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this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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Why are you talking about game budgets? Microsoft is paying completely finished games 100-300 million dollars to be on games pass. If they are doing that, do you seriously think that they aren’t spending more than 2.7 billion putting games in the service…? It’s obviously far far more than 1 billion dude….
Game pass isn’t profitable, or Microsoft would tell you the full financials to prove how good it is. So why haven’t they…?
In the link that you provided, which I have seen before, you can see that they turned down games for hundreds of millions of dollars but estimated that that's what they would cost to get on Game Pass when they launch. Have you noticed that games often leave Game Pass as well? That's because they have to keep paying those people for those games, and they don't see any value in continuing to do so. If they were spending 10x on licensing what they reported to investors, that would have come out in these leaks, especially since the licensees would be able to do some back of the napkin math when they can see what was spent to license their competitors. But that didn't happen. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there's no conspiracy here. Microsoft just has a profitable service.
Games leave gamepass since when it comes to renewal they don’t want to since streaming cannablizes sales and leads to lower revenue (already said this) so it’s not Microsoft deciding it’s not profitable, it’s the game wanting control back.
Investors don’t care, Microsoft itself is profitable, the gaming division can bleed money and they won’t care, since the parent company will just give them the difference another way.
Some games cost that much….
Not actually pricing, estimates, but if they were estimating that much, they were liking willing to pay close to it, even half these numbers and it doesn’t look good. Just this collection of games that a drop in the bucket of total games, would cost 1.5 billion dollars. That’s over half their revenue, without even accounting for any operating costs or anything, or the rest of the library.
So, no it is not profitable and it’s hilarious that you’re defending Microsoft for claiming this, why isn’t anyone else other than Microsoft saying the same thing? In fact lots are claiming the opposite since this leak came out and they started looking at the numbers and taking directly to devs involved. Devs hate it
Then please link that instead of their estimates, because if they were lying, publishers calling out bad math is exactly what I'd expect to happen. What I see on this list though are a bunch of costs that can be spread out over several years, not paid out all at the same time. Jedi Survivor, Suicide Squad, and Mortal Kombat account for $800M of this list, and none of them came to Game Pass, meaning Microsoft did not opt to spend that money.
You are misplacing cause and effect. It's more expensive for Microsoft to get someone else's game on Game Pass right at launch than it is after launch, because if it's a game people are already excited for, it will eat sales, as opposed to something like Descenders where most people never even heard of it, so it would serve as a form of marketing. In that case, Microsoft and the other company are essentially making a bet with regards to how much the game would make if it's not on Game Pass, and Microsoft pays them a guaranteed sum up front, which reduces risk but also reduces reward. When a game leaves Game Pass, it's not because they saw their sales tanking and wanted to "take back control". It's that Microsoft isn't offering them enough to make up for the sales they'd expect to otherwise make for the next leasing period. Microsoft doesn't offer them as much for the next period, because they don't expect that keeping that game on the service keeps more people subscribed.
If you can produce that link that demonstrates what you're claiming, I'll read it, but otherwise, this sure looks like you'd rather believe in some boogeyman conspiracy theory than a simple truth.
Or… no amount of money was enough to make those games cannablize their sales, why do you think it’s only Microsoft making decisions…?
What truth? That Spencer says it profitable, but won’t provide the information to prove it…? Yet all the leaks and information point the opposite direction…? You want the truth, don’t listen to Spencer and read between the lines lmfao. The last person you should be listening to on this, is the one at the top of it.
Provide anything other than Spencer claiming it, I bet while you attempt to find that you’ll find the mountain that’s behind you.