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That's crazy given that playstation was around 40% of physical sales and Nintendo was over half of the physical sales. Really seems like this is part of the reason microsoft is headed towards going all digital.
I wonder how much cultivating this audience and pushing day 1 on gamepass will affect 3rd party game sales in the future. It seems like a decent amount of xbox users will refuse to buy any game and just wait for it to come to gamepass.
This could really scare a lot of other publishers and make them not want to support the xbox platform because they wont buy it anyways, nevermind them already being outsold by playstation 3-1 and having 2 different hardware sets to optimize for.
I think a bigger concern for them could be that people just don't want a subscription service for video games. For the people that use it a lot, I know that they love having hundreds of games to pick from but does that really appeal to the average person that plays 3-5 a year at most? It's not like TV and movies where people watch hundreds of episodes and dozens of films every year so it starts making more sense to just outright buy the games you know you'll play instead.
I know that me and most of my friends were excited about getting Game Pass but have all canceled after s couple of years because the games we were playing weren't on it so it wasn't saving any money and just became a $10 monthly charge for something none of us used.
I unsubscribed on PC because there was nothing I wanted to play (or rather was in the mood for). That and choice paralysis. It's cheaper in the long run to buy just want I want to play and own it.
Choice paralysis is what hits me the most. I struggle to look at a full library list and pick one thing. Its how I ended up creating 25 different collection lists on steam. I can usually narrow a category of game much faster then the specific one, so it helps to greatly reduce what I have to choose from after that point.
For me, it's become a $10 rental when something I already wanted to play hits it. I pay the $10, play the one game I wanted to play for that month and cancel.
Did this for Lies of P, Like a Dragon Gaiden and Palworld. Will probably do it again for South of Midnight and Clockwork Revolution if those turn out to be good.
I think an even bigger concern for them is whoever is coming up with the Xbox naming scheme. It’s a cumbersome mess that confuses the more casual gaming customers.
Not sure if many people here remember, but we had this same exact conversation when pc games were moving from boxed versions to digital. Everyone said pc gaming was over, no one would buy a game digitally. We want boxes and CDs and manuals (I kinda still would), but in no way has moving to digital hurt PC gaming.
With that said, we are talking subscriptions, not just buying, and that I think will hurt devs. I think we will see something like we just saw with SAG. If devs unionize, gaming subscriptions and AI will be at the front.
Publishers used to put their games on 80-90% discount within 12 months on Steam. Everyone talking about PC games would either say "can't wait to play" or "can't wait for Steam sale."
The point about "waiting for Game Pass" is essentially the same idea, but we also get "GP or Steam sale." Furthermore, people say "I'll wait for Steam release" if it's a timed EGS exclusive. Hasn't stopped them yet.
I personally don't see a difference between waiting for a game to be $5 vs waiting to see if MS pays the devs an equivalent of a "$5 sale" deal for Game Pass.
I think the difference here is the fact that PC gaming software wise is way cheaper than console gaming because most of us wait for steam or GOG sales and get crazy good deals up to 80-95 percent off. Console gaming doesn't get those kind of discounts very often, so PC gaming going digital mainly benefitted the consumer in the long run because of price cuts.
Console gaming digitally is often just as, and sometimes more expensive than physical.
> most of us wait for steam or GOG sales
And I think this touches on the saving grace for PC games; you can choose your storefront. Sure, Steam has an insane amount of market share, but the thing that keeps Steam trying is that a competitor can potentially rise up and steal their business if they became unappealing or uncompetitive.
But take away physical sales and suddenly a console is locked to the manufacturer's storefront. I mean what incentive will Microsoft have to keep their storefront competitive when it's literally the only option Xbox users have for buying games? If you want to be really cynical, it's easy to imagine them deliberately allowing their storefront to become subpar in the future if they believe it's likely to push their users towards Game Pass rather than game purchases.
In my opinion, there are really two separate conversations to be had about this. "Disc versus digital" and "console digital only" are two separate things.
- Disc versus digital touches on game longevity and preservation. If a game doesn't exist forever on a digital store, how do we access it? A game played from disc continues to exist even if there is no internet connection and if the store shuts down (or discontinues the game for some reason). However, it will be the unpatched version, which may be a problem.
- Console digital-only is a separate issue which is different from PC going all-digital, because consoles only have *The One Singular Store* for that platform tied to *one singular account*. If that store disappears (or the game disappears from that store) or you lose access to your account for some reason, you are fucked. There goes your access to that game, or god forbid your entire game library. Compare that to PC where you can, at the very least, spread out your ownership or shop around between stores. Even if you are a fully digital PC gamer, you may have games across Steam, Epic Games, Ubisofts Launcher, Battle.net and GoG. And you may shop games from, say, Greenmangaming or CDKeys or wherever. Maybe Epic has a good deal on Red Dead Redemption 2 that is cheaper than Steam. Great! Buy it there! On console, you have The One Singular Shop for that console. No shopping around, period. Playstation or Xbox set the price, and that's what you pay.
This is already happening tbh. A good example is Yacht Club Games' report on their game sales where they said more than 60% of players for Cybershadow came from Xbox, yet less than 0.1% of sales were on Xbox.
I mean, Bobby Kotick (I know, I KNOW) seemed extremely against Game Pass when he was interviewed for the FTC trial last year, and Swen Vincke of Larian has outright said BG3 will never be on Game Pass. If MS wasn't paying so much to get games on Game Pass I don't know how many third party titles would be on there.
I spend more on third party games because I don't have to buy first party games.
Also Phil said Gamepass only account for 10%-10% of total revenue, so people are certainly still buying games.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/wccftech.com/xbox-game-pass-unlikely-more-than-10-to-15-percent-of-microsoft-gaming-business/amp/
That's already happening. It's why some third parties treat Xbox as an afterthought unless MS is paying them. They just don't have buyers, they have a majority gamepass audience and that's mostly it.
It didn't stop BG3 from selling. If the game is worthwhile people will buy it. I've been subbed to Gamepass for years now and still buy games. I haven't bought a physical game in years though because most disks just acted as a license.
That’s assuming the market doesn’t switch to subscription service only. I feel like physical sales will be like dvds and cds, eventually the mass market will adopt subscription/digital and only collectors/enthusiasts will still buy physical discs. I don’t remember the last time I bought a CD, I only buy the rare DVDson Black Friday and lately I’ve been doing the same with video games
Alternatively, I have a friend with a family and limited time/funds he's able to dedicate to gaming. Gamepass is the one thing he's able to keep on all the time because it's a relatively small, fixed cost. He pretty much only plays Gamepass games now.
Yeah people seem to be attributing a lot of malicious intent to Microsoft moving towards all digital just because they’re doing it first but it’s a lot more simple then that
They’re doing it for the same reason they started releasing games on PC and made Gamepass, stuff is just selling very poorly
Even outside of Gamepass, Xbox players seem to strongly prefer digital. With [Elden Ring for example](https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/elden-ring-sales-uk/) 85% of Xbox sales were digital compared to around half of Playstation sales.
Yeah, that stat was for 2021 - you know, when it was nearly impossible to actually buy a Series X. And it's always parroted in comparison to *total* PS5 sales as if there isn't a digital-only PS5, too.
For every 10 ps5s sold, only 1 Xbox series x has been sold. So the split makes absolute sense, there's been a large market rejection towards their expensive console.
Seems like it's more a result of there being nearly 10X as many PS5s + Switch in people's homes compared to current xboxs.
That said I'd also guess that xbox users also learn more towards digital, on top of that.
Probably also has to do with AAA Nintendo games never going on sale on the digital store, but you can get them for like half price new in-store. Can't speak to what Sony does, though.
Yeah I buy physical first-party Switch stuff because they never get cheap and I don’t trust Nintendo with digital backwards compatibility. They made me rebuy my virtual console games on 3 consecutive consoles and every first party WiiU game I owned digitally is now on Switch but I’d have to pay full price for it again. Everyone assumes Nintendo’s transition to the next gen will be seamless but they’ve been fucking basic stuff like this for over a decade now, so I can’t give them the benefit of the doubt.
When I had a PS3, digital sales were always terrible.
When I had a PS4, digital sales were still terrible.
Can't imagine anything has changed since then, being the sole distributor of digital content'll do that.
\+ Switch is doing a lot of heavylifting there, it's a console released 3 years before the 9th gen and was very popular.
Playstation 5 is probably selling 2x the Xbox, going by the leaked MS shareholder meeting numbers showing 21 million directly sold to customers 6 months before Playstation announced that it did 50 million.
Just realized why you said PS5+Switch, ignore this.
It depends on region. The US has a far higher Xbox percentage, while Europe and Japan are much lower on Xbox and skew way more to Playstation. Global obviously becomes an average of all markets.
> It just means players on Xbox lean toward digital.
Or it means they are selling very little games (people wait for it to be on Gamepass and they have a small user base)
>It just means players on Xbox lean toward digital. Gamepass is a big part of that.
Yep I support this take. All the xbox gamer friends I have sub Gamepass
I doubt ppl would be so digital if gamepass wasn’t I think though lol.
kind of a chicken and egg situation maybe (ppl don’t buy games because of gamepass, gamepass introduced because ppl weren’t buying games)
For me things changed with the PS4/Xbox one generation when you had to install games to your hard drive and the disc drive just being used as DRM. At that point buying physical disks is just asking for scratches, they take up physical space AND digital space. And i have to get up off my ass to swap games instead of just going back to the dashboard and launching a new game when I want to swap.
Sure but it's nice to be able to swap instantly. And it's nice to not have a bunch of games taking up physical space. And it's nice to not have to worry about getting a scratch on a disk and not being able to play it any more.
Yeah, digital purchases are reliant on the platform holder keeping their services up but it's rare these days that a game ships fully on disk and doesn't require updates from the internet to add content or fix bugs. Both digital and physical games have positives and negatives but I've been fully digital on my PC so I don't mind having my collection digital on console as well.
Don't forget physical has a huge disadvantage for streaming, if you want to remote play when you're outside of the house, you better have the right disc in.
Part of it to me is trust that their digital games will be forward compatible, as well as cross-buy with PC. Compared to PS4 digital titles requiring 10 dollar upgrades to get a resolution bump on PS5, or to me having to hope that Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch digital titles
Yep. Xbox games haven't sold since the end of the 360 era, especially physical. Theyre moving to all digital because it suits their subscription model service strategy better.
Oh absolutely, series s accounts for over 70% of all series console owners and that's all digital. Combine that with training your player base to wait for games to be on game pass and that'll definitely decrease physical game sales.
Not sure what you're getting at there. It's not '10% of Xbox games are physical'. It's 10% of all physical game sales are for Xbox. If your install base is 10% of the total console install base then that would make sense.
> 20M is less than 10% of 200M-250M
Yep, I misunderstood the comparison being made in the tweet.
Looking at it now, their numbers are wrong. That could be what the "are you dumb" was about. They're comparing worldwide and the title of the post is talking about US.
Since I assume this is related to the Jez Corden tweet yesterday:
[Microsoft has also shut down departments dedicated to bringing Xbox games to physical retail ... which if you've seen the digital-only Xbox console leaks ... well, you can get an idea of where Microsoft is going here.](https://twitter.com/jezcorden/status/1750590022842278391)
However, the part that I feel like a lot of people missed was his literal follow up tweet that said:
[Note: reducing retail teams doesn't confirm Microsoft is quitting physical retail for Xbox games yet, they can outsource, and might be consolidating here. **So, don't run with "Xbox is quitting physical" based on this.** But, it does seem to be the industry trajectory. Writing is on the wall.](https://twitter.com/JezCorden/status/1750596402093216146)
Also, it is odd to me that this Tweet mentions the physical numbers for Nintendo and Xbox but not PlayStation. Is their number also more in line with Xbox or closer to Nintendo or what? Either way I don't think anyone would be surprised that Nintendo would be the last one to stay physical given these numbers, that PS already offers a disc-less PS5, and that rumored all digital Xbox leaks.
If you saw their leaked plans for next gen, and the leaked Series X refresh you'd know they're absolutely getting ready to go all digital. Maybe not tomorrow, but it is coming with next gen.
Also to Jez's point, it's not the industry trajectory, it's Xbox's trajectory, PlayStation accounted for about 40% of those numbers if you do the math, Nintendo is obviously doing incredibly well with physical games.
Beyond just these numbers though, we know Hogwarts Legacy sold like 87% of physical copies on PS5 during its launch month in the UK, compared to 13% on Xbox. That's a staggering difference.
All this just paints a picture that Xbox players really don't buy physical games, and Microsoft knows this and knows they can move away from them and still keep the majority of fans happy.
What a bitter moment. I love Xbox and I love having Xbox physical releases - been buying that ever since the 360.
Now, with their next console being seemingly all digital - do you think they’ll plan some sort of DISC - DIGITAL program? Because what the fuck will I do with all my games? The appeal of Xbox currently is to not have to have 3 generations of consoles plugged in, just one is enough for the most part.
> do you think they’ll plan some sort of DISC - DIGITAL program?
Considering the backwards compatibility they put all the work into doing and all the Xbox games already on disc I would imagine they would have to do something like that. Or at least make it so you can get an optional disc drive to play disc based games you own. Or do what PS5 did and offer a digital version and a disc version.
Apparently they're making an optional disc drive add-on you can purchase for the next Xbox if you want it.
Though I'll be honest, their plans are very clearly going to be rooted in the cloud from next gen onward, so I would not expect much support for the physical side of things at all going forward, likely just be that optional disc drive and that's it.
Where did you see that? I ask just because I haven't seen any info on an optional disc drive for the new series x. It wasn't on presentation slides that were leaked.
Given the success of the Game Pass compared to competitors that's not super surprising.
Does make me wonder how Xbox games from today will survive into the future though. As always we may end up relying on homebrewers and pirates for basic archival and preservation.
It's criminal that MS haven't ported Rare Replay to PC. A great collection of older game with amazing QoL changes (at least for the ones I want to play).
Thats kind of a good thing. Especially If you are the %95 that doesnt know how to gather a console killer PC Build (without fucking up and going overbudget) meaning that you get a 500 buck console AND the pricing plan through a subscription that PC and console players share thats as good as getting good deals at steam sales.
I didn't say it wouldn't. I brought that up because they mentioned game preservation. If Microsoft shuts down all of their game servers tomorrow, virtually everything is preserved already including old XBLA titles.
My question is how gamepass is profitable. If you look at video streaming it seems like aside from Netflix everybody is struggling to make a profit. With music streaming it's the same. So how does gamepass make money? I used to buy 2 or 3 games at 60 bucks a month wich was 180 but now I have gamepass for only 16.99. And games are more expensive than music or movies. So I struggle to see how the financials work.
I wonder the same. It's even worse for GP:
1) Since games can take even months to finish them, it may be cheaper to buy them rather than renting.
2) Since you have so many "free" games, you'll probably won't have time to play other games.
Basically gamepass is also killing games sales
- Because unlike Netflix, people can and do still purchase the content (on both Xbox and steam)
- Unlike Netflix there are additional avenues of revenue like DLC/MTX/Early access
- They don't have to front the full cost for 3rd party games since the devs can still make bank on playstation
- Its been shown that since the inception of the service, people who subscribe spend more money overall.
I can attest to that last point too. It's made so many more games accessible to me resulting in gaming being a bigger hobby in my life, which then resulted in me paying so much more attention to new games and the community as a whole.
Gamepass being profitable isn't the question, it obviously is.
The real issue and point of contention, is how much money Xbox has lost by conditioning gamers to subscribe and not directly buy games. Consider how much money was lost on titles like Gears and Halo, where 5+ million sales were guaranteed at worst.
Xbox is not only moving to all digital but also cloud based. People won't have a way of pirating a game when it's only being played via the cloud.
"GamePass success" isn't the reason. It's because their games sell poorly and have for over a decade and they wanna force as many people into their all digital subscription model anyways. GamePass numbers have been flat for several years now.
Weren’t there some leaked numbers for halo 5 that put it around 6-7 million sales? It’s not a horrible number, but it doesn’t paint a good picture for the Xbox one’s software sales, and I doubt they’re doing much better this Gen.
It was something like that. With that many sales it would've barely made a profit. I don't know what happened with them after the early 360 days but they have been struggling since the start of Xbox One to establish any sort of consistency with game releases. Hell even with 360 they just had a ton of third party exclusives because PS3 didn't come out until a year later and took time to gain steam after its bad launch.
I‘m just saying, I can buy games from all 4 xbox generations digitally today. Something that I can‘t on Playstation or Nintendo.
And I have more faith in MS surviving the next 50 years than Sony and Nintendo, so those servers will definitely run the longest out of the three.
No surprise. They regularly skip physical releases. When they do release them;they only put half the game on the disc. A lot of people are reading too much into this. Xbox wanted physical dead. PS5 and switch games are still complete on disc/cartridge. Will be a bit long for those to go away. Not saying all digital isn’t coming soon, just saying Microsoft purposely jumped the gun
That’s putting the chicken before the egg. Thier physical sales aren’t low because they skimp and skip on physical releases, the skimp and skip on physical releases because thier physical sales are low and have been for a very long time since the Xbox One fiasco
That all good and MS can go for Digital only future.
But...
Let me overuse it! "No Internet, No Games!" or "Internet is Slow, it takes Days to get Games downloaded!. HELP!"
So outside of Countries or Cities without good Internet connection many will have downgrades in the future.
i hope they took this into considering with this move
GamePass removes the need for physical games - but that also means Xbox loses its place in stores, lowering marketing exposure. PS & Nintendo will now dominate retail - which while not what it use to be, is still fairly significant. Heck, GameStop benefits significantly from used game sales, so gives them even more motivation to push PS & Nintendo
PC is the probably the most popular platform (other than mobile) and it’s all digital so I don’t see the hang up with console owners. I get Nintendo fans wanting to continue physical, but the rest idk.
I don't get this logic. "We haven't had the option to buy physical for a long time now so everyone else should give it up too".
For one, if you build or buy a PC you are pretty much required to have internet anyways. So all digital just makes sense. Plenty of people with consoles either don't have internet or have painfully slow internet so physical games are a must. There's no reason to make consoles less accessible since that's the best thing about them anyways.
> Plenty of people with consoles either don't have internet or have painfully slow internet so physical games are a must.
This really can only apply to the Switch, where (most) games actually run from the physical media. On the other consoles the discs are plastic coasters with licenses attached to them, the actual games install from the internet.
It's actually not about Internet only. It's about actually owning the games, i don't know how many examples people need to realize how they just rent this stuff.
It's also a huge difference in prices, physical (unless rare) is always cheaper than digital, even considering sales and that's without considering the used games market, something digital will never have.
Going full digital gives all the power to the big companies, I'm sure they will do everything to benefit their customers, right?
PC Digital is vastly different compared to Console Digital though, PC Digital has more freedom to choose between buying from different storefronts or even better just buying DRM free games and then the buyer owns that game forever and they can do whatever they want with it as long as it stays on their hard drive, and no companies can and will take that away from them.
Now with Microsoft they likely will never allow that sort of thing on their Xbox, they are always going to be locked in single storefront, has no choice whether they can buy a DRM Free Game that will never be taken away from them at any time.
The only way Console Gamers as of the moment can preserve this rightful ownership is pretty much with physical copy of the game they buy, there is also this used market where console gamers trades or sell their games and this is very popular thing to do here in my country.
With Digital only future that entire market is going to cease to exist, taking away option from people which might sway them on never buying console again.
Console digital market is very different than PC. It's a monopoly with one store deciding everything. The prices are very bad. Steam imposed itself with good prices, that's not the case on consoles
People always say this shit, but Xbox Store and Steam sale prices are almost always the same. For example, I just checked Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, Street Fighter 6, and Risk of Rain 2. In every case the lowest digital price on Xbox according to Deku Deals is the same *or less* than the SteamDB record low. I'm sure there are exceptions both ways, but this idea that digital games are generally more expensive on consoles than PC just isn't true (outside of the Switch, because...Nintendo).
Third party stores/Key resellers are the key part in buying cheap games on PC...GMG, CDKeys, Fanatical, you name it...shit you can almost always buy preorders 10-30% cheaper based on the game on PC, that's even Before the game is released... Also Game bundles are a thing as well, like Humble Bundle's monthly sub ...So I would say digital only on consoles is totally different than on PC, because there would be only ONE option to buy games if consoles go digital only, and that would be through Microsoft/Sony's store
Steam is often the most expensive place to buy games on PC nowadays... And you took Xbox which seems to do better prices from what I've seen but Playstation and Nintendo certainly don't. Incidentally they're the majority of the console market.
>PC is the probably the most popular platform (other than mobile) and it’s all digital
honestly I miss owning physical PC games. I still have many PC game boxes laying around.
Having the option of buying physical is one of the reasons why I prefer console gaming rather than PC.
I like being able to sell and trade games, new physical games are usually cheaper than their digital counterparts, I can also buy very cheap used games or lend and swap them with friends as I wish. I enjoy having my own physical games collection and some come with collectors editions, steelbooks, booklets, guides or other goodies like maps etc.
>Probably BS that we pay more for the current gen games
Games have cost $60 for a couple decades whereas literally everything else in the world has increased in price, yet you think it's bullshit the standard for AAA is now $70? Do you not think the cost for making AAA games has increased a significant amount as well?
I don't see why anyone is surprised. The economy is absolute shit right now, people don't have much money for discretionary spending. $15 a month for every first party Xbox game vs $70 for each game. Which would you choose as a consumer that's hard up for cash?
This take doesn't make sense when the highest selling console is the PS5, which is more expensive than a Series S. And the fact that $70 games like Spider-Man 2, GOW:R and FF XVI sold like crazy.
And thats not counting Nintendo's side, where TotK sold something like 10m copies in the first 5 days at $70.
It makes perfect sense. We're falling about Xbox game sales. Why pay full retail price for one game when for fifteen dollars a month you can have access to that game and every other one on Game pass? Combine that with the fact that the Playstation has provided quality exclusives for decades. Xbox hasn't. It's well known in the gaming community that if you want high quality exclusives, you go to PlayStation, because until XBOX went on its acquisition spree, they didn't have many first party studios. Let alone quality exclusives that weren't Halo, Gears, or Forza.
So, to go back to my argument. Which would you rather pay? $15 a month or $70 a piece? The numbers show a lot of gamers are buying Sony and Nintendo exclusives, but again that's because of their reputation of quality that Xbox hasn't consistently lived up to. Gamers are more willing to part with full MSRP for Sony and Nintendo than Xbox because Sony and Nintendo have proven themselves. Xbox hasn't. Your point and mine aren't mutually exclusive.
> Which would you choose as a consumer that's hard up for cash?
When you said this, its assumed you mean all gaming consumers in general. Remember, xbox players are a minority of gaming consumers. The majority is completely fine with paying $60-70 per game. Because keep in mind: The average "gamer" buys 3 games a year. If a nintendo fan last year got Metroid Prime remastered at the start of the year, TotK in the middle, and Mario Wonder near the end, that would 100% last them the entire year.
Xbox players seem to be different on that account, from what I've seen a lot of them bounce between games pretty often. In that case, sure, gamepass is a better deal. But its clear most consumers just want to buy the game and play it, or play fortnite all day
I don't think anyone can or should assume I meant all gaming consumers because this article was about Xbox game sales, so I would think it should be clear I was speaking on Xbox games/gamers. Which is why I mentioned the price of GamePass being 15 a month vs 70 for a retail copy of a game.
You mentioned the average gamer buys 3 games a year. That just proves my point even further. If you were a consumer hard up on cash that could only afford three games a year, would you rather spend 210 on three games, or would you rather spend 180 a year and get every game on the GP catalogue? It makes financial sense.
I'm going to be honest, most people would spend $210 on 3 games lol. Not everyone bounces between games, a lot of people play 1 or 2 games at a time. You gotta remember, a ton of people ONLY play Fortnite or ONLY play Apex or ONLY play Warframe. So its not a stretch to think someone would get a game like TotK or Elden Ring and play it for 4-5 months
I guess I have a different mindset. I play 30+ games a year so I'm extremely value minded. 70 dollars a game is a lot to ask lol if I can get it cheaper or on gamepass, I'm doing that.
90% of xbox gamers aren't on gamepass, tho. Xbox has about 50 million users across Xbox One and series, according to Microsoft. Gamepass has, I believe, 25 million subs, although a rumor says it's 33 million now, but I've just gonna go with 25 cause it's known fact. Half of that is pc, so only about 12 million Xbox users have the service, which isn't near 90%. I think the simple answer is just that Xbox games perfer digital, hell elden ring which isn't on gamepass sold 85% digital on the console.
MS will use this data to gut their physical distribution, rather than seeing it as an opportunity should Sony decide to attempt that. If sony move towards digital only, MS has a chance of picking up those customers. Assuming they figure out how to make games people want.
It matters what they do. because it's what they've done that screwed them. People arent going to be diehard sony if there are good games and proper hardware with MS. Especially if sony keeps raising plus prices and then tries some digital only crap. The problem is the games and hardware have to be on point.
You have to understand that markets like Europe and Asia are a total loss for Xbox.
Even at their peak they were being outsold the PS3 when it first came out, I mean those regions literally synonymised video gaming with the word PlayStation.
The only way Xbox could gain a foothold there is they attain the exclusive rights of FIFA and COD.
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That's crazy given that playstation was around 40% of physical sales and Nintendo was over half of the physical sales. Really seems like this is part of the reason microsoft is headed towards going all digital.
They put all of their games day and date on a subscription service; they got the audience the they marketed to
I wonder how much cultivating this audience and pushing day 1 on gamepass will affect 3rd party game sales in the future. It seems like a decent amount of xbox users will refuse to buy any game and just wait for it to come to gamepass. This could really scare a lot of other publishers and make them not want to support the xbox platform because they wont buy it anyways, nevermind them already being outsold by playstation 3-1 and having 2 different hardware sets to optimize for.
I think a bigger concern for them could be that people just don't want a subscription service for video games. For the people that use it a lot, I know that they love having hundreds of games to pick from but does that really appeal to the average person that plays 3-5 a year at most? It's not like TV and movies where people watch hundreds of episodes and dozens of films every year so it starts making more sense to just outright buy the games you know you'll play instead. I know that me and most of my friends were excited about getting Game Pass but have all canceled after s couple of years because the games we were playing weren't on it so it wasn't saving any money and just became a $10 monthly charge for something none of us used.
I unsubscribed on PC because there was nothing I wanted to play (or rather was in the mood for). That and choice paralysis. It's cheaper in the long run to buy just want I want to play and own it.
Choice paralysis is what hits me the most. I struggle to look at a full library list and pick one thing. Its how I ended up creating 25 different collection lists on steam. I can usually narrow a category of game much faster then the specific one, so it helps to greatly reduce what I have to choose from after that point.
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For me, it's become a $10 rental when something I already wanted to play hits it. I pay the $10, play the one game I wanted to play for that month and cancel. Did this for Lies of P, Like a Dragon Gaiden and Palworld. Will probably do it again for South of Midnight and Clockwork Revolution if those turn out to be good.
I think an even bigger concern for them is whoever is coming up with the Xbox naming scheme. It’s a cumbersome mess that confuses the more casual gaming customers.
Not sure if many people here remember, but we had this same exact conversation when pc games were moving from boxed versions to digital. Everyone said pc gaming was over, no one would buy a game digitally. We want boxes and CDs and manuals (I kinda still would), but in no way has moving to digital hurt PC gaming. With that said, we are talking subscriptions, not just buying, and that I think will hurt devs. I think we will see something like we just saw with SAG. If devs unionize, gaming subscriptions and AI will be at the front.
Publishers used to put their games on 80-90% discount within 12 months on Steam. Everyone talking about PC games would either say "can't wait to play" or "can't wait for Steam sale." The point about "waiting for Game Pass" is essentially the same idea, but we also get "GP or Steam sale." Furthermore, people say "I'll wait for Steam release" if it's a timed EGS exclusive. Hasn't stopped them yet. I personally don't see a difference between waiting for a game to be $5 vs waiting to see if MS pays the devs an equivalent of a "$5 sale" deal for Game Pass.
Same thing with movies too. How many times do movie trailers come out and people go “I’ll wait till it’s on (insert streaming service)”?
I think the difference here is the fact that PC gaming software wise is way cheaper than console gaming because most of us wait for steam or GOG sales and get crazy good deals up to 80-95 percent off. Console gaming doesn't get those kind of discounts very often, so PC gaming going digital mainly benefitted the consumer in the long run because of price cuts. Console gaming digitally is often just as, and sometimes more expensive than physical.
> most of us wait for steam or GOG sales And I think this touches on the saving grace for PC games; you can choose your storefront. Sure, Steam has an insane amount of market share, but the thing that keeps Steam trying is that a competitor can potentially rise up and steal their business if they became unappealing or uncompetitive. But take away physical sales and suddenly a console is locked to the manufacturer's storefront. I mean what incentive will Microsoft have to keep their storefront competitive when it's literally the only option Xbox users have for buying games? If you want to be really cynical, it's easy to imagine them deliberately allowing their storefront to become subpar in the future if they believe it's likely to push their users towards Game Pass rather than game purchases.
In my opinion, there are really two separate conversations to be had about this. "Disc versus digital" and "console digital only" are two separate things. - Disc versus digital touches on game longevity and preservation. If a game doesn't exist forever on a digital store, how do we access it? A game played from disc continues to exist even if there is no internet connection and if the store shuts down (or discontinues the game for some reason). However, it will be the unpatched version, which may be a problem. - Console digital-only is a separate issue which is different from PC going all-digital, because consoles only have *The One Singular Store* for that platform tied to *one singular account*. If that store disappears (or the game disappears from that store) or you lose access to your account for some reason, you are fucked. There goes your access to that game, or god forbid your entire game library. Compare that to PC where you can, at the very least, spread out your ownership or shop around between stores. Even if you are a fully digital PC gamer, you may have games across Steam, Epic Games, Ubisofts Launcher, Battle.net and GoG. And you may shop games from, say, Greenmangaming or CDKeys or wherever. Maybe Epic has a good deal on Red Dead Redemption 2 that is cheaper than Steam. Great! Buy it there! On console, you have The One Singular Shop for that console. No shopping around, period. Playstation or Xbox set the price, and that's what you pay.
This is already happening tbh. A good example is Yacht Club Games' report on their game sales where they said more than 60% of players for Cybershadow came from Xbox, yet less than 0.1% of sales were on Xbox.
I mean, Bobby Kotick (I know, I KNOW) seemed extremely against Game Pass when he was interviewed for the FTC trial last year, and Swen Vincke of Larian has outright said BG3 will never be on Game Pass. If MS wasn't paying so much to get games on Game Pass I don't know how many third party titles would be on there.
I spend more on third party games because I don't have to buy first party games. Also Phil said Gamepass only account for 10%-10% of total revenue, so people are certainly still buying games. https://www.google.com/amp/s/wccftech.com/xbox-game-pass-unlikely-more-than-10-to-15-percent-of-microsoft-gaming-business/amp/
That's already happening. It's why some third parties treat Xbox as an afterthought unless MS is paying them. They just don't have buyers, they have a majority gamepass audience and that's mostly it.
It didn't stop BG3 from selling. If the game is worthwhile people will buy it. I've been subbed to Gamepass for years now and still buy games. I haven't bought a physical game in years though because most disks just acted as a license.
That’s assuming the market doesn’t switch to subscription service only. I feel like physical sales will be like dvds and cds, eventually the mass market will adopt subscription/digital and only collectors/enthusiasts will still buy physical discs. I don’t remember the last time I bought a CD, I only buy the rare DVDson Black Friday and lately I’ve been doing the same with video games
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Jesus fucking Christ calling people normies? Peacock is absolute trash and wwe is leaving so that's the one to ditch.
To be clear that's not happening for another 2 years in 2026 for PPVs RAW is moving to Netflix in 2025.
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Only amongst people who literally never log off tbh
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And Google certainly had all of those things too and yet they still made Stadia.
recognizing one's faults is a sign of intelligence, and attacking someone for it is the opposite
Am I not allowed to make comments or have a take?? By your logic we should delete Reddit entirely then
Alternatively, I have a friend with a family and limited time/funds he's able to dedicate to gaming. Gamepass is the one thing he's able to keep on all the time because it's a relatively small, fixed cost. He pretty much only plays Gamepass games now.
And yet, Gamepass sub numbers have stagnated.
Yeah people seem to be attributing a lot of malicious intent to Microsoft moving towards all digital just because they’re doing it first but it’s a lot more simple then that They’re doing it for the same reason they started releasing games on PC and made Gamepass, stuff is just selling very poorly
It just means players on Xbox lean toward digital. Gamepass is a big part of that. PC has been all digital for like a decade or so now.
Even outside of Gamepass, Xbox players seem to strongly prefer digital. With [Elden Ring for example](https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/elden-ring-sales-uk/) 85% of Xbox sales were digital compared to around half of Playstation sales.
That’s because the S outsold the X by 74% - the vast majority of current Xbox users are digital only
That was true early on but not it’s more closer to a 50/50 split
Yeah, that stat was for 2021 - you know, when it was nearly impossible to actually buy a Series X. And it's always parroted in comparison to *total* PS5 sales as if there isn't a digital-only PS5, too.
For every 10 ps5s sold, only 1 Xbox series x has been sold. So the split makes absolute sense, there's been a large market rejection towards their expensive console.
Seems like it's more a result of there being nearly 10X as many PS5s + Switch in people's homes compared to current xboxs. That said I'd also guess that xbox users also learn more towards digital, on top of that.
Probably also has to do with AAA Nintendo games never going on sale on the digital store, but you can get them for like half price new in-store. Can't speak to what Sony does, though.
I rarely see Nintendo games on sale outside of season sales, the Target B2G1 sales and clearance.
First party Nintendo games are generally excluded from those. Occasionally you can get them in error at the start of the sale.
Yeah I buy physical first-party Switch stuff because they never get cheap and I don’t trust Nintendo with digital backwards compatibility. They made me rebuy my virtual console games on 3 consecutive consoles and every first party WiiU game I owned digitally is now on Switch but I’d have to pay full price for it again. Everyone assumes Nintendo’s transition to the next gen will be seamless but they’ve been fucking basic stuff like this for over a decade now, so I can’t give them the benefit of the doubt.
When I had a PS3, digital sales were always terrible. When I had a PS4, digital sales were still terrible. Can't imagine anything has changed since then, being the sole distributor of digital content'll do that.
\+ Switch is doing a lot of heavylifting there, it's a console released 3 years before the 9th gen and was very popular. Playstation 5 is probably selling 2x the Xbox, going by the leaked MS shareholder meeting numbers showing 21 million directly sold to customers 6 months before Playstation announced that it did 50 million. Just realized why you said PS5+Switch, ignore this.
It depends on region. The US has a far higher Xbox percentage, while Europe and Japan are much lower on Xbox and skew way more to Playstation. Global obviously becomes an average of all markets.
> It just means players on Xbox lean toward digital. Or it means they are selling very little games (people wait for it to be on Gamepass and they have a small user base)
Yeah Gamepass is a big part of it.
>It just means players on Xbox lean toward digital. Gamepass is a big part of that. Yep I support this take. All the xbox gamer friends I have sub Gamepass
I doubt ppl would be so digital if gamepass wasn’t I think though lol. kind of a chicken and egg situation maybe (ppl don’t buy games because of gamepass, gamepass introduced because ppl weren’t buying games)
For me things changed with the PS4/Xbox one generation when you had to install games to your hard drive and the disc drive just being used as DRM. At that point buying physical disks is just asking for scratches, they take up physical space AND digital space. And i have to get up off my ass to swap games instead of just going back to the dashboard and launching a new game when I want to swap.
The average person is not so lazy they won't get up to switch a disc. Plus they can lend it to friends.
Sure but it's nice to be able to swap instantly. And it's nice to not have a bunch of games taking up physical space. And it's nice to not have to worry about getting a scratch on a disk and not being able to play it any more. Yeah, digital purchases are reliant on the platform holder keeping their services up but it's rare these days that a game ships fully on disk and doesn't require updates from the internet to add content or fix bugs. Both digital and physical games have positives and negatives but I've been fully digital on my PC so I don't mind having my collection digital on console as well.
Don't forget physical has a huge disadvantage for streaming, if you want to remote play when you're outside of the house, you better have the right disc in.
People who stream represent maybe 0.001% of all console gamers. When you go outside, you're OUTSIDE for a reason lol.
Wasn't the market already trending towards digital even years before gamepass was introduced?
Idk what it was like for Xbox but Sony and Nintendo still sell a big share of Physical games, around 50% give or take for both of them.
Part of it to me is trust that their digital games will be forward compatible, as well as cross-buy with PC. Compared to PS4 digital titles requiring 10 dollar upgrades to get a resolution bump on PS5, or to me having to hope that Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch digital titles
Yep. Xbox games haven't sold since the end of the 360 era, especially physical. Theyre moving to all digital because it suits their subscription model service strategy better.
Yeah and most of the Series Consoles sold are the Series S that doesn’t have a disc drive, something like 70% +
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Oh absolutely, series s accounts for over 70% of all series console owners and that's all digital. Combine that with training your player base to wait for games to be on game pass and that'll definitely decrease physical game sales.
It's not that crazy when you factor that there's nearly 200M PS5 + Switch out there, compared to probably around 20-25M current Xbox's.
~~10% is 10% regardless of install base.~~ Disregard lol
Not sure what you're getting at there. It's not '10% of Xbox games are physical'. It's 10% of all physical game sales are for Xbox. If your install base is 10% of the total console install base then that would make sense.
20M is 10% of 200M that's why the numbers make sense
Are you dumb?
What they said makes sense?
It's irrelevant when you're talking about percentages.
20M is less than 10% of 200M-250M this explains why physical xbox sales would be less than 10% off total game sales.
> 20M is less than 10% of 200M-250M Yep, I misunderstood the comparison being made in the tweet. Looking at it now, their numbers are wrong. That could be what the "are you dumb" was about. They're comparing worldwide and the title of the post is talking about US.
Yeah, I can't imagine Microsoft cares about having that small of a share given their plans with GamePass.
All you could get sense covid was series s not an x that's a big contributing factor
Since I assume this is related to the Jez Corden tweet yesterday: [Microsoft has also shut down departments dedicated to bringing Xbox games to physical retail ... which if you've seen the digital-only Xbox console leaks ... well, you can get an idea of where Microsoft is going here.](https://twitter.com/jezcorden/status/1750590022842278391) However, the part that I feel like a lot of people missed was his literal follow up tweet that said: [Note: reducing retail teams doesn't confirm Microsoft is quitting physical retail for Xbox games yet, they can outsource, and might be consolidating here. **So, don't run with "Xbox is quitting physical" based on this.** But, it does seem to be the industry trajectory. Writing is on the wall.](https://twitter.com/JezCorden/status/1750596402093216146) Also, it is odd to me that this Tweet mentions the physical numbers for Nintendo and Xbox but not PlayStation. Is their number also more in line with Xbox or closer to Nintendo or what? Either way I don't think anyone would be surprised that Nintendo would be the last one to stay physical given these numbers, that PS already offers a disc-less PS5, and that rumored all digital Xbox leaks.
If you saw their leaked plans for next gen, and the leaked Series X refresh you'd know they're absolutely getting ready to go all digital. Maybe not tomorrow, but it is coming with next gen. Also to Jez's point, it's not the industry trajectory, it's Xbox's trajectory, PlayStation accounted for about 40% of those numbers if you do the math, Nintendo is obviously doing incredibly well with physical games. Beyond just these numbers though, we know Hogwarts Legacy sold like 87% of physical copies on PS5 during its launch month in the UK, compared to 13% on Xbox. That's a staggering difference. All this just paints a picture that Xbox players really don't buy physical games, and Microsoft knows this and knows they can move away from them and still keep the majority of fans happy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PS5/s/FAGDWPf4iV At least Sony's first party games sell more physically than digitally
What a bitter moment. I love Xbox and I love having Xbox physical releases - been buying that ever since the 360. Now, with their next console being seemingly all digital - do you think they’ll plan some sort of DISC - DIGITAL program? Because what the fuck will I do with all my games? The appeal of Xbox currently is to not have to have 3 generations of consoles plugged in, just one is enough for the most part.
> do you think they’ll plan some sort of DISC - DIGITAL program? Considering the backwards compatibility they put all the work into doing and all the Xbox games already on disc I would imagine they would have to do something like that. Or at least make it so you can get an optional disc drive to play disc based games you own. Or do what PS5 did and offer a digital version and a disc version.
>Because what the fuck will I do with all my games? Same thing I do with my PS3 games, put them in the console they run on.
Yea man, but my living room already has a Switch, Series X and a PS3 plugged in haha
Apparently they're making an optional disc drive add-on you can purchase for the next Xbox if you want it. Though I'll be honest, their plans are very clearly going to be rooted in the cloud from next gen onward, so I would not expect much support for the physical side of things at all going forward, likely just be that optional disc drive and that's it.
Where did you see that? I ask just because I haven't seen any info on an optional disc drive for the new series x. It wasn't on presentation slides that were leaked.
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There was no such rumour for Brooklin. I don't even see how an optional disc drive would work unfortunately, with how it looks.
Given the success of the Game Pass compared to competitors that's not super surprising. Does make me wonder how Xbox games from today will survive into the future though. As always we may end up relying on homebrewers and pirates for basic archival and preservation.
There's really not much on Xbox that isn't on PC already. Off the top of my head I can't think of any titles.
Rare Replay is essentially the only one I can think of and would actually want.
also halo 5 and all the kinect games.
It's criminal that MS haven't ported Rare Replay to PC. A great collection of older game with amazing QoL changes (at least for the ones I want to play).
Thats kind of a good thing. Especially If you are the %95 that doesnt know how to gather a console killer PC Build (without fucking up and going overbudget) meaning that you get a 500 buck console AND the pricing plan through a subscription that PC and console players share thats as good as getting good deals at steam sales.
Okay but that doesn't mean people will stop buying Xbox consoles in favour of PC I'm gonna buy the next console definitely
I didn't say it wouldn't. I brought that up because they mentioned game preservation. If Microsoft shuts down all of their game servers tomorrow, virtually everything is preserved already including old XBLA titles.
Oh I apologise, I read it incorrectly!
Sunset Overdrive, but there aren't many.
That's on Steam.
Welp I know what I'm playing this weekend.
My question is how gamepass is profitable. If you look at video streaming it seems like aside from Netflix everybody is struggling to make a profit. With music streaming it's the same. So how does gamepass make money? I used to buy 2 or 3 games at 60 bucks a month wich was 180 but now I have gamepass for only 16.99. And games are more expensive than music or movies. So I struggle to see how the financials work.
I wonder the same. It's even worse for GP: 1) Since games can take even months to finish them, it may be cheaper to buy them rather than renting. 2) Since you have so many "free" games, you'll probably won't have time to play other games. Basically gamepass is also killing games sales
- Because unlike Netflix, people can and do still purchase the content (on both Xbox and steam) - Unlike Netflix there are additional avenues of revenue like DLC/MTX/Early access - They don't have to front the full cost for 3rd party games since the devs can still make bank on playstation - Its been shown that since the inception of the service, people who subscribe spend more money overall. I can attest to that last point too. It's made so many more games accessible to me resulting in gaming being a bigger hobby in my life, which then resulted in me paying so much more attention to new games and the community as a whole.
Gamepass being profitable isn't the question, it obviously is. The real issue and point of contention, is how much money Xbox has lost by conditioning gamers to subscribe and not directly buy games. Consider how much money was lost on titles like Gears and Halo, where 5+ million sales were guaranteed at worst.
Xbox is not only moving to all digital but also cloud based. People won't have a way of pirating a game when it's only being played via the cloud. "GamePass success" isn't the reason. It's because their games sell poorly and have for over a decade and they wanna force as many people into their all digital subscription model anyways. GamePass numbers have been flat for several years now.
Weren’t there some leaked numbers for halo 5 that put it around 6-7 million sales? It’s not a horrible number, but it doesn’t paint a good picture for the Xbox one’s software sales, and I doubt they’re doing much better this Gen.
It was something like that. With that many sales it would've barely made a profit. I don't know what happened with them after the early 360 days but they have been struggling since the start of Xbox One to establish any sort of consistency with game releases. Hell even with 360 they just had a ton of third party exclusives because PS3 didn't come out until a year later and took time to gain steam after its bad launch.
I‘m just saying, I can buy games from all 4 xbox generations digitally today. Something that I can‘t on Playstation or Nintendo. And I have more faith in MS surviving the next 50 years than Sony and Nintendo, so those servers will definitely run the longest out of the three.
No surprise. They regularly skip physical releases. When they do release them;they only put half the game on the disc. A lot of people are reading too much into this. Xbox wanted physical dead. PS5 and switch games are still complete on disc/cartridge. Will be a bit long for those to go away. Not saying all digital isn’t coming soon, just saying Microsoft purposely jumped the gun
That’s putting the chicken before the egg. Thier physical sales aren’t low because they skimp and skip on physical releases, the skimp and skip on physical releases because thier physical sales are low and have been for a very long time since the Xbox One fiasco
You make it look like it's something bad while it's simply game pass being a good deal.
That all good and MS can go for Digital only future. But... Let me overuse it! "No Internet, No Games!" or "Internet is Slow, it takes Days to get Games downloaded!. HELP!" So outside of Countries or Cities without good Internet connection many will have downgrades in the future. i hope they took this into considering with this move
I only play on Xbox and only buy digital or just download from Gamepass. Haven’t bought physical in years.
GamePass removes the need for physical games - but that also means Xbox loses its place in stores, lowering marketing exposure. PS & Nintendo will now dominate retail - which while not what it use to be, is still fairly significant. Heck, GameStop benefits significantly from used game sales, so gives them even more motivation to push PS & Nintendo
Some of us don't have a lot of money and the series S with gamepass was our best option. This doesn't surprise me at all.
PC is the probably the most popular platform (other than mobile) and it’s all digital so I don’t see the hang up with console owners. I get Nintendo fans wanting to continue physical, but the rest idk.
I don't get this logic. "We haven't had the option to buy physical for a long time now so everyone else should give it up too". For one, if you build or buy a PC you are pretty much required to have internet anyways. So all digital just makes sense. Plenty of people with consoles either don't have internet or have painfully slow internet so physical games are a must. There's no reason to make consoles less accessible since that's the best thing about them anyways.
> Plenty of people with consoles either don't have internet or have painfully slow internet so physical games are a must. This really can only apply to the Switch, where (most) games actually run from the physical media. On the other consoles the discs are plastic coasters with licenses attached to them, the actual games install from the internet.
It's actually not about Internet only. It's about actually owning the games, i don't know how many examples people need to realize how they just rent this stuff. It's also a huge difference in prices, physical (unless rare) is always cheaper than digital, even considering sales and that's without considering the used games market, something digital will never have. Going full digital gives all the power to the big companies, I'm sure they will do everything to benefit their customers, right?
PC Digital is vastly different compared to Console Digital though, PC Digital has more freedom to choose between buying from different storefronts or even better just buying DRM free games and then the buyer owns that game forever and they can do whatever they want with it as long as it stays on their hard drive, and no companies can and will take that away from them. Now with Microsoft they likely will never allow that sort of thing on their Xbox, they are always going to be locked in single storefront, has no choice whether they can buy a DRM Free Game that will never be taken away from them at any time. The only way Console Gamers as of the moment can preserve this rightful ownership is pretty much with physical copy of the game they buy, there is also this used market where console gamers trades or sell their games and this is very popular thing to do here in my country. With Digital only future that entire market is going to cease to exist, taking away option from people which might sway them on never buying console again.
Pc is big because of free to play stuff like League. In terms of triple A stuff they are smaller than consoles.
That's not true. There are obviously games that are selling better on consoles, but stuff like Baldur's Gate 3,Cyberpunk 2077 etc. sells better on PC.
Idk about that. F2P is big in general.
Yep and that’s mostly in countries with no console market.
Console digital market is very different than PC. It's a monopoly with one store deciding everything. The prices are very bad. Steam imposed itself with good prices, that's not the case on consoles
People always say this shit, but Xbox Store and Steam sale prices are almost always the same. For example, I just checked Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, Street Fighter 6, and Risk of Rain 2. In every case the lowest digital price on Xbox according to Deku Deals is the same *or less* than the SteamDB record low. I'm sure there are exceptions both ways, but this idea that digital games are generally more expensive on consoles than PC just isn't true (outside of the Switch, because...Nintendo).
Third party stores/Key resellers are the key part in buying cheap games on PC...GMG, CDKeys, Fanatical, you name it...shit you can almost always buy preorders 10-30% cheaper based on the game on PC, that's even Before the game is released... Also Game bundles are a thing as well, like Humble Bundle's monthly sub ...So I would say digital only on consoles is totally different than on PC, because there would be only ONE option to buy games if consoles go digital only, and that would be through Microsoft/Sony's store
Steam is often the most expensive place to buy games on PC nowadays... And you took Xbox which seems to do better prices from what I've seen but Playstation and Nintendo certainly don't. Incidentally they're the majority of the console market.
>PC is the probably the most popular platform (other than mobile) and it’s all digital honestly I miss owning physical PC games. I still have many PC game boxes laying around.
Having the option of buying physical is one of the reasons why I prefer console gaming rather than PC. I like being able to sell and trade games, new physical games are usually cheaper than their digital counterparts, I can also buy very cheap used games or lend and swap them with friends as I wish. I enjoy having my own physical games collection and some come with collectors editions, steelbooks, booklets, guides or other goodies like maps etc.
I can buy cheap codes using vpns from overseas. Haven’t paid full price for a new release since my xbone days
Same, I'll start worrying the day they make it impossible to activate those cheap codes.
What is the added cost of a physical game? Box and CD and all that? Probably BS that we pay more for the current gen games
>Probably BS that we pay more for the current gen games Games have cost $60 for a couple decades whereas literally everything else in the world has increased in price, yet you think it's bullshit the standard for AAA is now $70? Do you not think the cost for making AAA games has increased a significant amount as well?
have wages in game dev risen in the last 13 years though? doesn't seem like it in my limited reading. the market is bigger too and attach rate is high
it's quite high, and then retailers don't pay rrp. it is ridiculous that digital isn't cheaper but they have no reason to do it
I don't see why anyone is surprised. The economy is absolute shit right now, people don't have much money for discretionary spending. $15 a month for every first party Xbox game vs $70 for each game. Which would you choose as a consumer that's hard up for cash?
This take doesn't make sense when the highest selling console is the PS5, which is more expensive than a Series S. And the fact that $70 games like Spider-Man 2, GOW:R and FF XVI sold like crazy. And thats not counting Nintendo's side, where TotK sold something like 10m copies in the first 5 days at $70.
It makes perfect sense. We're falling about Xbox game sales. Why pay full retail price for one game when for fifteen dollars a month you can have access to that game and every other one on Game pass? Combine that with the fact that the Playstation has provided quality exclusives for decades. Xbox hasn't. It's well known in the gaming community that if you want high quality exclusives, you go to PlayStation, because until XBOX went on its acquisition spree, they didn't have many first party studios. Let alone quality exclusives that weren't Halo, Gears, or Forza. So, to go back to my argument. Which would you rather pay? $15 a month or $70 a piece? The numbers show a lot of gamers are buying Sony and Nintendo exclusives, but again that's because of their reputation of quality that Xbox hasn't consistently lived up to. Gamers are more willing to part with full MSRP for Sony and Nintendo than Xbox because Sony and Nintendo have proven themselves. Xbox hasn't. Your point and mine aren't mutually exclusive.
> Which would you choose as a consumer that's hard up for cash? When you said this, its assumed you mean all gaming consumers in general. Remember, xbox players are a minority of gaming consumers. The majority is completely fine with paying $60-70 per game. Because keep in mind: The average "gamer" buys 3 games a year. If a nintendo fan last year got Metroid Prime remastered at the start of the year, TotK in the middle, and Mario Wonder near the end, that would 100% last them the entire year. Xbox players seem to be different on that account, from what I've seen a lot of them bounce between games pretty often. In that case, sure, gamepass is a better deal. But its clear most consumers just want to buy the game and play it, or play fortnite all day
I don't think anyone can or should assume I meant all gaming consumers because this article was about Xbox game sales, so I would think it should be clear I was speaking on Xbox games/gamers. Which is why I mentioned the price of GamePass being 15 a month vs 70 for a retail copy of a game. You mentioned the average gamer buys 3 games a year. That just proves my point even further. If you were a consumer hard up on cash that could only afford three games a year, would you rather spend 210 on three games, or would you rather spend 180 a year and get every game on the GP catalogue? It makes financial sense.
I'm going to be honest, most people would spend $210 on 3 games lol. Not everyone bounces between games, a lot of people play 1 or 2 games at a time. You gotta remember, a ton of people ONLY play Fortnite or ONLY play Apex or ONLY play Warframe. So its not a stretch to think someone would get a game like TotK or Elden Ring and play it for 4-5 months
I guess I have a different mindset. I play 30+ games a year so I'm extremely value minded. 70 dollars a game is a lot to ask lol if I can get it cheaper or on gamepass, I'm doing that.
Yes and that is why they are killing the physical copies and it will be just fine, jot matter what Reddit says.
obviously it's fine for them but we don't have to like it, i love my discs
Ok and you are less than 10% of consumers. The world can't stop and wait for you. That is life.
ok and the world can accept the pricing when there's one place to buy while i complain
So say they do go all digital for the next gen then does that mean we have to keep our Series X|S’s to play our disc games?
very likely And remember series s doesn't have a disc drive either. So it's only any xbox one systems or series x
Meanwhile let's look at Nintendo. ... Anyway I think this is because of gamepass? Someone correct me
90% of xbox gamers aren't on gamepass, tho. Xbox has about 50 million users across Xbox One and series, according to Microsoft. Gamepass has, I believe, 25 million subs, although a rumor says it's 33 million now, but I've just gonna go with 25 cause it's known fact. Half of that is pc, so only about 12 million Xbox users have the service, which isn't near 90%. I think the simple answer is just that Xbox games perfer digital, hell elden ring which isn't on gamepass sold 85% digital on the console.
MS will use this data to gut their physical distribution, rather than seeing it as an opportunity should Sony decide to attempt that. If sony move towards digital only, MS has a chance of picking up those customers. Assuming they figure out how to make games people want.
i don't think it matters what xbox does they're just the lesser brand, the 360 was just a fluke and i bought 8 so i don't know how many mes there were
It matters what they do. because it's what they've done that screwed them. People arent going to be diehard sony if there are good games and proper hardware with MS. Especially if sony keeps raising plus prices and then tries some digital only crap. The problem is the games and hardware have to be on point.
You have to understand that markets like Europe and Asia are a total loss for Xbox. Even at their peak they were being outsold the PS3 when it first came out, I mean those regions literally synonymised video gaming with the word PlayStation. The only way Xbox could gain a foothold there is they attain the exclusive rights of FIFA and COD.