Xbox Game Studios Stupidity Hate Thread Game Pass Edition

If you think that people don't care about Warcraft, Doom, TES or Diablo anymore then you are incredibly out of touch with gaming trends.
Well to be fair, Diablo 4 seems pretty dead in the water. Warcraft is dead as a property. People still like Doom but after Starfield I think Todd really needs to shape things up for ES6
 
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In terms of sales numbers yes, all were huge successes in their latest release. Pretending otherwise just undermines whatever point you were trying to make.
Warcraft 3 Reforged was massive failure. Diablo 4 has seen its active player base crater to nothing. The last Elder Scrolls game came out well over 10 years ago. Only doom remains well liked, but even Doom Eternal was controversial.
 
I've said from day one of gamepass that it focused on the wrong end of the market. Giving away AAA games where the money is, is retarded.

What I want is a Jankpass. Give me a gamepass-like subscription that gives me access to all of the B-tier dross and jank (which has been replaced by niggercattle 'indies') that I will rarely play, let alone buy, and I would pay mega-money for that service.

Imagine, reliving the days of the bargain bin hunt but in the digital era. Much better than "play this game full of jank that's full of woke politics and terrible ideas".
 
Game Pass, for me, should have been the "Virtual Console" of Xbox. Put older games from the original Xbox and 360 on the service. You know; those old games that most people can't play anymore because they require original hardware. Then, add Xbox One games once the console is discontinued, so on and so forth. Putting brand new games on the service, day and date, is retarded as that cannibalizes new game sales. It would actually justify buying Zenimax and Activision Blizzard, because those companies have extensive libraries of older games. And they could make deals with other third parties to put Xbox exclusives on the service to ensure that they never disappear.
 
Game Pass, for me, should have been the "Virtual Console" of Xbox. Put older games from the original Xbox and 360 on the service. You know; those old games that most people can't play anymore because they require original hardware.
But why would anyone need to subscribe to that, when they could just purchase those games individually, and own them forever? You've just taken support for old consoles and physical games and eliminated them. And now forced everyone to rent games monthly to have access to them. Who wants that? The cost to the user for buying an old console and owning the older games in the long run is infinitely cheaper than having to pay a monthly fee for the rest of your life to access something that you just owned a single generation of consoles ago.

My SNES and PS2 run fine. If they die I can just buy a refurbished one or a SNES clone. Imagine if I had to pay Nintendo a monthly $25 fee to access my SNES games since the N64 came out. The cost of that subscription is not even close to what I would spend replacing the console every other decade and replacing any of the games that stop working. And even then for older consoles you can always go to emulation. If newer games cannot be owned but are streamed to you then you will not be able to archive or pirate them if the game assets are run off of a server that you can't access.

Gamepass is a ripoff for someone. Either the consumers. Or the developers and publishers. There financial model makes absolutely no sense. The older games should be purchasable on new consoles in every generation. And physical copies of rare or popular older games should be available to order on demand with printed manuals. People will argue "but isn't video streaming profitable?". No. Netflix has $15billion in unpaid debt.
Putting brand new games on the service, day and date, is retarded as that cannibalizes new game sales.
Putting any games on the service is idiotic. The service makes no sense for consumers. And honestly makes no sense for Microsoft considering that it just bleeds money and gives them extremely bad will with gamers. Microsoft should have focused on exclusive games, better online communities and forums, and making all older titles available on modern platforms.
 
But why would anyone need to subscribe to that, when they could just purchase those games individually, and own them forever?
Some of those games are hard to get because of rarity. Physical disks decay, and due to a design fault in the original 360, many disks were damaged just by moving the machine. Old hardware is not readily available and can only be acquired through the likes of Ebay. Having a service on hand offering 24 hour access to those games for minimal effort is just more convenient. Microsoft doesn't care about people buying anything second hand. They don't see a cent of those sales. Offering Gamepass is far more beneficial to me.

The cost to the user for buying an old console and owning the older games in the long run is infinitely cheaper than having to pay a monthly fee for the rest of your life to access something that you just owned a single generation of consoles ago.
I don't see how buying dozens or even hundreds of games from second hand sellers is somehow more cost effective than simply paying a single flat fee to play all those same games, without having to invest in hundreds of disks and multiple consoles.

My SNES and PS2 run fine. If they die I can just buy a refurbished one or a SNES clone.
Not everybody still has their older consoles from decades ago. Most people don't. Either they traded them in or sold them for store credit, gave them to somebody else, or the consoles broke down. And not everybody finds it worth it to look for a refurbished model. Hell, who would even sell those? Not the manufacturer, as those consoles are well out of production. Any "refurbishment" is third party and not guaranteed.

Imagine if I had to pay Nintendo a monthly $25 fee to access my SNES games since the N64 came out. The cost of that subscription is not even close to what I would spend replacing the console every other decade and replacing any of the games that stop working. And even then for older consoles you can always go to emulation.
You're average normy isn't going to learn how to emulate shit. They also aren't going to be thinking long form, tallying up the costs of a subscription long term. A subscription would eventually pay for itself in time as they get access to hundreds of games for a few bucks a month, which they could cancel or restart at any time.

Gamepass is a ripoff for someone. Either the consumers. Or the developers and publishers. There financial model makes absolutely no sense. The older games should be purchasable on new consoles in every generation. And physical copies of rare or popular older games should be available to order on demand with printed manuals.
What we think should happen doesn't translate to more money for Microsoft, who are the only ones who matter because they are the ones who own the rights to the games. Microsoft aren't going to make older games physically available on demand; that actually makes no sense. Games cost money to print and ship. They literally lose money on that deal. Microsoft could make games purchasable, but in order for them to maximize profit, they'd have to make you rebuy them every generation, like what Nintendo tried to do with the virtual console. In other words, there is no way consumers win in this scenario. It is what it is.

Putting any games on the service is idiotic. The service makes no sense for consumers. And honestly makes no sense for Microsoft considering that it just bleeds money and gives them extremely bad will with gamers.
The only reason it doesn't make sense for Microsoft now is that they decided to focus on putting new games on the platform, which only hurt new game sales. It also meant they couldn't recoup the costs of game development. For consumers, its arguably a great deal, but it only remains so as long as new games are consistently released on the platform that are good, which has proven to be a dubious proposition.

Microsoft should have focused on exclusive games, better online communities and forums, and making all older titles available on modern platforms.
As I said, a subscription service was the best way to make older titles available. At least Microsoft tried to maintain backwards compatibility, even if only in a limited fashion. Microsoft tried to increase their exclusive game releases with their buyouts, but these buyouts came too late to actually effect this generation in a significant way.
 
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I've said from day one of gamepass that it focused on the wrong end of the market. Giving away AAA games where the money is, is retarded.
Awesome idea. Get a service that is already known to only have garbage subpar games on it, and then remove the only blockbusters from the service, the shit people actually want to play.
 
Awesome idea. Get a service that is already known to only have garbage subpar games on it, and then remove the only blockbusters from the service, the shit people actually want to play.
Giving away the games people want to play, and therefore pay for, for free, is fucking retarded.

Microsoft could buy up 100's of small studios for less than a hundred million dollars. Those games are put on the gamepass service, knowing that a handful of those will be the next big thing, the next minecraft, among us etc.

Sports clubs do something similar to great effect; the youth teams and youth academy. They train up young kids for pennies, knowing that if they're a super-star they can hire then for free or sell them for fat stacks of cash.

But please, tell me how your idea of giving away multi-million selling software, the one aspect of consoles that makes any fucking money, for free is a smart idea.
 
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>Future hardware
Interesting wording. That could mean anything from consoles to VR headsets.
Wasn't there a rumor that MS were going to launch a stadia-like device?

Future hardware could be a phone. All King games free on mobile gamepass, while doubling up as a handheld.
 

It's really funny that I went to search for it, and I found like 5 PlayStation channels live streaming their reactions to this video.

Playstation users give more of a shit about Xbox than Xbox users at this point.

Edit: This was dumb. This could have been a fucking tweet weeks ago and stopped a lot of this bad PR from ever growing out of hand.
 
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Edit: This was dumb. This could have been a fucking tweet weeks ago and stopped a lot of this bad PR from ever growing out of hand.
This was just a rehearsed and scripted press conference disguised as am informal podcast. They were never going to openly admit that they are killing Xbox in a place like this. This was nothing more than corporate damage control. They looked especially uncomfortable as well.
 
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To quote a much better man than myself:
"And I want a toilet made out of solid gold but it's just not in the cards, is it?"
 
Game Pass, for me, should have been the "Virtual Console" of Xbox. Put older games from the original Xbox and 360 on the service. You know; those old games that most people can't play anymore because they require original hardware. Then, add Xbox One games once the console is discontinued, so on and so forth. Putting brand new games on the service, day and date, is retarded as that cannibalizes new game sales. It would actually justify buying Zenimax and Activision Blizzard, because those companies have extensive libraries of older games. And they could make deals with other third parties to put Xbox exclusives on the service to ensure that they never disappear.
BC is better.
 
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