. Now if you could only rent games you would see non of that and the monthly prices would be a lot more than what they are now to rent games. I like the way gaming is now, and I hope it stays this way.
@dark_knightmare2 I’m not sure how long Xbox consoles will be around, but the Xbox platform will be around for many years to come.
Wow it's almost like I was right all this time. I'm not the only one who pointed out the failure in logic here from Microsoft.
That pressure existed mostly from Microsoft and really only Microsoft. The reason is Microsoft needs sony to switch to this format more than sony or the gaming community at large needs this. Especially the older generations. Id go as far as to point out that this illustrates nintendos point about mobile and game pricing 10 or so years ago. Where this has initiated an unsustainable race to the bottom and devalues games. Nintendo has more than shown that services of this sort are not needed.
PS+ is completely irrelevant to me now. My sub for Premium ends on the 22nd and I won't be paying anything more.
It has either been a poor selection of games or ones I already bought and played months if not years ago. The fact that Sony want me to pay them £60 a year just to back up my saves in the cloud is not an enticing proposition either.
I have bought so many games after trying them on Game Pass however. If I try a game and like it I'll buy it. With my PS5 I'm much more selective about the games I buy because if I don't like it the best I can hope for is trading it in at CeX for pennies or hope someone wants it on eBay.
Personally, I'm not super big on subscription based stuff like this.
I like owning the games that I want to play, not borrow them from a digital library, and I don't play games fast enough to beat them before they're removed from said service.
Made the right call for themselves not for the consumer.
@Kienda I am not sure how important owning a game really is.
But certainly a subscription service removes freedom. As you mentioned you only get a certain selection not necessarily what You want (according to comments on pushsquare, most people hate every single game that is dropped on ps+ essential), additionally You often only have a time window in which the title is available. So you may feel pressured. Then, it is either all or nothing. You cannot stretch out games over a large period and do something else with the saved money.
Id argue it depends on how you view the choice.
As a consumer Im much happier with my gamepass package than my ps premium one. Not that the ps top tier is bad, at the $10 a month i paid it was a good value. However, at the new price tier i wont be renewing. Given jow I dont play mp games, im actually going to cancel my entire ps plus sub in sept when its up unless i find a hefty discount, where as ive no intention of cancelling my gpu sub. Ive had ps+ since day 1, so ill lose acess to a lot of titles, but im just following sonys model and switching to full purchases.
So from a consumer point, id argue sony made the wrong choice. From a business perspective though, id say its a tossup. Sony could charge 15-20 a month if they included day 1s, but not as it is now. They are looking for the balance.
@DanteDevilHunter
Here in lies the difference though. I have never had an issue with completing gamepass games and all first party games (almost)never leave. I prefer not to own my games because despite having plenty of room, I dont like clutter. Further, once i clear a game im done with it in 99% of instances. I do still buy games, but only digital and they always just get archived for eternity once done.
Point is, as long as we still have a choice of buying, there is nothing wrong with a sub. It provides the ability to try new things without having to incur much cost.
I believe Microsoft never actually said that Game Pass was profitable. What they did say however is that the service was sustainable.
The difference is clear: the latter term suggests that Game Pass might eventually become profitable, a reality which obviously hasn't materialized yet.
And to be frank, even the "sustainable" narrative now looks very weak.
@Th3solution GOWR is on sale for £43 right now on PSN also $40 in the US and it is even cheaper for a physical copy.
On Black Friday, It was also still just £30 or $35 in the US and goes on sale regularly. It seems you simply refuse to buy it and if so then you'll just have to wait until its sales dry up before it is added.
@Godot25 It's not about protecting corporations. It's about protecting our favorite hobby. It's a business venture after all. It exists to make money first and foremost. Your entertainment is a means to an end.
If a business is not sustainable, it won't be around for long. It either dies or readjusts. It happened to Sega in spectacular fashion and is now happening to Microsoft right in front of our eyes.
You journalists are kind of hypocrite. You were bombarding sony with many articles like oh ps4/5 owners must pay for this new title but it's free on game pass, and now that gp is now working, you write articles about it's not working as planned
@MrMagic Yeah, I did see GoWR on sale currently (and pretty frequently to be fair), and I have no problem paying for it, but my backlog is big enough that I’ve been fine to wait. Kind of glad I waited since the DLC just released. I actually paid for Spider-Man 2 full price on release and have it sitting unplayed still as I make my way through FF16 which I also paid full price for. And also Baldur’s Gate 3. Not to mention several other new releases that I’ve bought over the last year. So I don’t have an absolute aversion to buying games. I buy one every month or two, depending.
It’s just we all know the sting of finally buying an older game, only to have it drop in price or drop into PS+ the next week. So after first party games are past the 6-9 month point on the market, I tend to just prefer to wait and see, unless I really, really want to play it right away, or really, really think it isn’t coming down price wise. It’s sort of like going to see a movie in the theater after it’s already been out for 2 months. Might as well just wait at that point because it’ll be on streaming or available to own on 4K disc for the price of those two theater tickets. 😄
I will tend to go for a purchase of even an older game if it’s one that I want to show a little extra support for, so usually a smaller game or indie. If it’s a blockbuster then I don’t feel the obligation necessarily.
This story is clearly told through PS glasses. Also, Plus will get a major hit once current subs run out.
I'm pretty sure Sony would love the $360,000,000 a month Microsoft pulls from Gamepass subs every month but I also know Sony can't afford the upfront cost to get the service rolling which is substantial. Being the richest company in the world has its benefits and Gamepass isn't going anywhere lol.
Also sure id love Sony to have a Gamepass type subscription too and I just cancelled my ps+ premium because it wasn't even close to worth it. I had used the loophole before Sony announced and stacked up 2 years of subscription time with about a year of it ending up free.
@Darude84 mine just did and I cancelled ps+ entirely. I play no on Xbox and PC and the sub wasn't worth the asking price by a longshot for me
Make multiplayer free and both of them die its nothing but greed these subscriptions aren't worth the paper they're written on
You can't have full AAA single player games with subscription service like gamepass, the games will always have to have additional incomes (mtx) so people can't just subbed for 1 month to play that games and unsubbed after that, basically renting it online. The cost of single player AAA games are too high for that.
And yeah, psplus essential is suck now too at $80 yearly, a couple of years ago when it's $60 I usually can find a good deal for the yearly subs (usually at $40). The only thing I need is save backup so I guess I'll save it to usb every couple of months 😕
Microsoft mothballed Gold members to GP to boost it's numbers because of it's stagnation, why it's doing what it's doing. It's telling investors GP is the way to go but they clearly saw the stall and asked why so they've now decided to release mid level games on PS. And if that doesn't work or or bring in new players then it will kill of exclusives but by then I reckon they would consider pulling out of hardware at that point
An article telling consumers that less is better for them lol
I mean… even at stalled numbers that’s still what? 30 million people paying about $15 per month to not own the games they play? Simply because the publisher wants to make more money doesn’t make it a bad deal.
Removed - unconstructive feedback
@Deityjester I’d argue consumers too because it’s putting gaming into an even more precarious position than it already is in. Gaming has always been an expensive hobby and I find it funny that gamers think they should get these 300 million dollar games for Pennies not realizing that isn’t sustainable and could make gaming that they supposedly love crash and possibly go away
@Wilforce obviously it’s a bad deal if MS is looking elsewhere to make up the money they are losing. I also bet those numbers are slightly inflated and the majority of those subs probably don’t engage enough. I have Monthly gamepass yet I haven’t turned on or touched it since the 10 hours I put into Starfield at launch
@Toot1st yeah if your reading comprehension is poor or you’re looking at as a console warrior but that isn’t what the article was making a point of
@wiiware premium might not be the greatest but extra is legit and easily comparable to gamepass besides day one exclusives not being there
@dark_knightmare2 Who said they’re losing money? They want more money. That’s a fair desire because they’re a corporation and that’s why corporations exist. If Microsoft releases 3 major titles a year, they make their money back so long as a subscriber maintains their subscription for 4 months. Granted this is a dramatic oversimplification because they gotta pay for games from 3rd party devs like Persona, Palworld, and others so those are definitely losses, but once they get someone in the door they’re more likely to stay since they forgot about the subscription entirely.
@itsfoz I get what you are saying, but Sony discussed in the Insomniac leaks that releasing Horizon FW on PS Plus so soon after release destroyed its sales momentum
@Kienda I hope Gamepass will bomb hard I don't want to see Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo completely own us as proven they don't care about game preservation only cold hard cash.
With things like putting digital games available only during limited periods a disgusting practice done by Nintendo.
Microsoft wanting a digital only future where the customer owns nothing and they can do as they please with your purchase.
And Sony with locking things like backing up behind a paywall, making hardware harder to fix with a soldered harddrive on the motherboard making it unfixable when it breaks down eventually. The PS4 was a way better product in that case.
And for all the big three they would love to kill of the secondhand market, smaller discounts and total control of the market and it's publishers. Just to completely maximise their profits.
The same goes for completely with biased numbers where counts in favor towards digital only. DLC, MT, physical available games, small games for a few bucks. They want it so they can maximise profits.
Always online is the pet of the MS and Sony so they can pull the plug on what you are playing when they feel like it.
Wow..:so GamePass is LOSING subscribers! And once again, Microsoft uses deceitful language. It’s like their Modus Operandi. Obscure the truth with vagueness that can’t be classified as a lie, but doesn’t qualify as honesty either.
It’s like the Starfield and Indiana Jones deflection. To paraphrase, “We’re only releasing four games to PlayStation but they’re not Starfield or Indiana Jones.”
Okay, so the first four aren’t. What about game five? Or six? What number will the Starfield and Indiana Jones releases be since we know they won’t be a part of the initial four?
Same with GamePass. In January 2022 GamePass had 25 million subs. In the Activision trial it was disclosed that Xbox Live Gold had 11.7 million subscribers as of April 2022. Since they converted Live Gold to Game Pass Core, and Core included in these latest numbers, that puts the total LOSS at around 2.7 million subscribers!
That’s crazy!
@Wilforce I’m pretty sure MS has talked about gamepass being a loss leader right now and you’re right about people subscribing and forgetting that’s me but I don’t think that makes MS happy because that person isn’t telling friends and family how awesome gamepass is and getting them to subscribe which is why the numbers have stagnated
@lacerz MS and especially Phil Spencer are the masters of double speak too bad they aren’t masters at getting people into their ecosystem lol. I kid but it is annoying how many times Phil and MS have been caught out lying and yet hardcore Xbox fanboys still fawn all over him like he’s their friend
Games offered, PS3 streaming with premium is deluxe and not available on some/many countries for fair reasons of servers but still.
Timing or games on and off the service.
Marketing it well in general every so often. Or ceiling of hardcore gamers or types of games maybe.
Their strategy being different is fair and the difference of titles and what types Xbox doesn't get besides the yes no day 1 but even still.
Retro titles take time to make emulation possible, source code as well and the licensing, totally understandable. Lot of factors there.
But Extra doesn't have that issue other than licenses and what current games are offered or last gen PS4 titles on and off.
Pricing and justifying of using it. Waiting, giving up, getting them cheap digital or physical later.ghrn a need for the service.
It depends.
It's been how many years since a first party on Extra but fair third parties jumping on I'd say to make it fair of a service.
Many factors.
I could use it but other than people that haven't most of us have played whatever we wanted of the past, don't have access but will get it second hand/new eventually.
Would rather get them cheaper and whatever interests then use the service and played those I care for already with no need for it.
Newcomers to PS platforms by all means though.
@dark_knightmare2 I subbed to gamepass when I have xbox series console back then because it's cheap and discounted everywhere, it's really good but in the end, I have more games than I have time, I prefer buying and playing that bought game rather than paying monthly for renting games.
I hope sony make $20 psplus basic version only for cloud saves and ps store discount.
It’s not because they release exclusives on day one, that’s not why Xbox game pass is stagnating, it’s the fact they rarely release exclusives and gamepass is currently filled with Indy games that look like they were made for a sega Genesis pro. That’s why game pass sucks.
I tried both Gamepass and PS Plus. They're fine. I still prefer buying games. The biggest issue was how many games I tried and quit within 3 hours because I was bored or something else caught my attention. It makes your playstation library look ugly plus I feel owning a game and giving it a fair shake usually feels more rewarding.
@Godot25
Well, I do think it's a fair concern because we WANT these companies to be able to sustain the services they offer without killing themselves.
@guitarpete987 But here is the kicker. Nobody gamer has any idea about "sustainability" of this type of service. On one hand you have Jim Ryan saying it is unsustainable, on other hand you have Phil Spencer saying that Game Pass is not only sustainable, but also profitable.
And both of them HAVE to say things that they are saying, because of their corpo strategy regarding sub services.
It's hilarious to be talking about sustainability, when whole concept of console making with subsidized console manufacturing is unsustainable. But still people don't want to pay 700$ for consoles...
🤦🤦🤦 This article is a joke right? Gamepass is by far one if the best things to happen in gaming
I also love all the people in the comments who know the ins and outs of all the financials of Microsoft and Xbox 😅😅 it's absolutely ridiculous because GamEpAsS fAiL
@Stickleman It's killing sales of MS's first-party games and makes up about 15% of Xbox's revenue. Financially it's a disaster, and part of the reason Xbox is going multiplatform.
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