Will Gamepass kill the Xbox development community?

[Toppis]

I dont think so

 

[kuroninneko]

I was going to download both of those games and try them out on my PC gamepass but a big deciding factor to not was the amount of GB they require. Would have to delete many games I normally play just to try a game I dont even know if I like.

 

[Patches]

I feel like its Microsoft's other policies hurting them. The series S was a mistake for this entire console generation, microsoft's guidelines for their products, and the sniffing around in their services of party and game chats being listened to and recorded and probably fed into their AIs. I have been very loyal to them since the 360, but it just seems like they really don't want me to be a customer of theirs. First the just get a 360 if you want to play online, the disastrous releases like even MCC was so broken for so long. Even the "good" releases like forza motorsport 5 on xbox one felt like a downgrade from forza motorsport 4 on the 360. Then the sniffing around I can't even play my video games without 1984 big brother in my ****ing party chat anymore. We had retail mode emulation on the xbox one for a little bit and they orbital nuked it in one day to the extent I couldn't even retrieve my game saves. I'm just a sucker who bought 2 xbox ones and a razer kishi, but they'll be my final microsoft products. Its been fun, but I can only take so much abuse.

 

[Bomberman]

I feel like its Microsoft's other policies hurting them. The series S was a mistake for this entire console generation, microsoft's guidelines for their products, and the sniffing around in their services of party and game chats being listened to and recorded and probably fed into their AIs. I have been very loyal to them since the 360, but it just seems like they really don't want me to be a customer of theirs. First the just get a 360 if you want to play online, the disastrous releases like even MCC was so broken for so long. Even the "good" releases like forza motorsport 5 on xbox one felt like a downgrade from forza motorsport 4 on the 360. Then the sniffing around I can't even play my video games without 1984 big brother in my ****ing party chat anymore. We had retail mode emulation on the xbox one for a little bit and they orbital nuked it in one day to the extent I couldn't even retrieve my game saves. I'm just a sucker who bought 2 xbox ones and a razer kishi, but they'll be my final microsoft products. Its been fun, but I can only take so much abuse.

Series S was absolutely not a mistake. Most people who have the Xbox Series use the S. It is a great entry point and if they included a disc drive it would be even better.
Problem for Microsoft is ironically that as a software company they are terrible at making inhouse software and then fire the people they hire to make them great software.

Rumors that they are going to release a Xbox handheld that can't play Xbox games and only play anywhere titles shows how they lost the plot if true. Added to this are the rumors the next xbox will be a PC hybrid?
If people wanted a PC they would buy one not a watered down variant that you can't upgrade. Atari tried this with the VCS and it didn't catch steam because people want PCs to be PCs and consoles to be consoles.

At this point I am only with Xbox because I went with them during the 360 era. They have been making terrible decisions. I don't care if they release their exclusives on other systems (especially since most their exclusives are money hatted games other studios made dating back to the original Halo), but this emphasis on everything being an Xbox and the asinine naming system for their systems is killing the brand.

Xbox One S/X and Series S/X... Yeah that won't confuse consumers one bit. Phil Spencer looks so amazing because he succeeded Don Mattrick not based on his own merits. A lot of the credit given to Phil was probably him just approving the ideas of others which in fairness is what CEOs do I guess. But he just seems to lack initiative. I would say his leadership has been just okay because of this.

The CEO of Microsoft is based for letting Xbox continue despite all the blunders I guess.

 

[Patches]

Series S was absolutely not a mistake. Most people who have the Xbox Series use the S. It is a great entry point and if they included a disc drive it would be even better.
Problem for Microsoft is ironically that as a software company they are terrible at making inhouse software and then fire the people they hire to make them great software.

Rumors that they are going to release a Xbox handheld that can't play Xbox games and only play anywhere titles shows how they lost the plot if true. Added to this are the rumors the next xbox will be a PC hybrid?
If people wanted a PC they would buy one not a watered down variant that you can't upgrade. Atari tried this with the VCS and it didn't catch steam because people want PCs to be PCs and consoles to be consoles.

At this point I am only with Xbox because I went with them during the 360 era. They have been making terrible decisions. I don't care if they release their exclusives on other systems (especially since most their exclusives are money hatted games other studios made dating back to the original Halo), but this emphasis on everything being an Xbox and the asinine naming system for their systems is killing the brand.

Xbox One S/X and Series S/X... Yeah that won't confuse consumers one bit. Phil Spencer looks so amazing because he succeeded Don Mattrick not based on his own merits. A lot of the credit given to Phil was probably him just approving the ideas of others which in fairness is what CEOs do I guess. But he just seems to lack initiative. I would say his leadership has been just okay because of this.

The CEO of Microsoft is based for letting Xbox continue despite all the blunders I guess.

We can agree to disagree the reason why I singled out the series S is because it is currently the bottle neck of current gen game development every game has to meet it being the least common denominator hampering progression. It has worse specs than the Xbox one X and the only reason Xbox One X cannot play some current gen games is simply because Microsoft will not allow you to because it is capable. I think its consumer friendly of them to offer a lower tier and I think its an emulation and homebrew powerhouse, but its going to hurt games by limiting them for an entire generation.

 

[Bomberman]

We can agree to disagree the reason why I singled out the series S is because it is currently the bottle neck of current gen game development every game has to meet it being the least common denominator hampering progression. It has worse specs than the Xbox one X and the only reason Xbox One X cannot play some current gen games is simply because Microsoft will not allow you to because it is capable. I think its consumer friendly of them to offer a lower tier and I think its an emulation and homebrew powerhouse, but its going to hurt games by limiting them for an entire generation.

Games are still coming for PS4 and Xbox One. I would argue those are more of a bottle neck than the Series S.

 

[Patches]

Games are still coming for PS4 and Xbox One. I would argue those are more of a bottle neck than the Series S.

I agree with that. Its impossible to be both the most consumer friendly while simultaneously being the most innovative. Growing pains are necessary for instance it sucked not being able to play Halo 3 on my playstation 2. The playstation 2 gave me endless entertainment also, but once I got an xbox 360 I was so thrilled to spend thousands of hours on a 4 year old title. I feel like that scenario is much less today. There has been one game I have missed out on and wanted from not having a capable PC or making the next console jump, but even it does not look, perform, or even offer well enough to warrant the investment. With how long development cycles take I don't know if they will be able to stop the crash from coming and it will probably come on the next gen from now.

 

[sysuah]

More game devs from major studios should be out of a job, to be honest

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's iconTamagotchiTamaHero24]

View attachment 3876Noticed there were no threads whatsoever on Xbox and I figured it deserved one at least.

Do you think Gamepass is harming tangible sales for developers?

It had S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Heart of Chernobyl day one. How many actually bought it on pc though? Or even Xbox?

Do you think Gamepass is sustainable longterm, and will it drive developers away from Microsoft?

It’s weird, you have this genuinely great service. But… it’s actually almost TOO MUCH of a deal! Sure, you don’t own anything (which is a turn off for people like me) but also:

People just want to play a damn video game, man.

And they want to save money while doing so. Game Pass accomplishes both! While giving relatively little to nothing back to the developers or publishers in return. It’s a service that is literally so pro-consumer in its practices that it’s fundamentally unsustainable as a long term business. The issue is that it BECAME XBox. That’s what XBox is known for now. So, if you want to put your game out on that platform, expect to lose money.

Is it any wonder why, with games taking way too much time/effort/capital to be made (which is a whole other subject we can talk about), is it any WONDER why developers are starting to skip XBox as a platform? They literally just burn money by releasing on there if they have a game that they spent a lot to make and market.

Let’s not even get into the Microsoft owned studios problem. Its bad enough that they have to deal with insane mismanagement, odd head honchos, and all the other Microsoft Nonsense, but they also now have to contend with the horrible reality that they’ll most likely lose their job after a game is done, thanks to literally just BURNING REVENUE on GamePass.

Post automatically merged: Mar 12, 2025

More game devs from major studios should be out of a job, to be honest

No? It’s been made very clear from all the stories we’ve heard within the industry that it’s usually a problem with the bosses. The individual developers, bless them, are at the behest of a few power holders and brokers who have final say on the direction of a game.

It’s the bosses who are forcing in the micro transactions. It’s the bosses who are forcing respected developers to work on uninspired multiplayer projects that get shut down in a few months. It’s the bosses who always seem to keep their positions while the people below them suffer.

And GamePass ties right back into this, because those bosses ARE HIGH RANKING MICROSOFT EMPLOYEES! GUESS WHOSE JOB IS SAFE AND SECURE WHILE THEY TELL A TALENTED TEAM TO CHASE A TREND?

The management in Microsoft is truly despicable. It’s business people, not gamers, who make the decisions. It’s people who don’t care about the art form, nor the long term brand, rather they care about the immediate capital and keeping happy a long list of shareholders whom are also guilty for the state of the industry today.

Long story short, no, most devs don’t deserve to lose their jobs. But they do anyway. You can look it up. The industry has had the most firings it’s ever had within the last few years. It eats up young, naive talent, fresh out of college and hoping to make it big, and then it chews them up and spits them out without ever saying thank you. It does not matter the pedigree of a studio. It does not matter how many good games you’ve made. It does not matter if you have a stream of revenue from another project coming in. If one project fails bad enough, the entire studio is bunk. Aside from the boss, who usually gets absorbed like a cancer into the body of another poor, unfortunate company who will meet the same fate.

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

It won't if Microsoft recongnises that any inhouse game released day one on gamepass can't be judged based on sales.
It can only be judged on subscriber engagement. If you're developing a title for gamepass then its to boost gamepass subscriptions. Day one, week one or first quarter sales on Xbox are irrelevant.

That doesn't mean Microsoft can't judge a multiplatform release by day one sales.
But like with any subscription service no one is directly purchasing a single product, you could instead list expectations based on subscriber engagement (data Microsoft absolutely has) and determine whether something in a success or failure depending on its player count, and thus subscribers who are engaging with the ecosystem.

The problem is Microsoft hasn't made this transition from sales to engagement yet and that's killing studios

 

[Trainer Red]

i was starting to wonder about this game pass thing since i bought a few games recently and some of them had 'game pass' labelled

okay so i have more insight on it at least

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's iconTamagotchiTamaHero24]

i was starting to wonder about this game pass thing since i bought a few games recently and some of them had 'game pass' labelled

okay so i have more insight on it at least

To give the story very briefly: it’s a subscription based service offered by XBox to allow you to pay a monthly fee and access nearly their entire game library at the highest tier. Basically the closest you can get to old Netflix, but for video games.

 

[Tonberry]

It won't if Microsoft recongnises that any inhouse game released day one on gamepass can't be judged based on sales.
It can only be judged on subscriber engagement. If you're developing a title for gamepass then its to boost gamepass subscriptions. Day one, week one or first quarter sales on Xbox are irrelevant.

That doesn't mean Microsoft can't judge a multiplatform release by day one sales.
But like with any subscription service no one is directly purchasing a single product, you could instead list expectations based on subscriber engagement (data Microsoft absolutely has) and determine whether something in a success or failure depending on its player count, and thus subscribers who are engaging with the ecosystem.

The problem is Microsoft hasn't made this transition from sales to engagement yet and that's killing studios

Right on.

As an aside, Gamepass made me able to engage with games I’d never have touched otherwise, like the Indy game which would’ve been way too expensive for me. I played a ton of it and had a good time.
I dunno where I fall in the data for the game ”sales”, but I played it on release and liked it, not sure how they measure that, though.

 

[SyphonFilter12]

I dont think so.

 

[lil_thang]

some points from a developer across the pond:

Lorne Lanning says launching on PS Plus was “devastating” for Soulstorm sales

Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning has said that launching on PS Plus was "devastating" for the sales of Oddworld: Soulstor…

www.gamesindustry.biz

it is easy to be cynical and say it was the game itself that did not deliver, but i believe Lorne had somewhat of a point. at least when viewed through the scope of his experience in the industry. how can he see a near million of 'claimed' downloaded copies as anything but negative, if the copies claimed exceeded the exclusivity buyout?

i think the harsh reality for Lorne is that the majority of people who claimed soulstorm for free via PS+ weren't people who would've otherwise straight out purchased the game. i'm sure Sony's Claimed:Time_Played internal metrics demonstrate that most people booted it up watched the cutscenes then noped out of gameplay fairly quickly


EDIT: though it should be noted that he not only took Playstation Timed Exclusitivity money, he ALSO took Epic timed exclusivity money. this does not paint confidence in his ability to sell many units on the strength of his product

 

[metreon]

I was going to download both of those games and try them out on my PC gamepass but a big deciding factor to not was the amount of GB they require. Would have to delete many games I normally play just to try a game I dont even know if I like.

this is a huge factor for me as well for game pass ultimate -- modern games are just getting too huge and largely unoptimized. my graphics card that was highest tier not even ten years ago no longer meets minimum requirements for some of the newest releases. even steam deck no longer meets minimum requirements for a lot of new games. it's an interesting crossroads of modern AAA games becoming more and more hostile to actually play while a service like gamepass cloud is present, both of which definitely hurt sales across the board. i wholeheartedly agree situations like microsoft shutting down tango were unjust and self-sabotage but also feel like modern game development right now needs to shift gears to even begin to counter the accessibility of cloud gaming through game pass. a game really has no business being 100gb+, in my honest opinion.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's iconTamagotchiTamaHero24]

this is a huge factor for me as well for game pass ultimate -- modern games are just getting too huge and largely unoptimized. my graphics card that was highest tier not even ten years ago no longer meets minimum requirements for some of the newest releases. even steam deck no longer meets minimum requirements for a lot of new games. it's an interesting crossroads of modern AAA games becoming more and more hostile to actually play while a service like gamepass cloud is present, both of which definitely hurt sales across the board. i wholeheartedly agree situations like microsoft shutting down tango were unjust and self-sabotage but also feel like modern game development right now needs to shift gears to even begin to counter the accessibility of cloud gaming through game pass. a game really has no business being 100gb+, in my honest opinion.

I certainly agree with the space conundrum. The solution isn’t to get “more space” rather it is to minimize file size wherever possible. This isn’t ALWAYS possible, but many games only take up so much space thanks to poor optimization. I understand that any application running at all will take a couple megabytes, which then skyrockets into the tens of gigabytes for your usual game, but most titles don’t need the large sizes they have.

While unconfirmed, it’s to my understanding that certain games by EA and Activision actually take up more room SPECIFICALLY to force players to install fewer games and then be funneled into the game that is taking up so much space. Sure, it’s a theory, and one clearly forged from a distaste for these companies… but these companies are evil. They’ve shown us before they’re more than willing to take advantage of their customers in any way they can, so something like that makes sense.

Ultimately, I hope more games begin to be optimized. Maybe not the AAA stuff, but I’d love if more AA stuff from indie developers got compressed down a bit. Most games can and should max out around 32 GB, with larger games being up to 50 GB. Anything more and I begin to wonder where all that space is being used.

 

[kuroninneko]

this is a huge factor for me as well for game pass ultimate -- modern games are just getting too huge and largely unoptimized. my graphics card that was highest tier not even ten years ago no longer meets minimum requirements for some of the newest releases. even steam deck no longer meets minimum requirements for a lot of new games. it's an interesting crossroads of modern AAA games becoming more and more hostile to actually play while a service like gamepass cloud is present, both of which definitely hurt sales across the board. i wholeheartedly agree situations like microsoft shutting down tango were unjust and self-sabotage but also feel like modern game development right now needs to shift gears to even begin to counter the accessibility of cloud gaming through game pass. a game really has no business being 100gb+, in my honest opinion.

The cloud thing scares me because they already are implementing predictive input. At what point are we just playing a movie pretending to be a game?

 

[Trainer Red]

To give the story very briefly: it’s a subscription based service offered by XBox to allow you to pay a monthly fee and access nearly their entire game library at the highest tier. Basically the closest you can get to old Netflix, but for video games.

err o_o yeah no ... haha
i thought it'd be like access to exclusives or something along the lines sony plus was doing with certain online multiplayer bonuses
i rather stick with the purchase to keep and enjoy concept

speaking of which ... i really do like their digital sales !
i mean chrono cross - radical dreamers edition for around $10 is pretty nice !

 

[cjl8336]

we will see if bethesda was a good acquisiton for microsoft once elder scrolls 6 is released (possibly if)

 

[lil_thang]

i feel the only people who still have even the slightest bit of hope for TESVI have not paid any attention whatsoever to Bethesda's development efforts after 2011

 

[ThirdEidolon]

It’s weird, you have this genuinely great service. But… it’s actually almost TOO MUCH of a deal! Sure, you don’t own anything (which is a turn off for people like me) but also:

People just want to play a damn video game, man.

And they want to save money while doing so. Game Pass accomplishes both! While giving relatively little to nothing back to the developers or publishers in return. It’s a service that is literally so pro-consumer in its practices that it’s fundamentally unsustainable as a long term business. The issue is that it BECAME XBox. That’s what XBox is known for now. So, if you want to put your game out on that platform, expect to lose money.

Is it any wonder why, with games taking way too much time/effort/capital to be made (which is a whole other subject we can talk about), is it any WONDER why developers are starting to skip XBox as a platform? They literally just burn money by releasing on there if they have a game that they spent a lot to make and market.

Let’s not even get into the Microsoft owned studios problem. Its bad enough that they have to deal with insane mismanagement, odd head honchos, and all the other Microsoft Nonsense, but they also now have to contend with the horrible reality that they’ll most likely lose their job after a game is done, thanks to literally just BURNING REVENUE on GamePass.

Post automatically merged: Mar 12, 2025

No? It’s been made very clear from all the stories we’ve heard within the industry that it’s usually a problem with the bosses. The individual developers, bless them, are at the behest of a few power holders and brokers who have final say on the direction of a game.

It’s the bosses who are forcing in the micro transactions. It’s the bosses who are forcing respected developers to work on uninspired multiplayer projects that get shut down in a few months. It’s the bosses who always seem to keep their positions while the people below them suffer.

And GamePass ties right back into this, because those bosses ARE HIGH RANKING MICROSOFT EMPLOYEES! GUESS WHOSE JOB IS SAFE AND SECURE WHILE THEY TELL A TALENTED TEAM TO CHASE A TREND?

The management in Microsoft is truly despicable. It’s business people, not gamers, who make the decisions. It’s people who don’t care about the art form, nor the long term brand, rather they care about the immediate capital and keeping happy a long list of shareholders whom are also guilty for the state of the industry today.

Long story short, no, most devs don’t deserve to lose their jobs. But they do anyway. You can look it up. The industry has had the most firings it’s ever had within the last few years. It eats up young, naive talent, fresh out of college and hoping to make it big, and then it chews them up and spits them out without ever saying thank you. It does not matter the pedigree of a studio. It does not matter how many good games you’ve made. It does not matter if you have a stream of revenue from another project coming in. If one project fails bad enough, the entire studio is bunk. Aside from the boss, who usually gets absorbed like a cancer into the body of another poor, unfortunate company who will meet the same fate.

The other issue is Microsoft want every system to be an xbox.

If they seriously want that? Then they're competing with Steam. That's not going to happen.

 

[HyperTurboFox]

Xbox does dies long before Gamepass was ever a thing.

 

[Jambhala]

View attachment 3876Noticed there were no threads whatsoever on Xbox and I figured it deserved one at least.

Do you think Gamepass is harming tangible sales for developers?

It had S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Heart of Chernobyl day one. How many actually bought it on pc though? Or even Xbox?

Do you think Gamepass is sustainable longterm, and will it drive developers away from Microsoft?

I was one of the ones who first played stalker 2 on gamepass then later bought the ultimate edition on steam, was it worth it? probably not, but I loved the game and put like 200 hours in it so I wanted to show some love to the devs.

The devs must've got a pretty big chunk of money to put the game on gamepass on day one, so I don't know how much money they missed out on not keeping it off gamepass, but I'd imagine there'd be a lot of refunds anyway so it might've helped them out in the long run.

 

[ThirdEidolon]

I was one of the ones who first played stalker 2 on gamepass then later bought the ultimate edition on steam, was it worth it? probably not, but I loved the game and put like 200 hours in it so I wanted to show some love to the devs.

The devs must've got a pretty big chunk of money to put the game on gamepass on day one, so I don't know how much money they missed out on not keeping it off gamepass, but I'd imagine there'd be a lot of refunds anyway so it might've helped them out in the long run.

I will likely eventually get Stalker 2 on ps5, when it happens, but that will be years from now.