In a recent Bloomberg report, Microsoft has reportedly given up a potential $300 million in Call of Duty sales as a result of putting the game on Game Pass. In the report, Cecilia D’Anastasio said:
"The price hike and other changes to the Game Pass plans are a sign that Xbox’s big streaming push is still not generating the revenue it would like eight years after launch, according to interviews with seven current and former Xbox employees. The company is putting some of its top titles on the streaming service, but that’s cutting into sales of higher-margin games like Call of Duty, which came with Microsoft’s 2023 acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc., said the people, who asked to not be identified discussing internal company matters.
Xbox gave up more than $300 million in sales of Call of Duty on console and PCs last year, according to one of the former employees, who asked not to be identified discussing internal estimates."
The source is one former employee, so take it with a pinch of salt, just like everything else nowadays.
The last earnings report showed gaming revenue up year over year even following the ABK aquistion settling, something I didn’t expect to see so soon. COD had also posted record numbers. I find it difficult to believe that COD alone is driving the price increase and change with ultimate. Especially if the Bloomberg report’s reasoning is that after EIGHT years, Xbox Game Pass hasn’t generated the revenue they want it to. But like… they didn’t buy COD eight years ago. The report itself seems a little confused. Is the idea that COD didn’t boost subscribers as much as Microsoft hoped or that COD lost money in sales? Which one is driving up the cost of GP? Those are similar ideas that can affect each other, but how this is framed is important and you’d think a “report” would make that clear. If it’s a game pass subscriber growth problem, then the problem is that subscribers aren’t growing enough EVEN WITH COD, but this issue predates and is independent of COD. If it’s a COD game sales issue then it’s a simple matter of XGP having cost Microsoft more because of COD and the difference resulted in losses.
I’d say the question might also be if engagement is more important than raw game sales.
Exactly. And not just subscription revenue, but additional in-game spending, etc.
I didn’t read the article (just the summary above,) but it looks like just another one-sided clickbait article. Much like the “Xbox is dead” articles and videos popping up yet again. (How many times did they already die this year? I’ve lost count.)
Windows Central has seriously gone down in my estimation in the past year, they seem to be going for sensationalism and click bait whereas they used to provide a decent counter-argument to the biased pieces against Xbox
Ah yeah Future, the same people who own crappy PC Gamer that’s as anti-Microsoft as possible (weird, for a magazine who’s entire coverage relies on games that only play on Windows for the most part).
Was hoping Jez being editor would help but they’re chasing similar clickbait even if being slightly more pro-Xbox than PCG
This frustratingly feels like half the story - because some loss in sales would be expected but there is subscription revenue and in game content sales to factor in. That said, IF this was what lead to the rather dramatic shift in game pass pricing then I guess we can figure the end result still wasn’t good.