Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Gamepass made around 5 billion dollars last year for Microsoft. Its a monthly fee of course it makes money. Seems like they are banking on the COD crowd to push through the price hike and keep the service alive. Thats quite a gamble.

It's 5 billion dollar revenue. MS never disclose how much they pay for those game licenses and how more they need to paid for getting AAA games on XGP day one.

And if it's first party games funded by MS, MS also never disclose potential launch period sales loss v.s XGP sub increase on their end.

Without other data like profit margin, revenue is a useless data to discuss how profitable a business models is. It's only useful for PR, that's all.

They probably negotiate their deals case by case anyways.

Like I said, devs are probably only going to agree on day one release on XPG if MS pay them well enough. If MS money < potential launch period sales then dev wouldn't release their games on XGP day one and vice versa.

So increase sub = better deal MS can offer to developers to get XGP day one release = technically more money for developers in the end. Because in this case developers always have the choice to not launch games on XGP day one if XGP doesn't offer good enough benefit.

Also...another thing worth considering....

If game pass allows player access $70 AAA games on day one for $15, then more people will play those games on Game pass because it feels like a better deal. Which leads to other games not releasing on game pass at a disadvantage due to the lack of traffic.

If game pass fee is increase to $30 then feels more like a balanced price for $70 price tier game IMO. And it's actually more fair for other $70 games in the market that choose not to release on Game Pass day one.

So what's so bad about it exactly? I've always feel being able to play a $70 games on game pass day one wasn't a sustainable model, because the potential money loss during launch period is too huge. Now the price increase just reflects how much consumers should pay to get access to expensive games day one.

Speaking of Microsoft, yesterday was Oct 1st 2025 and this month marks the end of support for Windows 10, that ancient old operating system no one likes and hasn't been used since like 2001

wait a sec-

I know at least one dog who like it

That's only for plebs on personal use service terms.

Enterprise support extends to..... as long as enterprises want to and keep paying MS for last time I checked.

And yes, Win11 is yet another attempt to move to a "rent not buy" model.

Vote with your wallets. Mint is very easy to use, and Steam can play "Windows only" games on Linux.

I have serious doubts about their license expedentures even making a dent in their overall revenue from game pass. Anything more than 10% of that 5 billion would shock me. Im even skeptical of that number simply because where are the games? Looking at this year, what third party AAA games did they have at launch?

MH Wilds? No
AC: Shadows? No
Expedition 33? Yes
Night Reign? No
Borderlands 4? No
FF tactics? Might not qualify, but no.
Looking to the future...GTA 6? Hell no.

So one game from a small studio, seriously doubt that that licensing fee was more than a few million. Maybe 50, lets give them 50m. Everything else is either old or first party. They aren't losing a lot of money to license fees.

Viciouss inadvertently pointing out how *** the games market was in 2025

Wuchang was on gamepass, i saw it at my friends place


Like what the *** did I buy this year?
Wukong
Xenoblade chron x remake
Wuchang
Exp 33
MH wilds

Thats it for 2025? I guess 4 new games in 10 months is fine (im not counting a remake)