4 ms·

What is extraordinary about the Microsoft games unit and Xbox is how immune their senior staff are to the repercussions of their bad decisions. They're certainl

What is extraordinary about the Microsoft games unit and Xbox is how immune their senior staff are to the repercussions of their bad decisions. They're certainly not taking responsibility for the failed gamepass experiment, trashing the Xbox brand, or the acquisitions they now regret since successfully closing Activision. Failing upwards has never been so conspicuously obvious as it is in modern corporate America thanks to the pervasive use of social media.

CSMastermind 3y ago
I don't play games at all so I'm very out of the loop but gamepass was a failure? I have friends at Microsoft who worked on it and they all seemed to think it was going well last I checked (about a year ago).
- fidotron 3y ago
  > gamepass was a failure? I'm amazed that this is a question. Gamepass is essentially so low cost as to be an incredibly costly giveaway, only it has proven that this devalues everything that touches it. For context, Hifi Rush had 3 million players on Gamepass last August, and today they shut the studio. So even when they get a break out hit they cannot justify keeping the studios around to try and do another; that's not a success.
  - coffeeindex 3y ago
    Until I see actual numbers on Gamepass I won’t believe that it was a failure. It isn’t a direct comparison of “gamers are spending $10 instead of $70”. People who would not buy a game that just came out will willingly pay for Gamepass every month. Gamepass also exists on PC, so Xbox is dipping into a user base which otherwise might not buy many products from them. Yes they almost definitely make less money from some people, but they might make that back and more from people who otherwise would not be buying their games. It’s hard to use your intuition here without some numbers
    - rrix2 3y ago
      And yet here we are where a fantastically successful mid budget game published on to gamepass by a first party studio leading to huge excitement in gamepass is not enough to justify the continued existence of the studio which produced it.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      It's way too soon to call it a failure, but I'd be very surprised if GP isn't a loss leader strategy for Microsoft to capture the game subscription market. The problem is that this is a very 2010's strategy and money is no longer free. So this approach is a lot riskier than it was than in the netflix days. I don't know if Microsoft, given this news, wants to keep playing the long game.
- whoknowsidont 3y ago
  >they all seemed to think it was going well last I checked ...based on what?
- wredue 3y ago
  Game pass was an obvious piece of gamer bait. It is current high value for consumers, but that’s all it is, and in cases where MA is just a third party vendor to the publishers, high value for consumers is bad for the publishers. If it is ever deemed a success, that value will diminish extremely fast.
ajmurmann 3y ago
In what regard has gamepass failed? I keep hearing nothing but excitement about it? Does it lose a lot of money? Similarly, how did they trash the Xbox brand? I've always been a PlayStation or Nintendo user so my view is quite tainted here.
- bombcar 3y ago
  From what I understand gamepass has heavily undercut actual game sales (why buy a game for $70 when it'll probably be on gamepass at some point, and most games are a month of play or so).
  - anbotero 3y ago
    With games costing $70 now, I'm thinking it several times now before shelling out the money, specially for those AAA-valued bad/low-quality games, Game Pass or not. Argument is still valid, since I’ve not bought AAA games for more than two years now, only indies or AA, even if I already beat them with Game Pass.
- fidotron 3y ago
  I refer to my other answer about gamepass. For the Xbox brand they have failed to release quality versions of every major Xbox franchise bar Forza Horizon (Halo Infinite, for example), and this mismanagement has been ongoing for so long the sales figures of the Series consoles are dire. (And the Series X is not bad by any stretch). Now they are having to release their games on their major competitor, the PS5, making the point of buying into the Xbox ecosystem . . . what exactly? And to emphasise here Sony are not exactly doing stupidly well with PS5 software and support, they just aren't actively screwing it up completely.
  - mynameisvlad 3y ago
    They’ve already expressly said they’re shifting from a hardware-focused business to a software-focused one. Did you miss that and think they’re just bad at business? Hardware has always been a loss leader used to sell games, nothing more. If they can sell the games just as well on their “competitiors platforms” then why bother spending time and exorbitant amounts of money building your own hardware? Exiting the hardware space looks like a loss only if you don’t understand the dynamics of the game industry.
BlueTemplar 3y ago
'member Games For Windows ~~Live~~ Dead ?

CSMastermind 3y ago

I don't play games at all so I'm very out of the loop but gamepass was a failure? I have friends at Microsoft who worked on it and they all seemed to think it was going well last I checked (about a year ago).

fidotron 3y ago
> gamepass was a failure? I'm amazed that this is a question. Gamepass is essentially so low cost as to be an incredibly costly giveaway, only it has proven that this devalues everything that touches it. For context, Hifi Rush had 3 million players on Gamepass last August, and today they shut the studio. So even when they get a break out hit they cannot justify keeping the studios around to try and do another; that's not a success.
- coffeeindex 3y ago
  Until I see actual numbers on Gamepass I won’t believe that it was a failure. It isn’t a direct comparison of “gamers are spending $10 instead of $70”. People who would not buy a game that just came out will willingly pay for Gamepass every month. Gamepass also exists on PC, so Xbox is dipping into a user base which otherwise might not buy many products from them. Yes they almost definitely make less money from some people, but they might make that back and more from people who otherwise would not be buying their games. It’s hard to use your intuition here without some numbers
  - rrix2 3y ago
    And yet here we are where a fantastically successful mid budget game published on to gamepass by a first party studio leading to huge excitement in gamepass is not enough to justify the continued existence of the studio which produced it.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    It's way too soon to call it a failure, but I'd be very surprised if GP isn't a loss leader strategy for Microsoft to capture the game subscription market. The problem is that this is a very 2010's strategy and money is no longer free. So this approach is a lot riskier than it was than in the netflix days. I don't know if Microsoft, given this news, wants to keep playing the long game.
whoknowsidont 3y ago
>they all seemed to think it was going well last I checked ...based on what?
wredue 3y ago
Game pass was an obvious piece of gamer bait. It is current high value for consumers, but that’s all it is, and in cases where MA is just a third party vendor to the publishers, high value for consumers is bad for the publishers. If it is ever deemed a success, that value will diminish extremely fast.

ajmurmann 3y ago

In what regard has gamepass failed? I keep hearing nothing but excitement about it? Does it lose a lot of money? Similarly, how did they trash the Xbox brand? I've always been a PlayStation or Nintendo user so my view is quite tainted here.

bombcar 3y ago
From what I understand gamepass has heavily undercut actual game sales (why buy a game for $70 when it'll probably be on gamepass at some point, and most games are a month of play or so).
- anbotero 3y ago
  With games costing $70 now, I'm thinking it several times now before shelling out the money, specially for those AAA-valued bad/low-quality games, Game Pass or not. Argument is still valid, since I’ve not bought AAA games for more than two years now, only indies or AA, even if I already beat them with Game Pass.
fidotron 3y ago
I refer to my other answer about gamepass. For the Xbox brand they have failed to release quality versions of every major Xbox franchise bar Forza Horizon (Halo Infinite, for example), and this mismanagement has been ongoing for so long the sales figures of the Series consoles are dire. (And the Series X is not bad by any stretch). Now they are having to release their games on their major competitor, the PS5, making the point of buying into the Xbox ecosystem . . . what exactly? And to emphasise here Sony are not exactly doing stupidly well with PS5 software and support, they just aren't actively screwing it up completely.
- mynameisvlad 3y ago
  They’ve already expressly said they’re shifting from a hardware-focused business to a software-focused one. Did you miss that and think they’re just bad at business? Hardware has always been a loss leader used to sell games, nothing more. If they can sell the games just as well on their “competitiors platforms” then why bother spending time and exorbitant amounts of money building your own hardware? Exiting the hardware space looks like a loss only if you don’t understand the dynamics of the game industry.

BlueTemplar 3y ago

'member Games For Windows ~~Live~~ Dead ?