For a long time, I have this idea how Microsoft should structure and price the Game Pass. I am thinking of making it modular with a cheap entry price, and then having basically DLCs to enable certain services. This would also allow Microsoft to add in new services without restructuring everything again or screwing up the names.
The below list is just an idea how it could be structure and priced, I’m not saying this has to be exactly like that. What do you think?
--- Base ---
$7,99 Game Pass
(pc and console, includes console multiplayer,
50+ games dynamic library)
--- DLCs ---
+ $4,99 Plus Expansion
(full set 500+ games, including EA Play and Ubisoft+)
+ $9,99 Day 1 Ultimate
(including all first party games except Call of Duty,
plus day 1 premium games from third parties,
additional benefits, perks and rewards)
+ $1,99 Cloud Streaming S
(for supported titles of all your own games,
plus all Game Pass games)
+ $3,99 Cloud Streaming X
(like S but higher quality streaming, shorter wait times)
Make it work first
Xbox Live Silver subscription: Free - provides basic online functionality for games that require it and basic features like Friends list, but does not include premium features such as online matchmaking or voice chat. 1GB of cloud storage for game save files only.
Xbox Live Gold subscription: $5 USD / mo - includes Silver, and all premium features including online matchmaking and voice chat. 5GB of cloud storage for game save files, video clips, message inbox, or other console related data.
Games should be $60 USD or less one time purchase, FREE with MTX or paid expansions, or some other monetization, or $40 one time purchase with optional expansions at $10 or less each that only gate new content and not game improvements, pre-existing content, or QoL. Removing, deleting, “sunsetting,” or otherwise making previously accessible content inaccessible is grounds for publisher and/or developer total removal from the platform. All digital games must be discounted at least by the calculated cost of producing physical goods per unit.
No subscription model for renting digital games. Game licenses are non-revokable, but include a clause that states that players access to online features may be removed if they are determined to be cheating, exploiting, or otherwise playing unfairly with regards the rules of the game.
The games market should be survival of the fittest. Developers should be encouraged to make the best gameplay experience they can, not the best ATM they can. Players will want to play games that are fun and have a monetization model they agree with. Let players decide, not executives.
I don’t think unlimited subscription models actually work with game development economics. If I had to do something I would make it this way.
7.99 game pass, access to a rotating library of roughly 1-2 year old games. Each month you can select 2 to download/pick and play. Can change selections each month.
+4.99 more games, 3 more games per month to download.
+4.99 classic games, allow unlimited downloads of older games, roughly 3+ years old.
+9.99 premium games, access to games roughly 3 month to a year old. Maybe select titles on day one. Still limited to 2 total downloads with base plan.
+2.99 discount club, receive exclusive discounts and general reduced prices on games that are part of other packages. Allow additional games to be selected/downloaded if one was purchased.
+4.99/9.99 streaming and premium streaming unlocked for any/most games in your library.
Interesting idea, I’m not sure if I’m on board with that concept.
How does it work, 2 games to download / play at max per months or at the same time? Am I allowed to download and play another game, if I delete the current one? If not, then short games, indie titles or if I don’t like the game would ruin Game Pass for that month. Or if I am allowed to play different games, when deleting the current one, what point does the limitation have? In example I want to keep games and play them later, while trying out different other games. That’s the whole idea of Game Pass. Limiting the access is against the spirit of it to me.
It would be a hard limit of 2 games/month you could play, without paying more. This is a hard shift in model, but I think it makes it sustainable long term for developers to make their games part of it while allowing the price to be reasonable. Previously game pass was subsidized by Microsoft trying to grow their subscription base, so devs got big payouts to list their games. Publishers/devs aren’t making much if anything from being on game pass, especially indie titles that might only have 20 hours or less of gameplay. With cloud saves you could easily not lose progress if you took a month off from a game to try something else
This model creates a pathway that a developer could get $1-2 per install per month (or more for new/premium tier games) which would be reasonable income after initial launch sales. The vast majority of gamers also don’t play a lot of different games, so those that want more can pay for it while a lower price is available for the majority. There’s also the classic games tier that isn’t restricted as most the games aren’t really that valuable, but it’s a separate add on to keep the main price low.
For games as a subscription to work, it has to balance perceived value for consumers and developers. The unlimited model isn’t sustainable without a price point that makes buying games outright more attractive. I think a better scenario is allowing the subscription to create a funnel to direct sales, which I think this solution does.
(Don’t get me wrong, I have fun discussing with you. Ideas like these are the reason why I opened up this post, just to see what others would suggest. I just do not agree with your suggestion.)
I’m not buying into this model yet (meaning I don’t think its a good idea or would work well). Just because if you are stuck at 2 games per months, then why even bother with a Game Pass at all? And especially this sort of limits are very frustrating, so I do not think it would work. If I were, I would get rid of Game Pass, because it does more harm than have positive effects.
As for the sustainability of the model, I think an unlimited games access can work if done right. Look at Sony with Playstation Plus models. The actual problem for Xbox Game Pass is, that it offers too much and therefore has to increase its price, while players cannot make use of all values, nor most care. That’s why I think a modular system like I suggest would work best. Its just important to make it not like limited too much, so people don’t get frustrated and cancel or get overwhelmed by too many options.
If I’m locked to 2 games only per months, and lets say I choose a AAA game and do not like it, and then try a cheaper indie game and like it. It take too much of the freedom and reason why people buy into Game Pass at all. Instead I could have purchased the indie game for the price I am paying this month. Now I have to wait an entire months to try a new game. Plenty of time to think about it and to cancel the subscription, rather than an activate once and forget option.
This is basically a rental model. The 2 game limit is just for the cheapest option, you could always pay more for more. If you want a reasonable quality catalog at a sub $10 price there needs to be some level of restrictions. If you want complete freedom it’s going to come at increased cost or a worse catalog.
Any kind of subscription is just a trap for everyone involved in it except for the ones setting it up. It might not look like that at the beginning but rest assured that is it only purpose. Avoid it at all cost!
Things aren’t so cut and dry though, there’s a nuance to things. I use it to try a bunch of games without committing to a full purchase until I feel like it’s worth buying them. What about that is a trap?
The trap is the money you have to spend when you could have played a demo instead. And the larger trap, that you have to use a Microsoft product to play it on.
The trap is the money you have to spend when you could have played a demo instead.
Few games have demos nowadays though unfortunately.
And the larger trap, that you have to use a Microsoft product to play it on.
I mean that’s not remotely even an issue if you’re already on Windows which most PC gamers already are.
Demos are rare today though. Not to mention some are outright misrepresenting the actual game. Spending some money to try a game without having to do a refund if you don’t like it is a reasonable value. As a PC player I would absolutely spend $15 bucks for a single month to try a few $40-60 games that I would likely purchase through steam after trying. I wouldn’t pay more than a single month at a time though, which also isn’t great for Microsoft.
Yup. Amazon just announced that games bough on Luna will not be playable in future. No refunds either.
But that is not an issue specific to subscription, but with digital licenses in general. In technical terms, this could happen with Steam too (I hope not though, I bet everything on Steam…).
Personally, I think GamePass is a terrible idea.
The money developers get for GamePass “sales” isn’t enough to keep them in business, look at Tango Gameworks, who did Hi-Fi Rush. Great game, well received, lots of players.
Studio closed 4 months later.
If someone like Tango can’t survive on a game like Hi-Fi Rush, it doesn’t speak well for the business model.
So what you end up with are fewer games and lower quality games, it’s a race to the bottom.
Also, the push to digital only reduces the footprint in stores, so when people go to buy consoles, all they see are a bunch of old games, or (worse) no games at all, as we see in the Xbox section in Target and Walmart recently.
So GamePass encourages fewer games, lower quality games, a reduced footprint at retail, and ultimately, lower sales.
It also undermines the Stop Killing Games movement because you’re not sold a product. You’re sold a service which means any game that exists solely for game pass (which eventually will happen if game pass becomes the predominant way to access games) doesn’t need an EOL plan for game preservation.
It will also create the streaming service problem, where instead of having the games you want to play in one place you will have 3/4 gamepass-like services that each have their own exclusive library so instead of X amount a month you’ll be paying 3x amount to access different services.
It also further normalizes not owning any games so you’ll end up being dependent on the services like gamepass. Which also makes it easier to control the price of the service down the line because what are you going to do, go play your non-existent library of games?
Overall I think Gamepass becoming successful would be a net negative for gaming and as such I’m completely against gamepass and all similar subscription services that might pop up.
All of these points only apply to cases where a game has completely closed off full-purchase options, in favor of rental-only models. As of yet, I have not seen that model exist; only constant cries of “but someday…!” in regards to Game Pass.
I used to subscribe to it, and left for other criticisms I had of it and Microsoft. But to make clear to GP’s all-time critics: It is very clear to me that Game Pass is a rental model. I am not upset at losing access to said games when the time ends. I believe the same could be said about GP’s other users. I think most of us would view any attempt to actually reach a “rental-only system” as a negative. Heck, even Xbox themselves would likely view it negatively, since the success of game pass came conjoined with a rise in spending on permanent licenses to games. They’d be throwing away free money.
The moment such a “rent-only” measure occurs, even if it’s just for one major game, many people would likely move away to services where we can choose how long we keep our games. If such a service didn’t exist due to some massive market hand, an indie developer would make it, and people would go there.
While it’s reasonable to see an option like “Rent your games!” and reply “No thanks, I don’t like renting my games”, the conclusion of “This needs to be outlawed because someday all game developers worldwide will make us rent all our games and ownership will be banned which is anticonsumer” is asinine overreach that undermines your credibility.
Then it’s great I didn’t say anything about it needing to be outlawed. I simply pointed out the negatives of what will happen if game pass like services become THE way to play games. I’m not really worried about it at the moment because it’s Microslop, they’re incapable of not fucking it up before it’s too late.
But I would be very worried if other big publishers picked up the same model because that implies there’s a big enough market to make the switch and that would put us on the wrong path. I guarantee the likes of EA and T2 are definitely keeping an eye on how game pass is performing and if it was doing exceptionally well we’d be seeing more of them. Kind of like in the early 2010s you saw the likes of EA and Ubisoft create their own storefronts because they saw what a cash cow Steam was. That’s why I don’t use game pass and I don’t recommend game pass and I let people know of the anti-consumer outcomes of using game pass. Because what we do today can impact what we’ll be doing in the future.
I’ll apologize for the overreach on the subject of legality. But I do think treating it as an imminent danger, like it’s locking off options, is an overreach.
We DO see more game passes currently. There’s EA+, Ubisoft+ (often bundled in other services), PlayStation Plus, Nintendo Online, and even some other niches like Indie Pass.
Right now, a variety of consumers see the ads for these, and accept or reject the offer/pricing based on their circumstances. There doesn’t appear to be a direct “danger” of these models swallowing all digital consumption. The most common outcry I’ve seen is “Don’t rent these things! When the rental period is up, you have to give it back!” To me, that just insults the intelligence of people who are agreeing to these terms, which is definitely not everyone since not everyone likes renting. I will volunteer that I pay for PS+, knowing I don’t own its games.
I similarly don’t see an advantage to the supposed “making the switch” in which a publisher announces “Our next suite of games will be rental only and disallow purchase”. That would just be poor PR for that publisher and lose them customers to competitors.
To be clear, we have NEVER seen that and the fear written out by you and others suggests it will ALWAYS be the case. You are suggesting the potential for a 100% industry shift-over. The closest thing we’ve seen is live service games, and the clear preference there is through voluntary spending like Fallout 76’s vault pass; not lockout systems that kick people out of play wholesale for missing a payment. Even acknowledging how greedy corporations are, they don’t really have a strong reason to consider such lockouts.
To be honest, I don’t think the indie gaming scene will ever fully transition to his model even in the worst case scenario.
The market is basically large enough that it can support a niche being independent in terms of channel fulfilment and avoidance of console style exclusivety.
Not to mention video games are arguably much more competitive than movies or streaming shows. Often people look to a specific production with shows and movies, with games, new franchises can often build upon and expand upon existing gameplay models.
Not that I think the subscription model is good, but it is clear that there is a segment of the market that prefers this delivery approach.
These are good points to have in mind. I personally don’t even subscribe to Game Pass and even if i would, then only for couple of months at a time at most. I rather want to have a license to “own” the games (I know the issues with owning a license rather than specific copy of it). I just had fun of thoughts how to structure this business in a better way for the gamer (and probably for the company too?), as they definetely not backing up from a streaming service like Pass system.
Tango might have been fine if they were an independent developer, not owned by Microsoft who shut the studio down. Their shutdown likely had nothing to do with their sales, and everything to do with messing with margins for stockholders to see a line going up more.
So what you end up with are fewer games and lower quality games, it’s a race to the bottom.
I think Game Pass is a model where more games is beneficial for Microsoft, and diversity and short games that can be created easier. That’s because Game Pass wants to have a flood of games coming to keep subscription. I wouldn’t say that necessarily equates to lower quality. The risk is lower for each game, so they can experiment.
In the end I think Game Pass harms more than its useful, but I do not see this black and white, as it has its pros and cons. Overall I do not like subscription services where you pay for years and if you stop playing, you stop getting access. If you had purchased games, then after years you would have a library you can visit and play over and over again, without paying for access. But it has its pros too, as one can play ton of games in short period of time, especially if you like shorter small games.
I’d rather have a conversation about how I haven’t paid for software in over 25 years, but you do you
Edit: I find the concept of subscription software profane, and so should you
Is rather have a conversation that paying for software isn’t a bad thing. It incentivises creating new software.
Not paying a cent for open source just highlights the problem - it’s not like people didn’t spent their dev time creating the software don’t deserve the compensation. They do. And this is one reason why open source is doing an uphill battle vs proprietary that can just put enormous pricetag and people pay.
Saying that, I never subbed for gamepass and hopefully never will. I like to buy things directly. Steam / GOG is perfect. I wish there was that model in films/anime/music.
It’s extremely easy to price something for customers when you’re not the one paying for its capital and operating expenses, so I’m not sure how much value there is in this exercise. Cloud gaming is one that I’m just about convinced will never be able to price itself in a way that people will actually want to pay for it, given those who have tried and failed already.
Well, there is Nvidia Now cloud streaming and it seems to be working.
$10/month for just the cloud streaming of games you already paid for elsewhere (and if I’m not mistaken, there are still limits on which ones you’re allowed to play), which isn’t attractive for many people given the latency and image quality compromises that come along with cloud streaming. You put your fantasy price at $4/month. Maybe that’s what you’re willing to pay, but given that Google put their premium sub at about the same $10/month price, I’d wager the math doesn’t work out to supply it at $4.
Google, notably, also had a hard time delivering the high-end hardware that they promised in their pitch, where you’d never need to fork up hundreds of dollars for a powerful console or graphics card as the end user, because you’d always be sent a stream of the game running on highest settings. In reality, they were often running on much lower settings, because it’s expensive to cyclically upgrade your fleet of gaming PCs to keep up with the latest games.
But its not just $4 in this example (which should be priced higher probably, at least for the premium Series X based streaming). In this example there is a base price on top of it, which would add to 12,99, not just a supply at 4. Have in mind that Game Pass has streaming builtin already, even at the the current base price of 9,99. So my suggestion is just, to make it modular. And the suggested prices are just here to give an idea what I’m talking about, not exact numbers to compare to their actual value. I was more interested in sharing the idea, rather than the exact plan. Just sayin.
I mean, I’ll oppose any Xbox Game Pass because Microsoft has proven itself untrustworthy.
But I’ll bite; I don’t necessarily oppose the structure of a monthly fee for game rentals. Still, it really should be closer to the $10-$15 range, at max. Many people will claim the USA has suffered inflation, but I think a lot of that has just been price collusion on essentials. The minimum wage is the same.
The only problem with your piecemeal approach is that some features like cloud streaming sound unappealing from a distance (many people would comment “It can’t possibly technologically work! Anyone saying they’ve tried it is lying!111”) So having some way in which it becomes an extra element can get people to value it more. The base layer could even allow for about 1-2 hours of the “Streaming X” layer as a trial.
As a reminder, for anyone kinda interested in this but hating Microsoft, the lite Indie Pass exists.
Many people will claim the USA has suffered inflation, but I think a lot of that has just been price collusion on essentials. The minimum wage is the same.
We can measure inflation. You don’t need collusion on prices when all the way down the supply chain, prices increase for everyone producing the essentials. Minimum wage is the same, but it rarely gets adjusted, and that’s stupid.
How about just bring back online MP for $5/mo at 12mo purchase of $60. I stupidly joined in the GP tiers and watched it skyrocket from $10 to $30 and when my grandfathered price tier ended at $20, I canceled everything. Just shy of 20 years on Xbox down the drain! At one point MS had a bundle of everything that was $20/mo and that was Gold, Office, Skype minutes,1TB SkyDrive (before rebrand), it was decent.
Now they went from getting an annual $240 GP, $150 Office, and me still buying a bunch of games to now ditching the ecosystem until further notice. Greedy bastards!
Your plan structure suits me perfectly. Mostly because I wouldn’t want most of the DLCs. I’ll take the plus expansion, because it’s worth it at that price, and I might temporarily upgrade to the day 1s if something I’m really excited for comes out.
Other than that, I can do without.
That’s what I think most people would do, I mean just adding “1 DLC”. In example the streaming guy could just add the Cloud Streaming X and stream their own purchased games only. That would be roughly 12,99, according to my model (probably too cheap).
It does seem too cheap, and I think the deciding factor on whether it could survive would be the special promos included in the Premium package. Stuff like free game currency or skins. The whales would gladly pay the extra to cover the rest of our cheap asses if they can get some exclusive cosmetics.
I would only pay for it if my kids could play FC26 on Linux whenever they want. Cloud has queues, and other methods don’t work.
