Gaming

15 readers

2 users here now

A community for informative and interesting gaming content and discussions.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

communick@level-up.zone

Does the prevalence of Game Passes disincentivise game studios to make great games? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by fresh2112@alien.top to c/gaming@level-up.zone

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm interested in the economics of it, and I'm no expert so would be great for some insight.

In years gone by, the quality and popularity of a game would directly correlate to it's sales. Whereas for gamepass games, I assume that studios get a kick back percentage of revenue for installs, play hours, etc.

As the investment needed by a player to install is zero (barring a download and install, it's all sunk cost from already having a gamepass), their threshold to try a game is a lot lower, therefore the requirements for the studio to ensure high quality is much lower for a similar return on investment. (I.e. more speculative downloads with lower return than lower hard sales with higher return).

What do you think?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] StatusPatience5@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I think the benefit, and why Microsoft says GP has been profitable is because on top of being Gaming Netflix, they also sell the products.

So not only do they get reoccurring revenue, they also get a 100% of first party/ 30% of third party games sold in their store, and then 70% from steam, PlayStation and Switch.