It’s now two years since App Store opened its doors, providing developers of any creed an easy route to putting their work on the masses' devices. Microsoft has clearly had its eye on the way in which Apple’s iOS business model and workflow have become a standard for a burgeoning industry. Game developers can now publish their games on the previously entirely closed continent of consoles via XNA-fuelled Community Games, later renamed Indie Games.
Now, with the release of Windows Phone 7, which entered the European market on October 21 and reaches the US today, Microsoft is attempting to bring the developers and experience it has gathered on PC and 360 into the mobile world. We’ve spoken with four very different independent game developers, all of whom are among Windows Phone 7's first wave, about the pressures of developing for a formative platform and the promise that lies ahead for Microsoft’s bid to become a major player in the smartphone market.
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.
Senior Director and Video Game Industry Advisor at Circana Mat Piscatella has revealed Starfield was the best-selling video in the US based on dollar sales for the week ending April 11th.
For the week that nothing else of note launched.. I’m sure it will sell some copies but look at what released that week
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It’s not a requirement to buy games every month or whenever one is released. I don’t think people are going to spend $70+ on something they don’t care about.
I have talked about not being able to get into this game at launch. I still haven't given it another go, even though I think it looks great and has come a very long way since launch. Some people just want it to fail, even if it is a great game. I know why, we all do.
Starfield didn't just have the best sales for a week, but it was pre-ordered on PS store, with very nice numbers. I really need to start it again, on my PS5 though. So I can see how it is now. It has had some major updates.
I am looking forward to it all over again now.
Its not that people want the game to fail. Its that Bethesda wont ever improve their games if you guys keep calling slop like starfield great games. Pure as that. Formulaic, chasing the trends, slop.
Like Bethesda has fallen off since FO4.
Ive a PC 4070, no interest in Starfield since the beginning since despite Bethesda owning some serious FPS legacy within their ranks...They just like seem to hate good shooting mechanics.
I dont see whats the appeal and thats ok. But how can you guys call it great? By what metric? The story? The Gameplay? The package all together? Hell I'm enjoying Crimson Desert, but I've got my issues with some design choices, but I do think the game is better as a whole than its individual parts. Is that the case for Starfield?
To be honest alot of you starfield stans dont make a great case for yourself, since I've never heard a starfield say what it is they enjoyed about it other just it being another Bethesda game that feels familiar yet new to them. Yall dont make the case on whats so great about starfield that keeps you coming back.
What does it do that makes it great that everyone like me is missing?
Like I wanted to like the Starfield, but after seeing its first trailer, it pretty much came out like I thought it was. Bethesda has been coasting off prestige for years now. and honestly starfield is proof of that.
I'm fine with the game being janky Bethesda-core etc. For what it's worth it's more polished than previous games have been and the shooting mechanics are fine, feels pretty good even.
What I'm not fine with is it just being completely dull in every way. Even if they managed to resolve the structure of the game constantly sending you back and forth through maps and loading screens it's still going to be dull. The original The Outer Worlds did Fallout in space better, and that was hardly perfect (I haven't played the second one so I can't comment on that). At least The Outer Worlds had some interesting characters, enemies and locations. Starfield has none of that. They can argue that it's more grounded/going for realism or some nonsense (yet it's still doing Star Wars/Firefly style space travel) but it's fundamentally dull.
I dropped loads of money on a copy of this game at launch and I've no desire to get my money's worth out of it, I pretty quickly cut my losses and moved on. I don't know what happened to the writers for Bethesda, I presume they all moved on and have since been replaced by Jenny from accounting.
I agree with @CrimsonIdol
I played the game to completed, but it's version of NG+ simply didn't appeal to me, so I never went back to it.
There's base-building, but it really serves no point, other than, there's base building. If you're into that, you have it, but I didn't touch it at all, as it wasn't part of the story ... At all.
The main character models are "ok", but the NPCs are just bad.
And IMO, people shouldn't be OK with a Bethesda game being janky. They're a big company, and should be jank-free by now!
I've given it another go and with the new more modular difficulty i managed to balance it a bit like Stalker 2 and it has been a lot more enjoyable this time around. The free roaming in space also helps a bit. Still prefer older Bethesda games, but it's growing on me
ever so slowly.
Digital Foundry showed how bad the game runs even on PS5 Pro and crashes. It can’t even hold 60fps and not a looker to begin with. 🤷♂️
I found out. I loved FO4 and wanted to judge Starfield for myself. I should have waited for a sale.
It's still as Bad as it was on Xbox. Of cause some playstation user's are curious and because there is a lot of them then the sales are gonna be somewhat okay for small time period. But still a very sad story what starfield turned out to be. Maybe the biggest disappointment in my gaming life.
Former Xbox executive Ed Fries comments on the early days of Xbox, the opinion of Japanese game companies, and more.
Replies(2)I dont think that'll ever happen. But i must say back in the day, they were definitely trying because they were more cash rich than their competitors.
I think MS were and still are the richer company. They tried to acquire Sega back in the day (and considered doing so again more recently), they obviously bought exclusivity to Halo which was originally shown as a Mac title. I don’t think as a company MS can claim the moral high ground here. It’s a wilful lack of self awareness.
Of course Sony would try exactly the same if they had the resources, but when the PS2 dominated the industry was in a much healthier place with an abundance of great third parties.
This has been a depressing generation as far as first party decisions are concerned. The fact we are debating business plans rather than which game is better is a sad reflection of the state of things.
There was Nintendo as well, Sony wouldn't have had a monopoly. In fact, the world would be better today if Xbox never existed in the first place. They pretty much brought all bad practices we have today. We might have gotten all of it either way, but not this early. In term of franchises, I don't think there is anything Microsoft released that would actually be missed if it didn't exist. Even Halo the world wouldn't notice if Halo didn't exist.
I think almost everyone will agree that a monopoly is not good for the industry. But that being said, the competition needs to be smart and strategic with their business. Simply buying up publishers and traditional third-party studios just to keep them out of the other companies reach is not a sustainable practice. That goes for all parties so don't think I'm just referring to Xbox.
I'm no business guru by any stretch of the imagination but I firmly believe that the best way to drive consumers to your software and hardware is to invest smart in your first-party studios. Give them full support and guidance in making unique, fun games that are only available to play in your ecosystem and the gamers will come.
But first party studios aren't enough. They only make up a small portion of the industry. Without 3rd party there would be no industry for Microsoft or sony.Developing games take time and money and sometimes you gotta make moves to stay competitive.
Nah, I never said first-party was enough. I said it’s the ‘best way’ to drive gamers to your platform. 3rd-party is a free-for-all and there’s no guarantee that gamers will use your hardware to play the game. If you want to push your own software and/or hardware you need first-party, or at least exclusive deals with third-party studios.
Then why be so emotional and continue to talk about it. Xbox will never die be ause it stays in so many people's head.
How can you even see him being "emotional" in that comment?
If anything, you're the emotional one, constantly trying to go at anyone that says anything against Microsoft. So when you call him emotional, it comes off as deflection
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