Oh, no, it isn’t, and also taxis, largely don’t exist anymore, and also public transit (the much cheaper to the ‘consumer’ option) is now 10 to 15 years behind where it should be.
Roughly the same business model there.
You’re trading short term low cost and convenience and broad array of choices for long term higher prices and the broad stagnation/destruction of the entire industry, fucking over all the people who work in said industry.
You definitely have a point… if US was the only country in the world and Uber did not provide a much better service than our local taxis. I mean yeah the local ones are cheaper but considering overall service, fuck no.
For me, one of the major advantages of Game Pass is publishers are absolutely refusing to put local regional pricing nowadays. Games at 60$+ cannot be bought by anyone with middle class salaries. Now with push to 70-80 usd+ for AAA, even AA games getting to 60$ it is impossible to buy in my country.
So why should I get a single game at those prices when I can get few hundred at similar pricing? It’s MSs problem that they are willing to put their games day 1 on GP not mine. I don’t care whether games are getting “devalued” or whatever, I’m simply getting what I paid for.
Also, people do tend to buy games standalone and I really can’t see that going away honestly. I can’t see games ever going subscription only or anything like that.
You make good points, my view is obviously America centric.
As I literally used to work for MSFT, in various parts of their city sized corporate HQ outside of Seattle, and a few ‘smaller’, though still massive by the standards of any non megacorp, ‘satellite’ campuses in other parts of the broader Seattle area.
…
I completely agree that refusal to do reasonable location specific pricing is a huge problem, and I’d say that basically stems from MSFT being astoundingly myopic, to the point of the management culture being cult-like.
Perhaps a sort of saving grace for international customers is that uh, the US dollar is currently crashing against basically every other currency?
Or perhaps that is an actual cause of why AAA game prices go up in USD: MSFTs costs are primarily in USD, so they figure out a way to smudge costs over the whole system in a way that trickles up to them in USD, by using their influence to functionally make everything else somewhat subsidize their attempt to grow or maintain market share.
MSFT gaming seems to be transitioning to pretty much abandoning being a ‘console maker’, and moving toward ‘we are an uber publisher’.
…
But anyway… I get that from the consumer perspective, yes, it makes sense to go with GamesPass…
The problem is that from a business perspective, what this does is destroy the economics of actually making a game.
It reduces sales, which reduces profit, which means now game publishers force game studios to cut costs, so they fire half their staff or reassign them, which destroys all the undocumented knowledge of the game studio, and then they are replaced with cheaper per hour paid contractors who don’t know that information, which results in sloppier, buggier games that ironically always go overbudget, overschedule, and don’t sell as well.
…
Maybe think if it as an infrasctucture style situation, with game devs as the road maintenance crews, and consumers of games as car drivers:
If you skimp on road maintenance, and then also make everyone drive much much more, by making public transit very expensive/shitty, and cars are now all a cheap personal rental service…
… eventually the roads give out, pot holes everywhere, bridges falling apart… and the entire system grinds to a halt rather rapidly, because now, a decade later, there aren’t any more talented road maintenance crews, they all quit from the shit wages and shit working conditions, their specialized vehicles sre in disrepair, and there is also not enough money to hire and train a massive new workforce to fix all the roads.
Game pass is awesome. Played a fuck ton of games at that price. Hope it stays forever, especially with that stacking model lol.
Hey, uh, is Uber still cheaper than a taxi?
Oh, no, it isn’t, and also taxis, largely don’t exist anymore, and also public transit (the much cheaper to the ‘consumer’ option) is now 10 to 15 years behind where it should be.
Roughly the same business model there.
You’re trading short term low cost and convenience and broad array of choices for long term higher prices and the broad stagnation/destruction of the entire industry, fucking over all the people who work in said industry.
You definitely have a point… if US was the only country in the world and Uber did not provide a much better service than our local taxis. I mean yeah the local ones are cheaper but considering overall service, fuck no.
For me, one of the major advantages of Game Pass is publishers are absolutely refusing to put local regional pricing nowadays. Games at 60$+ cannot be bought by anyone with middle class salaries. Now with push to 70-80 usd+ for AAA, even AA games getting to 60$ it is impossible to buy in my country.
So why should I get a single game at those prices when I can get few hundred at similar pricing? It’s MSs problem that they are willing to put their games day 1 on GP not mine. I don’t care whether games are getting “devalued” or whatever, I’m simply getting what I paid for.
Also, people do tend to buy games standalone and I really can’t see that going away honestly. I can’t see games ever going subscription only or anything like that.
You make good points, my view is obviously America centric.
As I literally used to work for MSFT, in various parts of their city sized corporate HQ outside of Seattle, and a few ‘smaller’, though still massive by the standards of any non megacorp, ‘satellite’ campuses in other parts of the broader Seattle area.
…
I completely agree that refusal to do reasonable location specific pricing is a huge problem, and I’d say that basically stems from MSFT being astoundingly myopic, to the point of the management culture being cult-like.
Perhaps a sort of saving grace for international customers is that uh, the US dollar is currently crashing against basically every other currency?
Or perhaps that is an actual cause of why AAA game prices go up in USD: MSFTs costs are primarily in USD, so they figure out a way to smudge costs over the whole system in a way that trickles up to them in USD, by using their influence to functionally make everything else somewhat subsidize their attempt to grow or maintain market share.
MSFT gaming seems to be transitioning to pretty much abandoning being a ‘console maker’, and moving toward ‘we are an uber publisher’.
…
But anyway… I get that from the consumer perspective, yes, it makes sense to go with GamesPass…
The problem is that from a business perspective, what this does is destroy the economics of actually making a game.
It reduces sales, which reduces profit, which means now game publishers force game studios to cut costs, so they fire half their staff or reassign them, which destroys all the undocumented knowledge of the game studio, and then they are replaced with cheaper per hour paid contractors who don’t know that information, which results in sloppier, buggier games that ironically always go overbudget, overschedule, and don’t sell as well.
…
Maybe think if it as an infrasctucture style situation, with game devs as the road maintenance crews, and consumers of games as car drivers:
If you skimp on road maintenance, and then also make everyone drive much much more, by making public transit very expensive/shitty, and cars are now all a cheap personal rental service…
… eventually the roads give out, pot holes everywhere, bridges falling apart… and the entire system grinds to a halt rather rapidly, because now, a decade later, there aren’t any more talented road maintenance crews, they all quit from the shit wages and shit working conditions, their specialized vehicles sre in disrepair, and there is also not enough money to hire and train a massive new workforce to fix all the roads.
Oh boy, have I got some news for you
I know, I know lmfao. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to leach the hell out of this until it goes away.