Realism is sought after much in the modern gaming industry, and, more often than not, equates to gritty shooters. This is great for those who want to enjoy the pleasures of war without getting an explosion all over their faces. Indeed, fanboys seem to love telling me how “Battlefield is more of a war simulator than a game” and “Call of Duty is awesome and I’ll punch your face concave if you say otherwise.”
While both are compelling arguments, this revered realism is the very thing that drives me into a blind rage. With that in mind, read on to witness the raw power of my first world problems.
Starting today, Game Pass Ultimate drops from $29.99 to $22.99 a month. PC Game Pass will also drop from $16.49 to $13.99 a month. Prices may vary by region.
Beginning this year, future Call of Duty titles won’t join Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch. New Call of Duty games will be added to Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass during the following holiday season (about a year later), while existing Call of Duty titles already in the library will continue to be available.
Its nice there is some kind of drop... but is that all they really value CoD to be, a lousy $7 a month?
I was hoping it would drop by $10.
That $7 equates to $84 per year - which is more than COD new ($69.99 + tax).
So - you can get the exact same thing - and save a few bucks - or you can skip COD and pocket the savings or use toward another game - or games if on sale.
That’s how I’m taking it - and is enough for me to sign back up after canceling the day it went to $29.99.
It's unlikely that COD is going to be the only title they stop offering day one, but we'll see how they play their hand.
Including Call of Duty in Game Pass is just leaving money on the table. When the Elder Scrolls VI releases hopefully Microsoft doesn’t launch it into Game Pass. Then it can make more profits and use it give more value to Xbox console owners!
Can’t wait to hear how this will be spun extremely positive. 🤣
I wonder why knowing Microsoft thick head something must has happened in the background in the levels of Xbox one and Kinect 🤷🏿
Any price cut is a good thing in this day and age, but it also reveals a flaw in GamePass' design that we've all been calling out for years... it's unsustainable, especially with day and date releases on new games. COD won't be the only game they exclude, they're setting a precedent with it that they'll likely expand upon in the future.
At least they're being realistic about it now. I bet in the future we're going to start seeing them try to subsidize the high price of new consoles by making you buy 2-3 years of gamepass with it to get the console cheaper. I'm still not sure that'll be enough to save either the hardware or gamepass, but we'll see.
price cuts are good, the removal of Call of Duty is clearly something they are planning to leverage. But considering everyone around N4G claims Call of Duty sucks, it's not a big loss now is it?
Well, they're removing their biggest game from being Day 1 on the service so GamePass users can buy it instead. That's the intention.
They increased the price to $30, then removed COD and dropped it to still be above the old price.
It's an understandable compromise but the consumer Ultimately is getting less.
Think the calculation is that *most* COD users don't play that many games and aren't interested in GamePass. The GamePass users who do like COD would just buy it anyway. MS reportedly lost out a lot of money last year putting COD on GamePass.
Well Call of duty could just be the beginning. What other games can they trim from the service to get the price down? How long before it's just the Xbox core first party studio games and not the one to everquired?
Create an interesting scenario with Call of duty as well. Will people wait a year to play it? Does that split the fan base? Will it hurt to Call of duty more than a benefits Game pass? These are all legitimate questions which we will find the answers to in the coming years
And I don't consider my post negative spin just realistic observation. At the very least this backtracking can be seen as an admittance that the previous strategy of gamepass was not sustainable as most of us said.
I'd get rid of the EA and Ubisoft+ too. That should bring the price down more. The only game from either of those parts of the service i played was jedi Fallen order / survivor. both of which i also bought on disc so it was more of a convenience i didnt have to put the disc in to play when i was playing them via remote play. And really that is why i still use GPU and PS+. its the convenience of having the games ready to play from a remote location. I havent picked up my consoles controllers in at least a few years. I guess that makes me a bad gamer, but so what. i'm still playing the games, just not physically on the machines themselves. GCloud and Portal are my go to now.
They’ll say no one is buying game pass so they had to drop the price , even though it’s been extremely profitable.
Why remove CoD if it's *extremely* profitable then? Why even increase it to begin with?
Always funny seeing those that defended the price hike go "how you gonna spin this now!" after the price drops.
You should be thanking those that called it out. Obviously this is a good thing especially with everything increasing nowadays.
Also, what happened to the reason why that the Activision acquisition was good for gaming was that CoD would be day one on GamePass? Another backtrack on that I guess...
What removing CoD on GamePass shows, is that it's not sustainable for for the more popular and/or bigger budget games because of the sales you lose out on like people have been saying since inception. It never made sense to put CoD on there unless you thought it's popularity would draw in a lot of subscribers which it obviously didn't. And if it was as sustainable as people claim they wouldn't have increased the price while putting it on there in the first place.
In my region, it’s still more expensive than it was before the last price hike, but it’s a far more viable price point.
Losing Call of Duty from the service, honestly, has zero effect on me, and given they chose to make it so, it’s probably not the big seller they originally thought. Overall, it’s really good news, but I still think they have work to do on the tier structure, having Premium and PC at the same price point with different features feels odd.
Yep take COD out. Them waiting a year is interesting but it make sense. They don't want certain ppl waiting 4 to 6 months they want fomo and maximum sales. Wait a year while the new one releases.
Ok so far so good.
A new Call of Duty game that isn't Modern Warfare 4 may be coming, and the surprise re-emergence of Warzone Mobile could be crucial to it.
Microsoft reportedly lost over $300 million in Xbox and PC sales by putting Call of Duty on Game Pass, raising concerns over the subscription model’s long-term impact.
There are some reports that in March 2023, Microsoft told a court, "Game Pass prices will not increase as a result of the [Microsoft-Activision] Merger."
If true, massive hypocrite .
If this one franchise is the reason for the game pass price increases, then just leave it off game pass and not make people who don't play COD foot the bill for a game they will never play, like me.
Talk about stupid business decisions.
Honestly fuck em dude, they are constantly trying to monopolize the industry instead of just competing.
Exactly. Keep putting their regular games on GPU day one but big budget games that are very popular like COD should not release on GPU day one, maybe 9 months or a year later once they profit from sales.
I don't know if this is a stupid decision. Hear me out. I saw someone comment that it was time to cancel GP and MS would do a 180 like usual. It may be too late this time. It's the history of those other 180s that gives me some doubts about them doing it again or this being a stupid decision versus a cold calculation.
Despite never being the dominant brand, Xbox has at various times tried to push wildly unpopular changes on their customers when they thought they were in a position to get away with it. The 180s came because they overplayed their hand. Customers had options. They lost customers to PS because of the Xbox One launch plans. Anyone who moved to PS4 and stopped gaming on Xbox was a total loss for Xbox.
Customers still have options. The problem for GP subscribers is that most of those options are better for MS than continuing to offer GP as it was before and at the old pricing. Their fans cheered on their acquisitions. Some petitioned regulatory authorities to let the ABK merger happen. Congrats. They are now a dominant 3rd party publisher. Those other options gamers could threaten them with before now work to Xbox's favor.
Other than quitting their games entirely, which now includes ABK, Bethesda, and whatever else they gobbled up, what are upset GP subscribers going to do about it? You can suck it up and eat the price hike. They win. You can cancel GP and buy Xbox games instead. They come out ahead. You can switch to PS, Nintendo, or Steam. So? You'll be paying more for their games their than you were paying for GP, and are they really that committed to continuing to manufacture hardware (in the traditional sense) anyway?
Edit: Making matters worse is that this is likely being driven by pressure from MS, which has increased scrutiny of Xbox since the ABK acquisition.
The price would have increased anyway, which was already planned, with or without COD. They didn't lie about anything. You just misunderstood the answer.
@maximusprime:” There are some reports that in March 2023, Microsoft told a court, "Game Pass prices will not increase as a result of the [Microsoft-Activision] Merger."
If true, massive hypocrite .“
.
.
The problem is that you can buy a bakery and tell the community you won’t raise the prices because of the purchase then turn around and raise the prices then say it’s because the ingredients prices when up and be technically telling the truth.
.
Unless the courts would had a agreement in paper that the prices wouldn’t go up for example 5 years there’s no way to enforce it
Edited for typos
If this is true, this might be a case of taking a big risk gone wrong.
Is that why they always say revenue and not profit??
My question is, even though they lost 300 million in sales, were they able to offset it.
We might never know.
I don't know about you all, but, while that is a lot of money, that's less than I would expect. The totality of game pass users on two platforms playing Call of Duty results in just 300M?
Am I crazy to say that feels like an unusually low amount of revenue?
It is but for pc gamepass only works on the Microsoft store. Majority of pc gamers don't use any other storefront other than steam. So they wouldn't of sold much on the Microsoft store anyways.
That leaves Xbox one and Xbox Series. $300m does seem low.
Well, being that Microsoft is the lowest out of the platforms that sell the game..
Buying Activision, in long term, made up the loss of game sales of said game. By a mile.
But, being cod is tanking as of right now, will be interesting to see if Microsoft can actually save a franchise rather than destroy it.
They just raised the price of GamePass knowing they would piss off their customers.
You now know - they didn't offset it.
I’ve been saying for years, you just can’t trust MS period.
1 simple rule, don’t trust MS, act accordingly.
The price would have increased anyway, which was already planned, with or without COD. They didn't lie about anything. You just misunderstood the answer.
Which is an even bigger reason as to why you can't trust them, they play with semantics instead of being honest and straight forward. Your comment doesnt help their case by putting the blame on the consumer for what and how they said what they said.
Good, I had hoped Microsoft would be better for Activision and Blizzard than Kotick running the show but that would be expecting Microsoft to be competent at managing studios.
I can name one thing WONG with this article. Amateurs!
The main thing wrong with realistic games is that they are realistic. I play games to escape reality.
they are just too serious. . consequently, they get boring quickly.
If he's talking realism, why even mention Battlefield or CoD? If that's realism, I'm the king of the moon.
Admittingly i notice how shooters prior to COD, BF as FPS Oversaturation took the market shooters were far more fun but then its now gone from fun to dull and flat out boring. Even Medal of Honor Warfighter doesnt interest me. The only modern shooter i enjoy is the Bioshock series cause its NOt another War game with a craptastic campaign. "Bioshock" is more about the story than COD & BF are.