Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

It seems like a waste to spend all this money acquiring all these studios to do nothing with them, but I assume the only real need was for Candy Crush and Call of Duty. Those two would be enough to bring in revenue by themselves.

Where do people get the idea that Microsoft is losing money from? They're one of the most valuable and profitable companies on the planet. Even if you're just taking their games businesses by themselves, they're still bringing in revenues about 50% bigger than Nintendo.

Activision notionally lost money last year, but that's only because they were paying out hundreds of millions in golden parachutes to the company's former executives. Their underlying profitability isn't in question.

Their "problems" largely just stem from having set themselves absurdly ambitious targets for growth and profitability that they're inevitably failing to meet. That's why it particularly irks me to see them shuttering studios and sacking developers because there's no need for them to do so. They might shore up some investor metrics in the short term, and the multi-million dollar executive pay packages that depend on them, but they're ultimately going to compromise their ability to make new games in the long run.

@Matt_Barber I'm not saying Microsoft themselves are the ones losing money. It's moreso that XBOX isn't being as profitable. It's apparent by how they're cutting massive corners with companies, getting rid of them primarily. Even smaller titles are being hit hard. The thing I'm just trying to get across is that XBOX was banking on Gamepass to make back the money lost by their massive acquisitions, and it's being said that it's backfiring on them at the moment due to how subs plateaued.

Unpopular opinion : remakes of old games, like paper Mario, should only cost around $25, UNLESS significant extra modes, features, levels are added to significantly increase longevity of said game.

@VoidofLight you’re right. The Xbox hasn’t really ever made them a profit. And the series x/S consoles have failed to sell as many as even the GameCube (a console deemed to have failed).. and that’s combined numbers from both systems.

@VoidofLight That's the thing though. They're not losing money. They're already profitable and the cost-cutting is entirely about making bigger profits. I'm as disappointed as anyone to see the closure of Tango Gameworks and the other studios, but let's not ascribe desperation to a move that can be adequately put down to corporate greed.

As for the takeovers, they were funded out of Microsoft's cash reserves, so it's not like that had to borrow money or divert it from existing studios. The aforementioned one-off costs put Activision into the red last year, but their underlying profit is pretty strong. Nobody had to get sacked to pay for that takeover, it's just more investor-metric polishing.

Game Pass isn't losing money either, at least unless you think they're flat out lying to us. They're starting to plateau because they're hitting saturation point. With 34 million subscribers and only around 30 million sales of the Series X, it's pretty obvious that they were going to hit the buffers. Some of those subscribers will still be using an XB1 and some might be PC exclusive, but I wouldn't be expecting either to provide a lot of growth in the future. Rather, anything beyond than that is going to have to come from a cloud service that's currently in beta. Maybe it'll eventually be good enough for them to hit their 100 million target, but that's anyone's guess and I doubt they're betting the farm on it.

I'm not against criticizing Microsoft, but it's got to be based on reality. They're not struggling. Rather, they're loaded, have a huge market share and can do better for both their employees and their customers.

Unlike the streaming services though, you can still buy the games whether they are on Game Pass or not so this is just not true.

Is it a controversial opinion to say that I think game ownership is overrated?

Like, I agree its bad when like Destiny sunsets content you paid for, or sells expansions where all the content isn't in the game any more. Or when Ubisoft revokes the licence of a game you paid for and now you cant access it. Or a game is always online and they close the servers so you cant play them. I agree these are all real issues.

But in the context of Gamepass when people talk about ownership and talk about this dark future, like I don't care if I am being honest, I just don't.

Like maybe you're different, but I'm gonna say 95% of all the games I purchase I only ever play once. So for me, its a conversation of did I pay a tenner to play that game as part of a sub or sixty quid to play that game and have it sit in my library untouched until I die. And to me, the tenner sounds way better.

Plus if it comes off the subscription service at a later date and for some reason I want to play it again, Xbox always does a "leaving Gamepass" discount on the game purchase anyway.

@Pizzamorg Hard to say really. I consider ownership in general to be very important, if I'm being frank here

And games are no different. But if folks are fine not caring about game ownership, then that's on them. My opinion, that's all. I just like owning games that I PAID FOR with my hard-earned money. That's something I don't take very lightly. But it is what it is, I guess...

@Pizzamorg I do not think this is an unpopular opinion. Actually, it is the sole reason Gamepass exists.

There are gamers who care to own their games and there are gamers who care to consume/play games.

In addition, it is also one of the main reasons DRM game copies (Mostly Ubi modern games AC Shadows, Outlaws etc.) will sell well. Some gamers do not care for it.

Probably for me it's more like 50%.

Even more problematic for me, a lot of games I play such as puzzle games, longer RPGs, some level-based games, I play very slowly over months or sometimes years, so if a subscription service suddenly yeets it before I'm finished that really sucks.

@dmcc0 Well yeah, with Gamepass you can still buy the games now. If this were to be pushed further in the future though, I could see these services being the main way to get games. Games exclusive to pass services instead of being able to buy them outright.

(Not calling out DMCC, talking about what Pizzamorg said) Also, I don't agree with the people who are like "Ownership doesn't matter. Why do people care so much?"

Ownership 100% matters. Just because you don't play the games more than once doesn't mean that everyone should have to suffer because of your selfish decision. I play a ton of games over and over again, given that I genuinely loved the initial experience and wish to experience it again. This is why I care about game preservation. This is why I care about owning my own copies of the game. I want to be able to play the game 10-20 years from now and enjoy it. To look back on the first time I've played and re-experience the stories that I love. A ton of games tend to have stories that are actually better the second time around, given that you can see more of the nuance and see a scene in a brand new light.

Edit: And I was thinking about rebuying some of my digital purchases as physical releases. Stuff like Xenoblade Chronicles 3.

I've got about 3000 games in my collection, so that should tell you where I stand on ownership.

Most of them won't ever be played again, because I'd die of old age first, but exactly which ones I couldn't tell you as such decisions are often made on a whim. Meanwhile, subscription services are great for discovering new games, particularly ones from outside your comfort zone that you probably wouldn't drop seventy bucks on.

However, you've still got to be able to buy the keepers. Microsoft and Sony seem turned on to that, because they'll sell you anything you can play on PS+ or Game Pass, usually at a discount of some sort. Switch Online is very much an outlier, although I suspect things would change if Nintendo started to put more modern games on it. You can buy the DLC packages outright, at least.

With my preservation hat on, I'm not that worried about whether something comes on physical media. That's fine if you want a nice row of boxes on the shelf, but you're rarely getting the full game these days anyway, what with things like smart delivery, patches and DLC, so preservation mostly comes down to hacking and dumping. I wouldn't want to go into the details, but suffice it to say that almost everything released on the Switch so far is covered.

The real fly in the ointment is live service games and, more broadly, anything with a significant online component. Such games are nigh impossible to preserve, because we don't get access to the servers.

@VoidofLight I don't see any benefit of a sub-only model to be honest, it's not sustainable without people also buying games. With the budgets of some of the bigger games hitting hundreds of £/$millions there's no way studios would be able to make any money with a sub-only model - one of the reasons Sony say they don't put 1st party games on PS+ day-one is that they can't afford to.

@VoidofLight "Just because you don't play the games more than once doesn't mean that everyone should have to suffer because of your selfish decision." - what did you mean by this part? That because I don't care about game ownership, game ownership will be taken away or something?

All of the subs except Nintendo offer you the chance to purchase your games at a discount - are you concerned this option will disappear? Cause I don't see that future.

Gamepass is great business for Xbox, but its stagnating. Meanwhile on PC, every launcher wants to be the next Steam, which is a store front, not a streaming platform. Sony hasn't adapted a full Gamepass model and neither has Nintendo. I don't feel like we are in some sort of game sub arms race. In fact, I think we are at least one whole other console generation away after this one before that conversation even starts to shift at all. And even then, by that point Xbox may be moving away from Gamepass as its central pillar because of the reported stagnating growth.

Physical games are a little different, as we do see those slowly disappearing, and there is a wider more abstract conversation about true ownership of digital games. But the move to an all digital future existed long before Gamepass did.

Given that Digital ownership doesn't actually exist, I see that as being just as bad as a subscription-based future. Sony and Ubisoft have been people's rights away to play games that they purchased digitally- and that's turned me off from ever touching digital games ever again. I've been buying physical titles ever since outside of PC, given that PC no longer truly gives you that choice.

It is funny, because before the pandemic, I was almost entirely physical on console but for the opposite reasons. Physical provided me the form of rental experience I wanted for games better than any subscription model at the time. I basically never paid any money for games. I would just play a game, go back to the store, trade it in and pick up another and so on forever. I kinda miss that honestly, but during the pandemic I shifted predominantly gaming on PC, so it won't work for me in the same way, as everything there is mostly digital.

@VoidofLight Technically you don't own physical games either - they're just a licence to play the game on that particular format. Granted you have control over the media so in theory you should have access to it 'forever' but, in the case of Ubisoft (I'm assuming you are referring to The Crew disappearing from storefronts) the physical game doesn't work anymore either as the servers shutdown too and it was always online.

It's a bit dumb selling a physical version of a game that requires an always-on internet connection IMO. With day-one patches and required downloads, todays physical media is becoming more like a licence key or installer rather than a full game in many cases.

Its usually just a plastic box with a code inside. How many games actually come on the disc these days? I guess Nintendo carts still do have the actual game on, but I feel like most of Sony and Xbox's physical editions are performative and have no actual function.

@Pizzamorg From what I've heard/read PlayStation games are mostly still on the disc - or at least are fully installed from the disc would be more accurate. Xbox is different in that with Smart Delivery (for those games that use it) you still have the disc, but the correct version is downloaded depending on which console you are using. I've seen speculation that the XB one version is on the disc but I can't say I've checked. The few physical Xbox Series games I do have all still contain discs though.