I cancelled too! I really wanna see what excuse Microsoft will pull out to walk back the changes.
Hit 'em where it hurts, people.
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
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.
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.
Okay, but wouldn’t a higher price also discourage new people from subscribing in the first place? Or are companies that shortsighted?
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.
Pro financial tip: Be a patient gamer. Get the games you are interested in during sales. Fuck FOMO, subscription models and pre-orders.
Lately, I’ve only been buying indie games. I can’t justify dropping $70-$80 on one game and even when those games go on sale they’re usually $40-$50.
If you read reviews and do a little research you’ll find that there are actually a lot of really cool indie games and you can get multiple games for just a fraction of the cost of double or triple A games.
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Yeah, I’ve got so many more games than I have time to play them that there’s never a need to play full price for anything. I wishlist em and pick them up when they’re on sale less than £10
Exactly. My limit is also under 10 eur for most games on my wishlist, or 20 eur for games Im interested the most.
Yeah. I might break my rule for phantom liberty, it’s reduced to £17 at the mo. I’m enjoying cyberpunk so much I might make an exception here! But I’ve still got plenty in my backlog.
While I wouldn’t say it is crucial by any means, it is a fun piece of DLC. I put over 400 hours into Cyberpunk before I got the DLC though, so that may have been why I was okay with purchasing it! Either way, it does make me happy to see someone enjoying the game! :-]
I always preferred waiting a year for AAA games. Patches, mods, guides and sales.
Even better when GOTY editions or bundles with all the DLC on sale.
I agree. But if you are on a console and want to play online, you already need a subscription.
I want a subscription free Console that supports online play.
That’s just a computer. If you’ve heard about the steam deck, you can set up a pc to be basically the same but more powerful and permanently hooked up to a tv.
Yeah, I know that this is just a computer. From a skill point of view I have no problem to assemble it and set it up. The thing is I work in IT and spend the whole day on the computer. I do not want to administrate any system in my free time. That’s something I love about consoles. I’m aware they limit the possibilties, but they also low maintenance. I never actively installed system updates on my Xbox Series X, it is just done in the background. I turn it on and play. In worst case I need to install a game update. I have a store interface where I can buy and install games with pressing a few buttons. Inside the game, I do not need to play around with the graphic settings to find what runs best. If at all, I need to decide between graphics and performance mode. That’s what I love about consoles and do not want to have a gaming PC.
Consoles have obvious limitations, but they make it much easier if all you want to do is play.
I do not want to administrate any system in my free time.
Do you have a computer you use at home? How much time exactly do you think it takes to manage a personal computer?
I have a store interface where I can buy and install games with pressing a few buttons.
Seriously, look into a steam deck. The interface is very console-like and you can have it on a normal desktop if you want. Or don’t, you already seem pretty convinced that you only want a console.
I second this. The Steam Deck is the best console and a really cheap gaming PC at the same time. You can emulate and use it for other programs without needing to mod it like you would a console and even though it’s linux, it’s so easy to use. You don’t really need to use the desktop mode for much if you don’t want to, but it’s not bad at all. I’ve switched to Bazzite as my only OS for my main computer because of how much SteamOS has impressed me.
I want a subscription free Console that supports online play.
Sorry, best we can do is a PC or phone
It’s nice they pulled this nonsense during a steam sale. Cancelled and picked up halo mcc and silksong.
silksong isn’t on sale.
Impulse purchase
It’s a pretty low price already, and I personally think the devs deserve it. Hope you enjoy!
A game, where depending on opinion, $20 is only $20.
Coming for the sale and leaving having bought a game not on sale is part of why sales exist!
You know, fundamentally, I don’t hate Gamepass as a concept. “Netflix, but for videogames” is an idea I can get behind, as it widens the audience for something I love by lowering the bar of entry. There are plenty of people out there that benefit from being able to play a few games here and there without needing to commit hundreds of hours to $100 purchases.
But Netflix has overstepped with price hikes and ads, and I’ve cancelled my service with them. That Microsoft thinks it can charge some ~$40CAD a month is pure hubris. I hope they learn quickly that, at that price point, the enthusiast market will happily cancel and just buy their games outright, and the casual market will decide it’s an expense they don’t need.
I already canceled because of the atrocities Microsoft does / is / supports.
Not that the harm hasn’t already been done, but I did just see this: https://thisweekinvideogames.com/news/microsoft-pulls-azure-services-from-israeli-military/
Thanks for sharing! Small wins!!
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
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.
Now is probably not the best time to sell my xbox… I bet the market is flooding
You might even be able to sell it for what you paid for it…
Just canceled my 4 year old subscription. Can’t wait to hear the complaints from my kid but Netflix is likely next.
The missus and I sat down about a year ago and tabulated up how much all of the various streaming subscriptions were costing us per year (it was close to $1,000 when including YouTube Premium).
We cancelled every single one, and put that money towards building a home NAS and filling that up with downloaded media. No more ads, stupidly low bitrates, or TV shows & movies disappearing because a license expired.
The server has more than paid for itself at this point, and every additional spare dollar is being put aside for our kids’ tuition.
ETA: Consider doing the same, your kid’ll likely thank you in the long run!
PS: Never too late to introduce them to all of your favourite classic games, either - though that one may be a bit harder to get them onboard 🤣
I have a 16TB server and an extensive steam collection. I already explained it to him and he was fine about it.
Even better! What are you running on your server?
Ours is just an old QNAP I dug out of storage with 4x8TB drives in RAID5 - but am eager to try out HexOS on a proper system once I have some spare time.
It’s running windows out of convenience but I’ll be swapping to Linux soon.
Out of curiosity, what’s the electricity cost per month with your server running 24/7 now? Or do you schedule down time when its not in use. With all the datacenters poping up, electricity rates have gone through the roof, so looking at that, do you end up saving more still through this route?
I haven’t used a killawatt on it to check, but according to the specs it uses ~30W while in operation (plus whatever additional draw for the four drives). It’s pretty negligible, overall as far as I can tell.
Never too late to introduce them to all of your favourite classic games, either
Easier if you start with Bomberman Party on the PS1 or the arcade Neo Bomberman. I think those play much better than anything Bomberman released after 2004
If the kid enjoys strategy, starting out with Age of Empires should be easy. Or just leave them messing around with Settlers 2
For years I’ve been warning whoever would listen that XboxGP, much like any other content subscription service owned by a public company would inevitably lead to a massive consumer squeeze. Fortunately it happened before MS managed to metastasise into a monopoly in gaming too. Good riddance.
Getting users to pay extra for features that should already be included with their overpriced consoles is such a scam.
It’s the Microsoft way. They hide security features that should be standard behind higher subscription tiers. It’s entirely bullshit.
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.
I have never had gamepass, it just seemed like a waste honestly
I get the inherent value people attach to it, but after having it several times (I’d have it for a month or two and then drop it for like, a year), I would never go back to it even if it still seemed like a good deal.
For an app developed by Microsoft and working on a PC, it has some awful pathing, and I lost saves and had issues launching games on multiple occasions. Tried many fixes and it never worked out. Some games would work for me, others wouldn’t. So for me, since it felt like a toss up to get a game to work, it was pointless.
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
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.
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.
I wish Steam would make another Steam Machine with Steam OS.
It’s rumored they’re working on one codenamed Fremont.
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.
