Microsoft has changed consumer’s perceptions on Xbox Series X|S. By committing all first-party games to its Game Pass Ultimate membership, including the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, it’s cultivated an audience less likely to pay full-price for new games. This has affected software sales on its platform, and while the trillion dollar tech titan only shares vague financial information, it’s likely costing it a lot of money in the process.
Take-Two bigwig Strauss Zelnick insinuated in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz that it doesn’t really make sense for his company. “I think that offering a frontline title [like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6] with a premium price in a subscription service, day and date, will push consumers to that subscription service for at least a period of time, [but] it won't affect our decisions because our decisions are rational.”
It certainly makes sense from Take-Two’s perspective: a tentpole title like GTA 6 is expected to sell tens of millions of copies day one, and there’d be no real advantage to giving that away with a subscription service. It’ll be interesting to see how Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 ultimately performs on Xbox Series X|S, because while we’d expect engagement numbers to increase, it’s likely to see its overall sales impacted – even if we expect most fans to continue purchasing it at full-price.
[source gamesindustry.biz]
Comments 40
Imagine being Rockstar and being the only ones making the most expensive games for the longest development periods and an article like this pops up.
There's no way in any universe that a GTA or RDR becomes a freaking gamepass/ plus game on launch. That would be the day
I'm not surprised by this at all, could be the start of other large devs not letting their games being day one on game pass?
No one who's right in their mind would have expected that anyway
Also I don't think all Take-Twos decision are rational lol
Let’s be honest what XBox is doing is not about making money now, it’s attempting to force the industry and the customer into a different business model. And it really isn’t working at the moment.
@MrGawain It’s just aimed at a small audience. If most consumers don’t buy more than a few games a year… why subscribe? You need to be a hardcore gamer, who also plays a wide variety of games, for it to be worth the money and thats a very small portion of the audience. Lots of hardcore gamers only play a few games a year now that there are live service games. So it’s also only a portion of that audience. The recent price increase also hurts any possibility of expansion. I just don’t understand how it’s intended to work.
I’ve always hated the “Streamification” of gaming. I watched as we went from Netflix only to now having to have 5 or 6 different services to watch what we wanna watch. Who wants to have to subscribe to each dev’s service to play their games? Or each console-makers service? Don’t like it one bit!
Of course not.gta 6 is the most anticipated video games ever.short story its not gonna happen.its gonna be a juggernaut.word up son
Just so we're clear, both they're live service games.
If we're talking about ''that'', everyone oh so worried about how much revenue cod are losing out/sustainability instead of their real long term strategy of revenue making before making bank on another sequel after the milk runs out . . . just mind boggles me.
Comparing a chocolate factory versus a diamond artisan.
Both equally successful in their own way.
MS bought Bethesda & the likes and let's be honest, they had plans like these coming after contractual obligations fulfilled. They bought the company and it's resources, so it's fair game for their money.
TL;DR: too much speculating in some comments from T2's one neutral remark.
At the end of the day,
only they have their own financial revenue, we can only speculate.
On a side note, I'm looking forward to Tomb Raider news without unhinged expectations.
Game Pass is one of the worst things to happen in the industry in recent years - along with releasing games in unfinished/unoptimised states, which will kill the pre order market (I only pre order Sony 1st party now, as of last year, but used to pre order about half my games), and Microtransactions in general.
Im not surprised the devs dont want anything to do with it - even releasing a (much) smaller title on it helps drive a behaviour that developers do not want - "Well they released game X on gamepass, so im sure game Y will be on it soon, so i will wait".
Lmfao this Fing moron.. "but don't forget to subscribe to gta+“ right?!
Rockstar and take two are just another grew to big shareholder led garbage dump attracting all manner of sociopath employees to further the predation machine.
I’ll wait for it to hit Gamepass - short-sighted gamers
We’ll probably the most sensible thing this year and last year said in gaming.
Microsoft to buy them. Day one on GamePass but up the sub to £29.99pm
P.S I’m joking!!!
TL;DR: Sony/Nintendo were right, Microsoft is wrong with gamepass. Gamepass isn't sustainable longer term with all the buy outs + the impending increases in subscription charges. I suspect it will get to the point where it's £40 monthly eventually which will block the majority of users and will kill the Xbox eventually. Talking a couple of years a way however
They said this a while ago tbf, they’re just reiterating the point.
Because it doesn’t need to be lol
He's not wrong to be fair. Putting AAA titles on subscription day one simply isn't economically sustainable.
Subscriptions work best giving people a library of older games to try.
Gta 5 made 12 billion dollars at least..... you gotta be crazy to think a sub service can afford that game.
Makes sense.
Subscription based services cannibalize sales. It's a good venture for a small time developer, that isn't guaranteed X amount of revenue from sales, but if your game turns out to be popular, you lose money by taking the deal. Just look at Sea of Stars' launch on PS Extra. The devs thought the game wouldn't do that well, so they took an offer from Sony. Shortly after launch when the game was proving to be wildly popular, the devs lamented that they regretted the PS Extra deal because they could have made more off of sales.
Any developer or publisher that knows their game is going to sell well will be wise to avoid signing day-one release deals on any platform, especially if it's something as massive as GTA.
The only reason Microsoft is sticking to the day 1 GP nonsense is because they literally have no other option, other than just outright killing off GP altogether. This is what it looks like when companies make decisions based on hubris, and pride, instead of rational thought and logic. Of course nobody expects GTA VI to launch on PS Plus or GP, are you kidding me? It's already proven the model doesn't work, Xbox is just going down with the ship.
This game is going to break a lot of sales records. I don't think anyone expected or even thought about this hitting a subscription service. Maybe when they've re-released the game on PS6 and PS7 then it will hit a subscription service but that's a long way around.
That's fine. Don't put your game on a subscription service. But while you're at it, can you please stop milking your loyal customers dry and using sneaky tactics to inflate your game sales.
Pretty obvious it wouldn’t be on any game subscription service day 1, but I’d also add that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if GTA 6 is the first game to retail higher than £/$70 for the standard edition. Needless to say, I hope I’m wrong.
Sort of off subject.
I find lately how the film industry have shows and teasers on stage and appearances for films releasing 2025, 2026 and 2027.
I actually miss the days when especially Sony used it do this with their top AAA games.
The buzz of the live crowd when GOW and uncharted 4 and TLOU 2 got revealed.
And even the future dates, that used to lets us know what was coming and something to look forward to, even two years away.
Wish Sony would go back to those days it was far more existing and emotional, even if the game was say 2 years away, now it’s all boring and quiet and hidden.
It’ll be on plus in 2-3 years after release. I’ll wait.
"sell tens of millions of copies day one"
Is this hyperbole or are people really expecting a game to sell more than 20 million copies in 1 day? 30 million? 40 million? 🤷
How many versions are we expecting? $70 basic, $100 deluxe play 3 hours early, , $250 w/ a statue, what else?
I'm sure this will sell but I'm feeling a little like Noel saying Oasis is bigger than the Beatles. 😂
https://www.nme.com/news/music/paul-mccartney-14-1192208
Tbh, GTA VI could demand to sacrifice your firstborn.
2-3 less sales. Max.
@Oram77 Large publishers/devs already don’t offer their games day one on game pass
@MrGawain
Exactly. If enough people refuse it, it won't be
I'm really interested to see where they land on monetization with all they've learned from GTA V. I mean all that they know they can get away with now, lol. I'm sure it will be rad. The Fast and Furious setting looks like hell to me.
No games but experimental indies should be out day one on subs. Games like KunitsuGami and Animal Well make sense.
If any bigger game is on a sub day one I usually assume it's because the devs know they have a mediocre game and would rather take the upfront money instead of fighting it out in the market with a Metascore of 65-72.
I honestly don’t understand the GTA thing. Is it just because the sandbox is so open? What is the hook of this thing?
Of course it doesn't make sense that a Publisher like Take Two who rely on 'Sales' for their Revenue to put their game into another Publishers Sub Service.
Its not just Game Pass that offers Day 1 games - it maybe the only one right now that also offers 3rd Party developed and/or published games, but EA Play (PC) offers Day 1 games and Ubisoft+ too offers Day 1 games. If Take Two had their own Sub service, maybe they'll offer Day 1.
Those 3rd Party Publishers are already 'helping' the console Platform holders by releasing on their Platform. Sony/MS will make money from every game sold - especially through their store as the only digital 'retailer'. They have to pay to release on another 'owned/locked' platform with '30%' of their sales revenue going to the Platform holder. A $200m+ 3rd Party game would need to sell more to break even than a first party release - hence Sony making so much money from Call of Duty for example.
I wouldn't expect it to be 'right' for Take Two to put their Games 'Day 1' into EA Play or Ubisoft+, but maybe one day will have their own Sub Service to generate their own subscription based revenue stream, not rely purely on Sales...
Yeah…lol did this even need to be asked / answered?
Not to be a smart ass but no *****.
It's ok, I have no intention of playing your homophobic, racist, and misogynistic games anyway.
Who on Earth thought it would be?!
The only way that’s possible is for either Sony or MS to directly pay Take Two the amount that they think they would lose in sales by being on the service. In other words, an absolutely phenomenal amount of money. Never going to happen.
Now, years down the line when the revenue stream is GTA 6 Online yes, it’ll be on these services as with GTA V, RDR2 and others. But that will be a while away. The sub services are great overall and they work well for some games/publishers/business models but not for a behemoth like GTA6.
@rjejr GTA V sold over 10 million day one and the hype for this one is way higher. 20m day one wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. It'd the most hyped game released in history
@Blofse Microsoft like all software companies has a high cash flow. Something only Sony and Nintendo can dream of ever having. Microsoft can afford subsidized gamepass. I don’t understand why people complain about price increases for subscription services. Then demand more content! As someone whom buys games and movies physically I think it’s very funny. As at the end of the day subscription services are good deals. And lastly people forgot that gaming is a hobby. Hobbies have a cost.
@Andy22385 " GTA V sold over 10 million day one "
That's nuts. And 20 million would be nuts. Guess I'll start paying attention, thanks.
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