@343_Guilty_Spark

All the games on gamepass so far are games that were developed based on the old model, we won't know for 5 or more years how subscriptions have effected the industry.

MS has figured out how much they're willing to lose to subsidize Gears 5 to use as a marketing tool to try and get people to use their service. Whether that continues indefinately or not still remains to be seen. As all these other publishers decide to throw their hat in the ring, we'll be looking at less content that those publishers are willing to license to MS. Just like we see Disney not giving stuff to Netflix and what not.

Then what is MS going to do? Well....there is doing what Amazon and Netflix realized they had to do....which was create their own content. But realistically, how many high profile, multi-million dollar productions can MS create with the scope and content of Gears 5 in a single year and be able to support itself off a $10/month sub cost. Or even a $15 month sub cost. it costs a lot less to make a TV series than it does to make a single game.

Things like game pass, or even steaming services are going to see rapid growth, and then implode in upon themselves, and in the mean time, these companies are going to be designing games to find a way to maximize the profit they can make off them, because you don't spend $100 million to make and market a game, just to not make money on it with the relative minimal amount of profit made off of sub costs.

I'm sorry, but I've spent the last 15 years losing faith in the gaming industry to do what is right for the consumers. All this positivity is all predicated on the notion that these companies are somehow more interested in not screwing over the customers, despite the fact that we have been complaining about that very thing since horse armor graced our fair consoles.

@343_Guilty_Spark

Netflix has not made $1 of profit so good analogy there. Look up any article about it, they are all over the internet.

Source: My best friend works in the industry. As a company, Netflix has made ZERO profit.

It may be optional but the way they make you have to use iron, how its bought and earned and the fact that if you do want certain cosmetics some of them are put behind the paywall loop that you either have to overly grind at or pay up for, its the wrong way to do mts in a full priced game.

"The first time players can unlock Iron through Tour of Duty is at hitting the rank "Officer II" or level 24 . At that level, the reward is 100 Iron. The amount of Iron increases as players hit the levels where it is listed as the reward, but receiving the currency is still a rare occurrence, even for the most committed Gears head
The biggest issue with the system overall is how the items are locked to one drop pool or the other. Gears 5 players who really want all the cosmetics can't just play a lot and hope for the items they want. Eventually, they will have to earn or purchase Iron to get premium items, which isn't spending money on random loot boxes, but it's not ideal either."

No excuse for it, optional or not nothing in a full priced game should be locked behind a system like this, why cant they just offer the cosmetics for a fair price for those that want to pay? they could still use a system to fairly reward players without having to grind out iron in a full priced AAA game.

But he's right. Just now, these services can charge you a fee to not be forced to buy these MT.

Doesn't matter that if it wasn't a MS service, and lets say this was EA, then I'm sure the tone of the nature of the MT model on a sub model would be very different.

We've complained about MT for a long time now. I don't see why because it's on a paywall service, that it's fine now. I mean, I thought services like these were supposed to help the sales of a game....despite that obviously not happening with MS games.

@Gangsta and Krib

The problem isn't that they are there, it's that games that have heavy MT schemes tend to often be designed around making purchases more appealing than spending countless hours grinding out for something desirable.

It'd be hard to point to a single game as an example of this being the norm, but if you look at the last 10-15 years or so, there is an obvious shift in game design to do exactly what we all have said at some point is happening.

Don't try to defend it because it's on MS service and it's a MS game. They are what they are, and all publishers are guilty of it. It's not confined to MS. But instead of being complacent, fight against it to try and make it known that as a consumer you don't like this kind of crap.

I don't buy MT. I don't mind certain kinds if they don't affect game play, or if they're available otherwise and don't require a stupid amount of grind.

In general, it's not the MT that are the problem, it's the implementation of those MT in the game design.