Comment on Microsoft spending $1B annually on third-party Xbox Game Pass titles
echo64@lemmy.world 6 months ago
this is on-top of all the lost sales from no one buying their first-party games.
Gamepass is not financially viable, it’s funded by microsoft office and azure. It never will be unless they get a huge majority of the market /and/ raise praises massively. Which is of course their goal as soon as they kill the concept of game ownership.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 6 months ago
Yup, it’s obvious once you connect everything why Microsoft is doing this. They’re monopolizing the game market - and most gamers couldn’t be more excited. When I was on Reddit I called out how competition was good and this was bad and was always met with the majority of people saying “nuh uh, they’re going to put them all on game pass for only $9 a month!”
Kids let me tell you the story of Netflix.
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Netflix at least didn’t plan to be what it became from the start, they even experimented with releasing some of its originals on Blu-ray for a bit. But when every shitty heavy hitter in the entertainment industry comes after you, you’re gonna learn to be shitty real fast.
Microsoft is a whole different brand of monster. They have a long, long history of terrible anti-competitve practices, fucking over their own consumers, flagrantly ignoring complaints, and making deeply underhanded moves. In many different markets, for decades. The Xbox One release was almost literally a thesis statement. They could not possibly have broadcast any clearer who the fuck they are and what the goal is.
And still, still, people defend them. They downplay everything and fall head over heels for their marketing bullshit.
That’s why we’re truly fucked without regulations. It’s not just because corporations are terrible and will do incredibly underhanded shit at the drop of a hat to raise profits, it’s also because the vast majority of the consumer base is fucking stupid. Incapable of pattern recognition and imagination, and unwilling to change their patterns even slightly. It’s really, really, really easy to see the negative effects of a Microsoft dominated gaming market. And the consumers can’t see it.