General Gaming News

[Lenny Solidus]

[Sly Boots]

[Alan]

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry ... ntent=null

[Raid]

I've been under the impression that Microsoft knew what they were doing with Game Pass, that they had access to figures that showed giving gamers access to a hundred games for a relatively low subscription fee was still profitable over selling them a handful of that same number. I questioned how long it would take them to recoup the $60 billion price for Activision Blizzard at the time, but hey, they presumably had a plan, right? This is Microsoft we're talking about, they're presumably fairly good at making money. Is.... is that not actually the case then?

That $300 million loss on Blops 6 is being reported as if it took them by surprise. We knew that as of a few months back Game Pass had 35 million subscribers, and that Kotaku calculation of requiring 15 million new people signing up for one month to make up that $300m doesn't really make sense. They've only sold 33 million XBox Series consoles, so even if you assume every single console owner is subscribed (which is a ridiculous assumption in itself), they'd still need 17 million PC subscribers to make up the numbers. That's not impossible, there are a lot of PC gamers afterall, but it doesn't feel likely when PC players have access to far more reasonable game prices.

I'm obviously not a corporate strategy expert, but given the expectation of gains measured no further than the end of the next quarter (because shareholders are the only people that companies that size care about and god forbid the stock price sinks even a tiny bit), I just can't see how the Activision Blizzard acquisition makes any sense.

[Wrathbone]

Nothing Microsoft has done with gaming this generation has made sense on the surface. There’s no point me trying to understand the financial figures because at that level of business, it’s like pinning down smoke. Gone are the days of simple profit and loss based on selling a product or service, otherwise Xbox and Game Pass would have been a financial catastrophe five years ago. Instead, they hit record numbers last year.

I don’t think they have a clue what they’re doing as a gaming platform anymore, and I don’t think that matters to them because I do think they know what they’re doing financially. I have doubts that they lost $300m in potential sales revenue for COD - not everyone who played it on Game Pass would have otherwise bought it. It’s more likely that they’re pushing that line to justify more layoffs, or for tax evasion reasons.

[Alan]

I don’t think they’re doing that though. 300mil is only around 4mil sales. COD typically sells 20-30mil copies. With 82% sales on PS I think 300mil is conservative.

[Wrathbone]

Could it not just be that the world is sick to death of COD and the change of hands to Microsoft was the wake up call (of duty) that some people needed?

[Alan]

You would think but you’d be wrong :p

I’d actually love a new CoD to play if they got rid of the mtx vomit covering everything. It’s a real fun game to play at its core but the loathing I feel just by its title screen… urgh. Even a remaster of Blops 1 or 2 that ran on steam deck I’d be well up for. That said I hear the CoD4 remake was garbage on PC so :/