Microsoft Update (05/15): Microsoft's multiplatform initiative has an internal codename - "Latitude"

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, DarkStar189 said:

Game Pass is a strange concept when you think about it. Games are really expensive to make and the master plan was to put them all up for "free" and rely on subscribers paying monthly. For me personally, I almost never get heavily invested into a game I've gotten for free. I'm more likely to impulse buy something I might want to try. Then they have gotten my money for the game, and i stick with it more because I paid for it.  You put it up for free on Game Pass and I'll try it for 30 minutes and just move on. In that case they got no extra money out of me.

 

I already have a subscription where I can try 8+ new games a month.  Its called the Epic Games Store, and costs $0 a month.

 

In case that doesn't do it for me, there's the occasional good Prime drop within a subscription I already pay for.  If that doesn't have anything appealing, there's Humble Choice every month.  Then and only then might I consider paying for a month of rentals with Games Pass.  Or just stick to my backlog, boosted by all the aforementioned and more.

 

Why Games Pass hasn't succeeded on PC yet is plainly obvious.  There's too many other things its trying to vie attention from, even beyond Steam.  The rental model doesn't have much appeal in the current landscape there.

 

I have to wonder how much this stuff affects the consoles too.  Why buy an Xbox if you can't play all your free PC games on it?  All the noise about bringing EGS, itch.io, etc to Xbox consoles reflects that reality, IMO.  It's probably a preemptive move against Valve trying to enter the space again in a more meaningful way.

[Mr.Vic20]

I canceled PSN last month and I plan to cancel Gampass shortly. IF I want a game, I'll just buy it. Pretty much everything comes to PC so with a little patience I don't need to be a double dipper. I'm going PC/Nintendo next gen and I think that's it. 

[SuperSpreader]

I cancelled GamePass yesterday.

[Best]

47 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

I canceled PSN last month and I plan to cancel Gampass shortly. IF I want a game, I'll just buy it. Pretty much everything comes to PC so with a little patience I don't need to be a double dipper. I'm going PC/Nintendo next gen and I think that's it. 

 

Sicko 

[Brian]

51 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

I canceled PSN last month and I plan to cancel Gampass shortly. IF I want a game, I'll just buy it. Pretty much everything comes to PC so with a little patience I don't need to be a double dipper. I'm going PC/Nintendo next gen and I think that's it. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

At this point why do we even care if Phil does an interview? I mean whatever, Phil sounds like a nice, regular guy that likes playing games. Meanwhile the studios have fuck all for leadership, most looking like a shadow of what they were in the Xbox and Xbox 360 era, and executives over him at MS don’t give a shit about being “nice”. All Phil brings is platitudes. 

[Mr.Vic20]

1 minute ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

At this point why do we even care if Phil does an interview? I mean whatever, Phil sounds like a nice, regular guy that likes playing games. Meanwhile the studios have fuck all for leadership, most looking like a shadow of what they were in the Xbox and Xbox 360 era, and executives over him at MS don’t give a shit about being “nice”. All Phil brings is platitudes. 

I would be shocked if Phil wasn't exiting MS this year. 

[Keyser_Soze]

I think if Phil goes Game Pass goes with it.

 

On the subject of using Game Pass: As I've said before it's a lot like Sega channel to me. I never bought a ton of games, and I can't afford to get all the games (like some people). There are games on there that interest me and I usually play them to completion. Some of the games I want to play but not own, so it's a fine deal for me (especially since I get with the rewards)

[SaysWho?]

 

1 hour ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

I canceled PSN last month and I plan to cancel Gampass shortly. IF I want a game, I'll just buy it. Pretty much everything comes to PC so with a little patience I don't need to be a double dipper. I'm going PC/Nintendo next gen and I think that's it. 

 

My PS+ account is expiring in several days. I'm letting it lapse even though I've played some cool stuff on it which I sometimes ended up buying anyway (most recently Talos Principle); that's something I actually really dig the services for. But I like my collection and growing it and I like having a game and not thinking about if I have access, if it's leaving a service, and if the service will increase in price.

[SuperSpreader]

1 hour ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

I would be shocked if Phil wasn't exiting MS this year. 

 

Dudes probably getting promoted for fucking it up so well!

 

(joking)

(maybe not joking)

[GeneticBlueprint]

5 hours ago, DarkStar189 said:

Game Pass is a strange concept when you think about it. Games are really expensive to make and the master plan was to put them all up for "free" and rely on subscribers paying monthly. For me personally, I almost never get heavily invested into a game I've gotten for free. I'm more likely to impulse buy something I might want to try. Then they have gotten my money for the game, and i stick with it more because I paid for it.  You put it up for free on Game Pass and I'll try it for 30 minutes and just move on. In that case they got no extra money out of me.

 

Very much this. But I'm definitely not the cohort for GamePass. I play one thing at a time, and due to life have much less time for gaming than I did twenty years ago when Xbox launched and I was a teenager. So a subscription is not appealing to me at all.

 

Which sucks because I absolutely love the hardware.

[SuperSpreader]

Maybe Microsoft should have bought 12 years of COD Xbox/Windows exclusivity at like 8billion plus some sort of revenue sharing and tried Warzone+ to GamePass (maybe fewer drops on non-GP). That would have made people have a reason to get an Xbox and GamePass at 1/10th the cost and also not taken the risk of COD losing interest long-long term.

[stepee]

1 minute ago, SuperSpreader said:

Maybe Microsoft should have bought 12 years of COD Xbox/Windows exclusivity at like 8billion plus some sort of revenue sharing and tried Warzone+ to GamePass (maybe fewer drops on non-GP). That would have made people have a reason to get an Xbox and GamePass at 1/10th the cost and also not taken the risk of COD losing interest long-long term.

 

Counterpoint: Phil spencer is a misunderstood genius

[SuperSpreader]

Just now, stepee said:

 

Counterpoint: Phil spencer is a misunderstood genius

Now you're getting it

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I could see gamepass staying, being more like EA Play where stuff doesn’t go there for like a year. 

[BloodyHell]

I mean, MS should have killed its console business and became a publisher long ago. MS does software, and they have made a bunch of great games. 
 

And while he probably shouldn’t have said it out loud, phil was right that last generation was the absolute worst to lose. People are absolutely tied to their libraries, and rightly so, gaming is expensive.

 

Ill continue to support GP, I like the service, its not very expensive and the value is there for me. I do think Xbox has a better UI than sony, theres a lot I like about the console, but its just redundant with my PC, so I may get rid of it. I know a local family whose kids would very much appreciate it.

[BloodyHell]

On 5/8/2024 at 12:25 PM, Firewithin said:

yes phil is a likeable guy more so than most corporate suits but he should ABSOLUTLEY be viewed as a villain by now along with others as well but hes the main "face" 

I mean, Phil didn’t make the decision to cut, that came from above. Phil is a failure, but calling him a villain is a bit ridiculous. This wasn’t phil waking up and deciding he wanted to close studios. He got a missive from on high and was told to make the cuts, which he then had to decide where to cut. 
 

Frankly, Phil’s previous hands off “let the creatives cook” was a bad strategy, because if there is one thing creatives are awful at, it’s knowing when to stop. The point of good management is to stay those impulses. Phil and his team just aren’t good managers.

[Biggie]

21 hours ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

I canceled PSN last month and I plan to cancel Gampass shortly. IF I want a game, I'll just buy it. Pretty much everything comes to PC so with a little patience I don't need to be a double dipper. I'm going PC/Nintendo next gen and I think that's it. 

But you buy every damn thing lol. Why you trying to save money?

[Keyser_Soze]

4 minutes ago, Biggie said:

But you buy every damn thing lol. Why you trying to save money?

 

He will retire in a couple of years and then he will only make 4 million dollars a year instead of 8 million!

[Biggie]

Just now, Keyser_Soze said:

 

He will retire in a couple of years and then he will only make 4 million dollars a year instead of 8 million!

[MarSolo]

Yah, I’ve been thinking about canceling my PSN subscription. I never play the free games that are available (outside of the Uncharted games), and honestly, that $130 or whatever charge that’s coming up could go towards something else.

[Brian]

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

On 5/10/2024 at 10:52 AM, crispy4000 said:

 

I already have a subscription where I can try 8+ new games a month.  Its called the Epic Games Store, and costs $0 a month.

 

In case that doesn't do it for me, there's the occasional good Prime drop within a subscription I already pay for.  If that doesn't have anything appealing, there's Humble Choice every month.  Then and only then might I consider paying for a month of rentals with Games Pass.  Or just stick to my backlog, boosted by all the aforementioned and more.

 

Why Games Pass hasn't succeeded on PC yet is plainly obvious.  There's too many other things its trying to vie attention from, even beyond Steam.  The rental model doesn't have much appeal in the current landscape there.

 

I have to wonder how much this stuff affects the consoles too.  Why buy an Xbox if you can't play all your free PC games on it?  All the noise about bringing EGS, itch.io, etc to Xbox consoles reflects that reality, IMO.  It's probably a preemptive move against Valve trying to enter the space again in a more meaningful way.

That’s pretty unfair the amount/quality of content on GamePass vs the free games on EGS/Prime isn’t even close. 

[Stickey]

This is all my fault. I jinxed it when I met Phil right before the pandemic and said thank you for saving Xbox. Ooof. 

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

That’s pretty unfair the amount/quality of content on GamePass vs the free games on EGS/Prime isn’t even close. 

Yes, but also no?  I think I have 90% of the Bethesda back catalog now acquired through those two.

 

There’s clearly a pecking order, where the console subs get things first. Most things do trickle down to the others eventually, outside of some of the Japanese stuff.

[AbsolutSurgen]

2 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Yes, but also no?  I think I have 90% of the Bethesda back catalog now acquired through those two.

 

There’s clearly a pecking order, where the console subs get things first. Most things do trickle down to the others eventually, outside of some of the Japanese stuff.

Epic and Prime usually get obscure or very old stuff. 
Gamepass has the entire EA back catalogue, the entire Xbox Studios catalogue, plus tons of “big indies” at launch, and other 1-2 year old big games.
 

I’ve been very critical of GamePass, but let’s be honest - it’s not even close. 

[crispy4000]

32 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Epic and Prime usually get obscure or very old stuff. 
Gamepass has the entire EA back catalogue, the entire Xbox Studios catalogue, plus tons of “big indies” at launch, and other 1-2 year old big games.
 

I’ve been very critical of GamePass, but let’s be honest - it’s not even close. 

I won’t argue that the breadth is more and more substantial.  My point wasn’t to say that they offer something superior.   Just that there’s so much free stuff or dirt cheap stuff  everywhere on PC it becomes harder to justify money on a rental library.

[AbsolutSurgen]

28 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

I won’t argue that the breadth is more and more substantial.  My point wasn’t to say that they offer something superior.   Just that there’s so much free stuff or dirt cheap stuff  everywhere on PC it becomes harder to justify money on a rental library.

There is lots of free stuff. Most of it is extremely old, or very obscure. 

[crispy4000]

59 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

There is lots of free stuff. Most of it is extremely old, or very obscure. 

Humble Choice less so, as a paid bundle of Steam keys.  They usually lead with a headliner or two that while older than on Games Pass, is essentially where they go next.

 

Even on Epic you get a free well known gem every once and a while, Guardians of the Galaxy being the biggest in recent memory.  Old or obscure doesn’t mean bad.  We’re getting to the point where several of them were Games Pass highlights, like Sable and Call of the Sea.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Microsoft's quest for short-term $$$ is doing long-term damage to Windows, Surface, Xbox, and beyond | Windows Central

WWW.WINDOWSCENTRAL.COM

---

Microsoft has made a range of baffling decisions and awful mis-steps recently. You can trace everything back to insatiable desire for money.

 

Quote

 

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella previously said that he "has no love" for the world of console-exclusive games. Fast-forward a few months, and Nadella is now celebrating with investors his strategy to move Xbox's exclusive games to PlayStation, a strategy that has been met with widespread alarm from Xbox users and confusion from pundits. 

 

There's some console war tribalism in certain corners, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons to be concerned about this if you're a current Xbox customer. It stands to reason that moving your exclusive games like Halo, Gears, or Forza to PlayStation eliminates a reason to buy an Xbox console. If you eliminate reasons to buy an Xbox console, you're once again handing the keys to your future to other platforms, a problem Microsoft has right now with Google and Apple. Furthermore, you're removing an endpoint to acquire users via Xbox Game Pass. Cloud is prohibitively expensive right now and is gatekept by Apple and Google, once again blocking in-app purchases or, in some cases, blocking it entirely. You're also decreasing your footprint for game developers, who will increasingly see Xbox versions as wasting time. You set yourself up for a tailspin nosedive of exclusion, to the point where Xbox becomes another game publisher without a say in the overall direction of the industry — but maybe that's the idea. 

 

The plan to move Xbox games to other platforms is codenamed "Latitude" internally, and I know there's debate and unease at Microsoft about whether or not this is a good idea. More upcoming Microsoft-owned games slated for PlayStation are already being developed. At least for now, they're potentially obvious games you'd most likely expect. And yes, while it's true Microsoft is a prolific publisher on PlayStation already, it has typically revolved around specific franchises like Minecraft. From what I've heard, Microsoft is pushing for no "red line" for what games could come to PlayStation, and it all revolves around Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood's mandate to increase every department's margins. 

 

Obviously, putting Halo Infinite on PlayStation will increase profit margins. Sea of Thieves enjoyed the top spot on the PlayStation Store this past week. And in a perfect world, it's great that more people get to play these games. But we don't live in a perfect world where platform holders willingly collaborate for customers' betterment while competing on pure value. Like many of Microsoft's other recent strategies, pursuing this strategy is a short-term margin booster with long-term consequences. Yes, the industry is struggling, and Microsoft isn't the only hardware manufacturer that has seen declines. But destroying the foundational reason to buy an Xbox isn't the answer you give if you do care about the long-term. 

 

 

[crispy4000]

Jez actually pulled together a fantastic article on the situation here.  One of your biggest cheerleaders weaponizing his knowledge of your corporate structure and institutional failures to call foul.  Ouch.
 

Quote

"From what I've heard, Microsoft is pushing for no "red line" for what games could come to PlayStation, and it all revolves around Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood's mandate to increase every department's margins."

 

This just made everything said about exclusivity in the roundtable update pointless.

[crispy4000]

More rumors now swirling about that Call of Duty will be on Games Pass, but with changes to the service.

 

wsj.com

WWW.WSJ.COM

 

[CitizenVectron]

3 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

More rumors now swirling about that Call of Duty will be on Games Pass, but with changes to the service.

 

wsj.com

WWW.WSJ.COM

 

 

Probably a more expensive tier for COD.

[crispy4000]

[crispy4000]

1 minute ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

Probably a more expensive tier for COD.

 

Gotta wonder if they would do that for a singular franchise.  It'd be tempting to stick other AAA games in that tier too.  Or maybe EA stuff.