They are just proving they don't understand what makes games sell at all then. Anybody who had experienced the early access (they had like 3 years to do so) knew this was a special game. Anybody who tried the DOS series also knew and are probably here because of those anyway. The success of this game was obvious way before it came out. This is just another proof that the people running the business have no idea of what they are doing. They just cannot judge of stuff before they have numbers and it's why we should get rid of these leeches. So again, the only surprised people are the idiots that don't understand shit about modern games.

“This is really a disaster situation for us given all we’ve invested in content across studios at our GP [Game Pass] content fund,” ... “We set a very high bar in 2021 on quality and pacing of content which was awesome to see,” he continued. “But to come off of that year with no big exclusives launching in 2022 is a portfolio planning miss that we can’t afford. If we need to delay launches (understanding there is a financial impact of that) to create more regular beats for us we need to do that. We have to all understand that the situation we are in now is a failure of our planning and production execution.”

My corporate speak is a little rusty, but if I understand the gravity of this statement correctly, is Spencer implying that GamePass is a house of cards that is only supported by the regular timing of new exclusive releases? It seems like that's a very risky business model then, and the consequences of GamePass folding would be consumers lose access to a truly massive number of games. This statement would basically make me lose a ton of confidence in the service, and I'd be looking to take my library (and money) elsewhere.

Honestly. This is a fine look for Microsoft. This is inside baseball executives trying to make sure the lineup on their game pass platform is appealing to people throughout the year. They're going to make bad predictions, but they're not doing it out of spite or evilness, they're just trying to maintain engagement in their game pass.

You would see similar discussions behind any other subscription platform. Did they underestimate it sure, but their job is to predict, so they're going to have to make good estimates and bad estimates.

Archive.ph version in case you don't want to accept all cookies or send a carrier pigeon to headquarters to be exempt in the future.

Even looking past the “unprecedented “ success of BG3, they were ridiculously underestimating it…

Goes to show how out of touch they are with what people want. They’re so focused on their known market that they completely ignore everyone else.

This article and a lot of people reading it seem to have interpreted second run as second rate. This is estimating they'll need to offer $5m to get Baldurs Gate 3 on game pass after it leaves PC/Stadia exclusivity.

It looks like the list was created based on name recognition.

Xbox dubbed Larian’s hit a ‘second-run Stadia PC RPG’ before its release

Man, ~~journalists~~ blog authors are really milking this whole "people in the industry feel threatened by BG3 and have commented publcily" thing just a tad dry now. At least the Twitter comments from devs on their personal accounts on its release were noteworthy in their timing, before the reflection of public perception had hit for many people, but this is just non-news dug up after the fact.

Ubisoft’s Just Dance

Will it be assassins dancing? If so, I'll consider it.

As much as I hate to say if, trying to low ball Larian is probably a good business decision. They are studio with niche appeal (out at least they were, before bg3 released) and I have no trouble believing MS would have the upper hand in negotiations.

Making an agreement to release a game on game pass basically means betting against the developers on their own success. The game might be huge. It might be a flop. Whatever happens, the money from MS it’s going in the back.