I cancelled too! I really wanna see what excuse Microsoft will pull out to walk back the changes.
Hit 'em where it hurts, people.
It’s honestly cheaper to just buy games than pay this subscription per year.
Plus, you get to keep the games.
It’s even cheaper to torrent them.
And you actually get to keep them.
Honestly, I’ve kinda gone back to buying physical media.
I bought DK Bananza on cart, and guess what? After I finished it, I gave it to my brother. Imagine that! Sharing a game you own? Madness.
I’m eager to pick up Ghost of Yotei from the store this afternoon, as well.
For PC games that’s impossible, at most you can find a disc-shaped steam redeem code
Family Share works really well in my experience. It worked better when I could change the users more frequently but this model is still works pretty well.
Is there a way to share a single game and use your library still?
I share my library with my son and when he’s using a game my whole library is unavailable to me, unless something has changed (or I’m old and ignorant … also likely)
And the huge drawback that if the kid finds some “easy trick to win matches” on YouTube and gets vac banned, the parent also gets vac banned
That would be grounds for a 64th trimester abortion IMO
Yeah they (if we’re talking about Steam here) changed their whole family stuff. You can keep playing, as long it’s not the same title.
That part changed. You only share what game is in use now.
That’s why I don’t really use Steam to buy games anymore, too.
At least maybe use GoG if possible to get a DRM free version.
I’ve never gone away from buying physical media, but I could understand exactly why you would want to return to it.
For me, when the Switch 1 came out it was just nice to have everything on the device and you never had to do the most heinous thing of taking a moment to put a cart into the device.
But more and more I buy one to two games a time and focus on those, so that issue is largely not a thing any more.
For me, with the Switch 1, I was worried about wanting to play a game but oh no it’s back at home. Happened a bunch of times with my 3DS.
But then I bought a case that had card slots in it, and that concern wasn’t much of a concern anymore. Then the pandemic happened, and I never really left home anyway, which meant it mattered even less. So now I have a few digital games that are super annoying to share.
You never needed physical media in order to share games with others.
You still don’t, and you can share with more people digitally.
Netflix Spotify Disney and Amazon proved that price hikes are effective at increasing profits even despite the loss of subscribers. Capitalism baby.
I think the only time collective cancellations actually hurt one of these companies was that time Jimmy Kimmel made fun of the president and it took an estimated 1.7M ex-Disney Plus subscribers.
Maybe, but in the Kimmel case there could have been other reasons too. Like Hollywood people not wanting to make business with a company that would just cancel contacts when they have opinions on public. Disney needs those people, arguable more than subscribers.
IMO, consumer boycotts don’t really work in general, here it might have worked, but it is also possible it worked for other reasons.
Consumer boycotts are pretty much the only strategy guaranteed to work, the only exceptions being Facebook and Google, as they’re the only businesses I can think of that are both primarily B2B, and can operate on speculative liquidity
I haven’t subbed to gamepads for years because I knew this would eventually happen. Gamepass was designed to get people used to not purchasing games and instead letting them come to them. Subscribers now have to chose between paying even more each month or losing access to the library of games available to them.
Gamepass only ever made sense to people who had time to play or dabble in a sufficiently large amount of games per year and felt the need to play some new titles soon or immediately instead of waiting. Otherwise, eventually your total subscription costs would outpace the total cost to purchase what you played, especially if purchased on sale at a later date. And the value gets worse if you ever replayed a game (s).
I’ll never really understand the excitement about this service. It was always a Trojan horse.
Gamepass only made sense if you’re an idiot.
Everyone who isn’t stupid knew that they were renting access to something they could be getting for free. The business can raise fees whenever it wants, and you’re stuck either paying the higher rates or cutting your losses and having nothing to show for the money you wasted.
Renting is a scam and only morons think otherwise. Hopefully some of them grow up after seeing this, but I doubt it.
Gamepass only ever made sense to people who had time to play or dabble in a sufficiently large amount of games per year
Exactly. I only played two games before unsubscribing. You have to have so many free time to make the gamepass worth your while and money.
I learned after a few months of game pass that most of the games that looked interesting actually weren’t. It’s no big loss, and it’s cheaper to just buy the few games I actually want anymore. Doubly true now.
Knowing Microsoft, I’d like to thing that it went down like this:
Pardon me, your department isn’t achieving the expected 20% annual revenue increase.
But we’re just selling subscriptions to games that cost us nearly nothing. It’s free money.
And you need to make more money from it, increase your subscriber count or your costs, or we’ll cut your staff.
Then they cut staff anyways, because why leave free money on the table?
Buying isn’t owning, but it has to be better than this…
It can be if you buy from stores, such as GOG and Itch, that provide DRM-free downloads of games. Even Steam, depending on the game.
Never would I ever subscribe to a game service. That’s just me.
I justified it as a games rental. I mean I easily paid $5 to rent a game for the weekend in the 90s. Paying 12 bucks to rent games all month long wasn’t bad (for PC).
But the price they’re charging now, I may as well buy the games I do play, rather than paying for the subscription. The problem for Microsoft is that money is gonna be going to steam instead of them.
Your justification is exemplary of how useful idiots operate.
you wouldn’t? not if the cost and convenience was right? just out of principle, regardless of value?
I could see doing it if I had more time to game
I don’t feel good about not having the ability to do what I want with my games; the idea of games being “mine” goes away if I cannot buy, sell, resell, loan, copy, backup, modify or destroy it.
I’m not sure how a digital gaming subscription service can compete with that no matter how cheap or how good the library is or how long the service is proposed to exist.
I definitely see this. I think, at least the way I’ve used it, it’s replaced rentals for me (I miss video stores). I’ve picked it up 2-3 times, each time to play a specific game and cancelled at the end of the month. I’ve absolutely saved money that way, and didn’t really care about owning the content I was getting it for.
Don’t take this as an endorsement though. I don’t think that’s the intended use, and I doubt it would last if everyone did the same. Besides the price hike takes it out of that reasonable territory for the rental idea, at least for me.
same boat. as soon as that service was announced it never made sense to me.
i play a lot of games, but its never at a consistent pace, just makes more sense to buy.
same goes for shit like netflix. im not constantly watching something, so why wouldn’t i just buy the movie when i have a movie night.
I work in the IT software licensing industry, it’s a fucking cancer I can’t wait to fail so bad that when we have the first extended internet outage failure so bad that it shows the world that subscriptions are a liability that shouldn’t exist
Just cancelled mine. I have barely been doing ~2 games per year, and the cost was low enough for me to not really care about the months I didn’t play at all.
But a price increase is the straw.
I just bought 12 month of Ultimate on eBay. I always did this in the past, because it’s cheaper than buying directly from Microsoft. So far, I made good experience with it.
The way it usually works is, that you get a few codes you need to redeem. I got three codes for 36 month of EA Play and then one code for Ultimate that is supposed to transform the EA Play subscription to 12 month Ultimate. But due to the the price hike, the subscription transformation changed as well and I did not get the 12 month.
I’m now in contact with the seller and he tries to find a solution. I want to have my 12 month Ultimate that he offered for the price. But it also sucks for the seller. Seems like we both didn’t know. He basically sold it to cheap. I paid 150€ for 12 month Ultimate and he just now increased the price to 200€.
The new prices are insane! 150€ a year is already my upper limit. I’m not gonna pay 200€ or even more a year. I think, if my new subscription is over, I will not extend it. I like the idea of Game Pass, but that’s to much money.
The thing is I really like Game Consoles. I want to play in front of my TV. I wish, Steam would make another Steam Machine with Steam OS. I do want an all in one solution. The last thing I want is a gaming PC. I hope, alternatives to Xbox Consoles and Playstation come up.
I know, I could also use the XBox without GamePass, but I do play online something and it would be nice to get away from subscriptions completly.
I wish, Steam would make another steam machine with steamOS
The last thing I want is a gaming PC
The steam machine program was where OEMs could partner with Valve to make a gaming PC that shipped with a steam controller and Steam OS. That’s it.
You stated you wanted a steam machine, but also say you don’t want a gaming PC, but… That’s what a steam machine is
Thanks for clarifying! You are right, I thought they sold complete systems with just Steam OS, like the Steam Deck, but as a console. Seems like I was wrong around it.
Just to make sure: I’m aware one can also use the desktop mode on SteamOS, but it’s not really necessary.
Yeah I think some folks get confused and think Steam machines were a Steam based console, but the closest to that is the Steam Deck which admittedly is pretty solid. Though I do think Valve has experimented with making a Steam Console in the past but I don’t think it went anywhere, though it also couldve been absorbed into the Steam Deck team.
I wish Steam would make another Steam Machine with Steam OS.
It’s rumored they’re working on one codenamed Fremont.
It’s also rumored they’re working on Half-Life 3. Let’s see what happens first. 😉
I’d say the console is the more plausible rumor, but maybe someday we’ll see!
I mean, you can set up a gaming pc or laptop to mostly work with a controller and have a general interface akin to that of consoles. Retro stuff like Lakka or RetroPie already do it super well. The “set up” part is where you’ll likely spend several hours, though
Yeah, but what I love about consoles is the nearly zero maintenance. Updates are installed completly in the background. I work the whole day on IT stuff. I do not want to administrate any system in my free time.
And I like to play some more graphic intensiv games, not only retro stuff.
From this points of view Xbox and Playstation are great. I’m just getting less and less happy with the business model behind it. I’m totally fine with paying for stuff. But I never liked the subscription and the higher the monthly prices get the less attractive it is for me.
I’m usually fine with paying more for things I enjoy that are worth it. Like $70 games are just not a big deal to me.
I’m also too lazy to cancel most things. I’ve ignored Game Pass price hikes before and justified them by thinking of all the games I played without buying.
But this one is just ridiculous. There’s no value here, no way for me to justify it. I was enjoying Silksong on Xbox because I didn’t have to buy it, but now that I do have to buy it I guess I’ll do that on my Switch instead. Replaying it is going to be rough, especially without my Elite controller.
I hope Microsoft gets their shit together, because Xbox has been my favorite game platform for years.
I’m doing my part!
Oh, they got rid of the 12 month core plan completely and renamed core to essential (isn’t essential the basic playstation plan?).
I guess I won’t buy more than 1 month at a time for multiplayer. That’s going to save me a lot of money, since I don’t play xbox online very often.
The thing about this shit is…
Microsoft, like Google, is now a user-data driven company and they have already made loss/profit ratio analysis on this long before they released the price increase. They’re absolutely banking on people cancelling but making up the difference and then some from the people who stay.
For a thought experiment let’s consider how many subscribers they were reported to have in Feburary: 34 million. Let’s assume that everyone is paying for the highest tier to make the math easier. So current income would be 34 million user x $20 a month and thats $680 million a month. New income of 34 million users x $30 a month is $1.02 billion. The difference is $340 million a month. Let’s divide that by $30 a month. That gets us about 11,333,333 users. So they can hemorrhage over 11 million users and still break even. To make sure, let’s subtract 11 million users. That gives us 23 million users. 23 million users x $30 a month is $690 million a month, a cool $10 million a month above current profits.
For final context, 11 million users is roughly 32% of their entire subscriber count. They can afford to lose a third of the people subscribing and still make money.
The math doesn’t bode well for us who vote with our wallets.
Okay, but wouldn’t a higher price also discourage new people from subscribing in the first place? Or are companies that shortsighted?
Most of them are. Just make profit NOW!!
The same math is there too. They can afford to loose one third of new subscribers to get the same amount of money.
But their new customer acquisition cost wont get higher at the same pace and they get more valuable customers whose payback period will be shorter.
Also i dont think its relevant here, but less customers means less operating costs, so they will most likelly save some money on customer service and behind the scenes things like server upkeeps etc., but i dont think these make real difference here.
Also if for some reason things start to go bad they still have option to create “a budget version” for the people who see the normal subscrition as too expencive.
One could imagine that conveniently, Microsoft’s online support pages and the amount of support staff were designed to only handle hundreds of thousands of cancelations at a time.
And it gets even better. Instead of up to 33% leaving, say 50% of that group convert to Premium instead of Ultimate. That isn’t any lost revenue since the price is going up to what Ultimate used to be. So that cushions their numbers even more.
I’m not a licensed math surgeon, but I think your math is wildly optimistic in favor of Microsoft due to how the subscription totals are actually distributed per price tier.
I don’t doubt that they did a lot of math to figure out an acceptable level of churn for this change, I just don’t think it’s nearly as generous and wide as you’re calculating.
There probably is a very real churn limit that they’re trying to avoid, and my hunch is that there exists a breaking point that could be hit with an aggressive and sustained boycott / cancellation spree, but again, I’m not a math surgeon so I could be wrong. That’s just my gut feeling.
Now factor in the cost savings from a lower server load and less staff to run the back end, and possibly the smaller licensing\use costs for the games available to play since less people would be accessing those games.
But also less new users and still the usual churn of existing users. It could be a downward spiral.
That’s the next CEOs problem.
Yes, but still something they will look at. It means when it becomes unviable with the squeeze already on, those that chose to pay the higher fees lose access to everything as they shut it down. I’m sure they will thank their loyal subscribers, so there is that.
My guess is they realise that xbox users in general is likely on a downward trajectory and now is the time to milk them.
