Guy : Wait, what was that sound ? Major Nelson : Do you know anything about foreshadowing ? Guy : No... ? Hbombguy : Foreshadowing is a litteracy device in which-
I actually was surprised to hear that and I thought why Kyle put that sound effect?. And the moment he said that didn't do anything and the sound effect was part of the original broadcast, man I was totally shocked and made me laugh. 😂
Just love this guy. You can’t get content like this anymore. No cheesy fancy effects, no loud obnoxious voiceover, no stupid lights in the background. Just Kyle and his thoughts. Thank you. 🙏
I saw this elsewhere and it’s worth bringing up: are the hardcore CoD players REALLY a demographic that’s gonna maintain a Game Pass Subscription? Many of them fall into the category of dudes who buy 2 games: FIFA, CoD and that’s it. It doesn’t make financial sense for them to pay $240 annually when $140 covers their game habits for the year already.
140 for the games plus 10 per month to be able to play them online. Interestingly works out exactly the same price as gamepass ultimate! *ok not exactly, slightly more*
@@SPACECOWBOY705 Being right is great. Nothing brought us as much together as a species then pointing out others missteps and inadequacies to claim them as personal victory without ever having to contribute anything of value to a society and risk being the next one "wrong". You think about that now.
20 years from now a documetary (that you didn't buy) shows a historic clip from Delayed Input: "I did not add that honk silly sound effect, that was part of the original video, I can't explain it either"
Xbox is positioning itself to become a dominant player in the gaming sector. Game Pass has the potential to revolutionize the gaming landscape. Its affordability is remarkable, to the point where I feel a sense of guilt for taking advantage of Xbox's generosity. The only conceivable reason for someone to dislike Game Pass is if they are overly loyal to a competing platform and feel threatened by the potential success of Game Pass.
I buy one MAYBE two games a year on Steam or GOG. Rarely do I spend more than 100 bucks, free multiplayer, play on Linux or Steam Deck, no Windows or Xbox.
If you think about Netflix, Amazon or Disney, the novelty of having a library of programmes and films like Friends or Pixar to watch again was an exciting prospect. A few years down the line and we’re all pretty much over that and we want new stuff from our subscription- Stranger Things, The Boys, The latest Marvel thing. The problem with this is I find is we watch it once or halfway through and then never again. Maybe because it isn’t that good. Maybe because it’s so cheap we are devaluing this content- we didn’t really pay for it so we watch five minutes and if it doesn’t connect so we turn it off. We aren’t paying month or month for subscriptions, we dip in and out to realise there wasn’t anything worth hanging around for. This argument is exactly the same for a games subscription service- the novelty of old games has worn off, and we don’t commit to new games if they don’t click straight away. That makes us question if we really want to pay for a subscription, and also makes us question if any of it was worth it in the first place if we give up so quickly trying it. Subscription for Entertainment is in general doomed to fail.
@@ilbroduccioreps plus isn't being pushed on us the same though. It isn't at the centre of playstations business model. It's just a thing they are doing. They aren't banking on it for them to be profitable. It just like a bonus for them. For the most part Sony are still supporting and pushing traditional game sales. You could do do the same thing with an Xbox. But that's not the messaging from Microsoft.
@@ilbroducciore Why would anyone buy a PlayStation when all their games come to Steam now? And everything Xbox has is *also* on Steam. PC gamers stay winning. 😎
@@HealyHQI don’t like fucking around on a computer, it’s annoying. Computers are outdated, always tinkering around and fidgeting with shit,it’s nice to just have consistency with a console. Not saying either is better, but I prefer the ease of a console.
@@dsidsidsi1000 I mean objectively it's better. Tier 1 being the new Gamepass Standard. Do you have a catalogue of games? Both true Do you have online play? Both true Do you have discounts? Both true Is the month $15? Both true How much is a year? PS Plus Extra: $135 - Standard: $180 (it will not have a yearly subscription) So objectively it's kinda a better deal.
@@byte-bg4ob I snag PS+ extra on occasion when there's something to make up for its cost, which is quite pricier than game pass with often a huge overlap with the games offered. But the tiering system for PS+ was just disastrous for it, imo. Premium tier I've never grabbed as it is practically "hey, remember those PS3 games that you stream that used to be standard feature of Now? Yeah, they're now PREMIUM!" and it was / still is quite lacklustre for the price increase in the sub. Sony must've realised it as they've nabbed all the remasters / remakes / re-releases and decided they're now Premium, even if they were previously in Extra tier. At the very least the game pass tiers show a clear distinction of value proposal between them. Even at 20€ for console users, but especially so at 12€ for PC it's still a great deal if you have time to beat even one day 1 title. Sometimes with Extra its difficult to justify paying 14€ when a good chunk of the games are quite low priced titles so you'd have to find the time to beat numerous games within that one month to win out on it.
Kyle is the kind of 40-something gamer that doesn't yet understand that you can just play most of the XBoc Game Pass Library via X-Cloud and you don't need a console, but you do need a controller. Which is the same kind of person who would spike the football of unprofitability when they are trying to claw back some of the money they will lose from their XBox CoD sales. Which is reasonable to do, but I would have preferred they just left Call of Duty outside of the service.
I get your point, but this is not quite a "sunk-cost fallacy" situation. As far as videogames go, a true sunk-cost fallacy is in game production. "Well, we've spent $40 million so far on Concord, so I guess we're just going to have to pour another $40 million into end-production & support, release the game and try to support it, and hope we get somewhere near $80 million back!" Instead of just cancelling the game back in early 2023 when it should have been clear it was not going to succeed. If Sony had cancelled Concord 18 months ago, and eaten that loss, they probably would have lost less money than they will in the end. However, the PlayStation brand would not have suffered if Concord never saw the light of day. The player-base on PlayStation would be pretty unaffected, and a few of them would just buy a different game instead of Concord. No biggie. In contrast -- with Game Pass, Xbox has been "all in" for several years. Game Pass with Day One first-party games is VERY CLEARLY the only reason Xbox is still even competing at all against PlayStation, Nintendo, and Steam. They CAN'T remove those Day One games from GPU, or millions of subscribers and Xbox players will leave the Xbox ecosystem instantly, like rats from a sinking ship. So Microsoft keep raising the price and hope for the best. Day One first-party games on Game Pass was (financially) a terrible idea from the start -- as Kyle often talks about, and highlighted again in this video. If Xbox is going to survive 10-20 more years, they need to transition into something different, without giving millions of Xbox users the feeling that stuff is being taken away. How to accomplish that transition? I have no idea. No-one at Xbox does either, obviously.
@@sonicmania9993 You say it isn't, but in your comment you basically explained that in Microsoft's case the sunk cost fallacy is Xbox itself. It may not be gamepass, it's Xbox that, if Microsoft as a company wasn't so disproportionately rich (thanks to their Windows monopoly), should have been closed years ago, but they keep pumping money on it hoping that one day it'll become profitable.
@@urracojalpa4481 Well first, I don't think that's what OP was talking about: wasn't it Game Pass? My argument was that once Xbox committed to going all-in on pushing Game Pass (including first-party games) as the primary way to attract and retain such a large percentage of their player-base ... they're just committed, and can't cut-and-run. To do so would kill Xbox for sure. "Sunk cost fallacy" implies situations where you are better off just cutting a program and taking the loss to that point, which doesn't apply here. It would mean the end of Xbox (maybe slow, maybe quick). As for your larger point suggesting that Xbox should not still be alive, and that Microsoft should have cut Xbox off years ago ... well, that's a different matter. I'm not a huge Xbox fan, but I did buy an og Xbox day1 in 2001, had a great time with that console and with the 360 which I played more than PS3 (even though I'm more of a Japanese game guy). But XB1 and XBSX have been mostly Game Pass machines for me -- plus a few western action games -- while I mostly play on Switch and PS. There have been a catastrophic series of bad decisions at Xbox since the early 2010s -- mistake after mistake after mistake. And now like a lot of people I feel like they are incapable of managing their huge/expensive stable of studios to make good games. T-shirt wearing executives phoning in from Redmond doesn't cut it. It doesn't help that when those first-party games release, they are free to Game Pass subscribers, so are unlikely to pay for themselves. The problem with Xbox is it relies too much on the unreliable array of western game publishers -- some of which they have "acquired", some not. Indie games in the west are super-interesting, but they don't really make much money. The AAA western game industry is set for implosion here in the next few years, and it is this sector that Xbox rests on. Steam is much more diversified. PlayStation is much more diversified, so that even though their first-party is stalling for a few years here, they still have tons of great games from Japan/Asia/the west, and many millions of players feel like it's the best place to play those games. Nintendo of course is its own thing, almost separated completely from western AAA publishers. So I can not dispute your point that maybe Microsoft should have cut Xbox. Too many mistakes. I actually don't see how there will be Xbox to speak of in 15-20 years: Microsoft Gaming will be multiplat, figuring out how to make money that way.
This is what irked me about game pass, and XBOX since the latter half of last generation. It became increasingly obvious that their vision of competing was to out-spend anyone else. Sure, that might make the brand more attractive in the short term, but inevitably the perks gained by that will disappear. Maybe their hope is to get everyone too heavily invested in XBOX, and hope that when the platform becomes worse again, gamers won't leave.@@urracojalpa4481
@@sonicmania9993 I'm not even sure Microsoft _can_ transition into "something else". People keep bringing up "doing a Sega", but Microsoft --- despite all the IP they've bought --- isn't really a strong publisher. They clearly have---and have always had---a hard time incubating games or developers. They buy up studios, mismanage them and shut them down. Their IPs they run into the ground. As far as gaming goes, without the Xbox they're nothing.
I feel like the entire Game Pass ecosystem's single load-bearing pillar was an assumption on the part of C-suite executives that gamers are categorically poor at financial analysis. They probably think that simply buying numerous games would itself be classified as wasteful behavior, because they are practically worthless items in their eyes. When it's like...games themselves train their players to extract maximum value from the money they earn in games. The way people had been going through the tedious process of converting Xbox Live subscriptions to Game Pass subscriptions to shave even more of the price is off is kind of emblematic of that. It reminds me of Asphalt Urban GT on the DS, where it wasn't even a very quick and especially wasn't a very fun way of making money, but the purchase price was like 500 dollars less than the selling price of a Corvette. So everyone would just buy and sell hundreds of Corvettes to rack up money in the game. This is exactly the kind of thing they'll try to do in buying games IRL, too.
Everything is a subscription these days, and every company continually ups the price while reducing the value and/or shoehorning in a lower more restrictive tier. Par for the course since these companies are beholden to shareholders and they don't want some of the money, they want all of the money.
i knew after cod was announced to be included they would increase the price, which is complete bullshit for people like me who have 0 interest in cod, buying activision has been the biggest disaster for xbox, not only have we lost many studios with great games, but now we have to pay more for garbage
I knew when Microsoft announced game pass day one games the plan was bullshit the math never made sense.... It's sad anyone believed Phil Spencer's ridiculous lies
You don't have to pay. You can just buy games too. But one thing about subscriptions, they always go up in price. It's the same price as EA's and Ubisoft's plan on PC.
as someone that enjoyed gamepass ultimate for 3 years since XSX launch by stacking up 3 years of games with gold and then 1:1 converting it to GPU, I think you’re right Kyle, and at this point I don’t think even COD will save gamepass. Personally I’m done with it
As someone who derives great enjoyment from xbox, I feel like the most tragic thing is that the company itself doesnt seem to be aware of the enticing aspects of the platform, and in turn the audience at large is not remotely aware of the cool differentiating aspects, and would be excused for thinking there arent any besides gamepass and xcloud. And this isnt even commenting on mismanagement at large, because thats a very long tangent.
Microsoft took one look at all the shit Adobe gets right now and said "we want some of that shit too" and procceds to use the same shitty subcription practices as Adobe.
Oh also the fact that Xbox has yet again broken their agreement to buy activision. They’ve broken two clauses already, one was that no one would be laid off after the acquisition, the other is that they would not raise prices after the deal finalized. Oh look at that, the first two things they do are layoff employees and raise the prices!
That's quite a disingenous statement from you that's clearly not true, you should probably go back to those statements and look at the actual wording they used. Using you wording their claims would mean they would never lay people of or raise prices in the future, something that would obviously not happen. Are you actually paying attention to whats happening to the economy, at some point they simply have to raise prices to keep up with inflation.
@@yomamasohot6411 So pointing out that an increase in inflation leads to an increase in prices counts as defending corporations now does it? I don't give a shit about MS, just calling out a disingenious argument.
They reached saturation before they thought they would, and after crunching the numbers, realized it wasn't going to work at that price. Now that they're making the deal worse, it will be interesting to see what happens next...
Nonsense. It was obvious this was the long term plan from day 1. Current pricing was not sustainable especially not after the massive acquisitions. It's still very cheap on PC and I could see them trying to drive that price closer to 20 a month over time as well.
Note of interest before they raise the prises: you can stack up to 36 months of game pass until 18 sept. After that date you can only stack max. 13 months (you don't lose the months you bought after that date)
I don't disagree that these changes are adding confusion as to what Game Pass actually is but... GP Ultimate is *still* one of the best deals in gaming if you play a wide variety of different games every year. Sure, it's not for everyone (what is?) - especially if you only play a couple of new games a year, or just *REALLY* want to own everything you play for some reason. But I think it's still the best deal for the majority of people who want to play a wide variety of games.
7:00 I could be wrong, but I don't think it's possible to subscribe to both GamePass Console (the one that's discontinued that has Day 1 games but no online play) and Core (the XBL Gold rebrand) at the same time from the same account. If you want COD and want to play it online then Ultimate isn't just the optimal way, it was already the only way. Unless I'm mistaken.
You and Colin Moriarty are having a field day with this lol. Jokes aside, at best I always thought game pass would be a service that would have a Netflix or Amazon type trajectory, taking losses initially to grow towards a profitable plan that also offered a great value to the consumer. These changes “may” be their plan towards that but I’ll say that now more than ever the unsustainable plan of gamepass is evident. #kylewasright #colinwasright
There's one problem with what you expected, Xbox. Xbox doesn't know how to make games. Their leadership would never be able to hold a job, let alone a managerial position, in any other big gaming company . It's a company run by failures who have managed to manipulate their delusional fanbase into believing they are successful. Sony could actually make GP successful but they do not have the infinite cash bag that Microsoft does. So we will never know.
@@wooordwooord4712 in his defense - people excessively shat on him for his views on Game Pass from day one and especially during the ABK deal. Yet time and time again his points have been proven right, so I get why he relishes in it. As do I btw. People went completely unhinged the moment you dared to criticise the Game Pass model or Microsofts aggressive consolidation strategy.
This is why owning games will always be the smartest choice. That way these companies can not just willy-nilly manipulate prices or remove games from existence altogether.
I feel like Game Pass, while a great deal in gaming, is only worth it for those who just don't tend to finish their often-lengthy games. Or maybe just don't play 1-player games with end credits. Or whatever the opposite of my fav genres are. I mean, going from Horizon FW to Zelda TOTK and then to FF7 Rebirth is many many months of commitment to just 3 games, but I can't say I didn't get my money's worth.
MS has pretty much told us this was coming back with the party line that Game Pass being the “Netflix of video games”. Translated the investors like the subscription model and incrementally raising the price and artificially creating a value proposition by removing benefits to lower tier subscriptions.
This was just an inevitability, the math never made sense, and for any elite status executive without any common sense which is most of them... No amount of advertising will make as many people who watch movies start playing games... Netflix model to gaming is impossible unless there are 25 billion more people on this earth
I don't get why microsoft didn't go with two tiers: Game Pass Day One and Game Pass Standard. One will get all day one games and the other won't. Gold and Cloud for both
I think this is a pretty good route for them to take with two issues I can think of: 1.) this would require them to charge less for GP Standard than they'd want to, because the pricing for whatever the minimum subscription needed to play games online is needs to be "competitive" (I think $60+ a year, now $75; is already ridiculous.) Then they'd need to undercut that even more with a yearly price option (like how Core is now $75 for the year but $9.99 a month.) 2.) I imagine this would create multiple new things to consider for Cloud. One for example is that they've never had to gate that library in any way since it's always been exclusive to Ultimate so that would require some work on the software front.
For better or worse, Xbox has trained their player base not to buy games and embrace the gamepass model. If you normally would buy a handful of games a year, this is a great value and offers a ton of variety. Even with the price increase, it's still a great service imo, assuming you're open to trying new games and don't just play the same game or two. The big question is, can all these first-party games finally deliver and make it a great service. They certainly don't have the track record, but I think there's room to be cautiously optimistic.
I think what they should have done to advertise the advert is make that "creepy voice on the phone" and have it around, and at the end reveal its Phil Spencer by making him walk into the room and hanging up the phone, making this the advert would make people think "if I play Psyconaughts 2 on my FireTV Stick, Phil Spencer will appear randomly in my room!"
I like the symbolism of your shirt this week Kyle. You had a gold one before, but now it's a silver one, a metaphor for Microsoft's inevitable Never-The-Best-ness. Poetic.
Online play has to go free for all games at this point It's free on consoles for F2P games but it's not enough buying a multiplayer game and needing to pay a subscription to be able to play it sucks Gamepass core needs to GO
In December 2016 I was waiting in line with my wife for the second day of the Playstation Experience (PSX) in Anaheim, California. As the doors open a guy next to us in the line screamed "XBOX SUCKS" and we were all cheering and laughing. He was right back then and he's still absolutely right today, indeed Xbox sucks. Thank you random guy in the line!
Not gonna lie the unknown shadow in the XBox commercial gave me Energizer bunny vibes for a minute and now I'm worried Microsoft is gonna gobble up that poor fucker with an acquisition too...
They got tired of people subbing for one month and paying as little as possible for full-price games. I would be, too. The fact they even have a lower tier for more casual players is surprising, but great. If you yourself admit Ultimate is the best value and largest playerbase, why add value to that? It's already doing its job. This is only news because they're already essentially the only gaming sub worth their salt.
I don't subscribe to videogames - I buy them in tangible form and have for many years. 100 games on the pass? I already physically own around 300 games I love across several consoles and decades, so that's really not impressive or a draw to me. Especially since I know that the games on the pass aren't tailored to my exact taste in games like my personal game library is. Those who would actually buy subscriptions to mass, preselected libraries of games are far too lazy, fickle, and capricious to rely on for supporting gaming. They choose subscriptions because they are too casual to invest in actually finding and buying specific games as individual packages. So they say "here's a fee, now dump a bunch of games on me because I don't have time to go pick out individual games I would want." Casual people are not reliable customers. Their patronage shifts and disappears like the changing wind. The consumers who really support the industry and keep it going long term are the hardcore gamers, those who collect games across generations and invest in it thoroughly, long-term. Something as flimsy and fleeing as a subscription to digital games isn't NEARLY robust enough for such people. So of course subscription gaming services are bound to fail. Gamers are not to be treated as "Netflix customers." There really is a difference.
“i didn’t add that silly sound effect”
holy shit
Guy : Wait, what was that sound ?
Major Nelson : Do you know anything about foreshadowing ?
Guy : No... ?
Hbombguy : Foreshadowing is a litteracy device in which-
Oh shit, is that Fat4all?
I feel like the audio person may have accidentally done that
@@thedapperdolphin1590 "accidentally"
I actually was surprised to hear that and I thought why Kyle put that sound effect?.
And the moment he said that didn't do anything and the sound effect was part of the original broadcast, man I was totally shocked and made me laugh. 😂
This is it Kyle. The shiny shirt that finally
Impresses me.
It being a long-sleeve helps this one
Oh hi, Shania
@OctaBech Oh, so you're Microsoft? That dont impress me much. When your, clothes are fine but do they, have the shine?
Just love this guy. You can’t get content like this anymore. No cheesy fancy effects, no loud obnoxious voiceover, no stupid lights in the background. Just Kyle and his thoughts. Thank you. 🙏
Future shows are going to have to flip-flop between saying "Play it Day One With Game Pass" and "Play it One Day With Game Pass"
😂😂😂
This is good. This is a good bit.
Bag over head + shiny shirt = win
His best look yet!
I saw this elsewhere and it’s worth bringing up: are the hardcore CoD players REALLY a demographic that’s gonna maintain a Game Pass Subscription? Many of them fall into the category of dudes who buy 2 games: FIFA, CoD and that’s it. It doesn’t make financial sense for them to pay $240 annually when $140 covers their game habits for the year already.
They can still do that. Either way it's a win for MS.
@@mojojojo6292 But a loss for Game Pass, which is the point.
Fifa, cod, and the lesser spotted GTA*
140 for the games plus 10 per month to be able to play them online. Interestingly works out exactly the same price as gamepass ultimate! *ok not exactly, slightly more*
Kyle being right is an inevitability
Like a clock
Or an audit from the IRS
@@SPACECOWBOY705 Being right is great. Nothing brought us as much together as a species then pointing out others missteps and inadequacies to claim them as personal victory without ever having to contribute anything of value to a society and risk being the next one "wrong".
You think about that now.
Thanks for the tip
20 years from now a documetary (that you didn't buy) shows a historic clip from Delayed Input:
"I did not add that honk silly sound effect, that was part of the original video, I can't explain it either"
I'll wait for the Game Pass CoPilot tier that can play games for me
There’s nothing more that I love than Kyle dissecting corporate speak and marketing.
I knew refreshing my TH-cam app all morning would pay off eventually
That “Xbox will never win” video continues to be timeless
Xbox is positioning itself to become a dominant player in the gaming sector. Game Pass has the potential to revolutionize the gaming landscape. Its affordability is remarkable, to the point where I feel a sense of guilt for taking advantage of Xbox's generosity.
The only conceivable reason for someone to dislike Game Pass is if they are overly loyal to a competing platform and feel threatened by the potential success of Game Pass.
@@Thethinker6141 “Affordability” bruh it costs $240 a year.
@@Thethinker6141I like to own and keep games.. if all you do is play multiple games a month and NOTHING else then it’s a fair deal.
I buy one MAYBE two games a year on Steam or GOG. Rarely do I spend more than 100 bucks, free multiplayer, play on Linux or Steam Deck, no Windows or Xbox.
@@Thethinker6141gamepass is great but it’s not profitable. Also no one is saying they dislike gamepass.
Oh shit, is that Raz‽
From Psychonauts? and Psychonauts 2? and Rhombus of Ruin (which is not available on Game Pass)!?
Who?
"They didn't really mean it"
I wish we had the second after that, your face is teasing a big laugh.
If you think about Netflix, Amazon or Disney, the novelty of having a library of programmes and films like Friends or Pixar to watch again was an exciting prospect. A few years down the line and we’re all pretty much over that and we want new stuff from our subscription- Stranger Things, The Boys, The latest Marvel thing. The problem with this is I find is we watch it once or halfway through and then never again. Maybe because it isn’t that good. Maybe because it’s so cheap we are devaluing this content- we didn’t really pay for it so we watch five minutes and if it doesn’t connect so we turn it off. We aren’t paying month or month for subscriptions, we dip in and out to realise there wasn’t anything worth hanging around for.
This argument is exactly the same for a games subscription service- the novelty of old games has worn off, and we don’t commit to new games if they don’t click straight away. That makes us question if we really want to pay for a subscription, and also makes us question if any of it was worth it in the first place if we give up so quickly trying it.
Subscription for Entertainment is in general doomed to fail.
Pretty much the same thing that happened with music streaming.
Starting an official petition to begin the "slide whistle" era and retire the "car horn" era.
signed
I lost it!
I was thinking the same thing
Nope
I appreciate Kyle trying to explain the Game Pass tiers. I mostly came away determined never to buy an Xbox.
Don’t fool yourself - they just made it more similar to PS Plus. Unless you also mean that you’re determined never to buy a PS.
@@ilbroduccioreps plus isn't being pushed on us the same though. It isn't at the centre of playstations business model. It's just a thing they are doing.
They aren't banking on it for them to be profitable. It just like a bonus for them.
For the most part Sony are still supporting and pushing traditional game sales.
You could do do the same thing with an Xbox. But that's not the messaging from Microsoft.
Those tiers tell you to buy a PC
@@ilbroducciore Why would anyone buy a PlayStation when all their games come to Steam now? And everything Xbox has is *also* on Steam. PC gamers stay winning. 😎
@@HealyHQI don’t like fucking around on a computer, it’s annoying. Computers are outdated, always tinkering around and fidgeting with shit,it’s nice to just have consistency with a console. Not saying either is better, but I prefer the ease of a console.
Game pass is finally right about Kyle Boseman
God damn this episode was a funeral. 😂
Forgot who said it first but “Game Pass isn’t a good plan for Xbox, but it is for us, so abuse it while you still can”
Is it even good for the consumer at this price?
@@PokyBallinBabo Still cheaper than buying 1 game full price
@@PokyBallinBaboEr yes wtf
@@PokyBallinBabo You don't use GamePass... easy to point at those who don't lmao
Personally, see it as decent value only for people who play pretty much every day.
The "No Day-1 games" tier exists as a price anchor to push people towards the pricier tier with Day-1 games.
Not gonna work, PS+ extra is a better deal than Xbox tier 1.
@@byte-bg4obno it’s not lol
@@dsidsidsi1000 I mean objectively it's better.
Tier 1 being the new Gamepass Standard.
Do you have a catalogue of games? Both true
Do you have online play? Both true
Do you have discounts? Both true
Is the month $15? Both true
How much is a year? PS Plus Extra: $135 - Standard: $180 (it will not have a yearly subscription)
So objectively it's kinda a better deal.
@@byte-bg4ob lol no.
@@byte-bg4ob I snag PS+ extra on occasion when there's something to make up for its cost, which is quite pricier than game pass with often a huge overlap with the games offered. But the tiering system for PS+ was just disastrous for it, imo. Premium tier I've never grabbed as it is practically "hey, remember those PS3 games that you stream that used to be standard feature of Now? Yeah, they're now PREMIUM!" and it was / still is quite lacklustre for the price increase in the sub. Sony must've realised it as they've nabbed all the remasters / remakes / re-releases and decided they're now Premium, even if they were previously in Extra tier.
At the very least the game pass tiers show a clear distinction of value proposal between them. Even at 20€ for console users, but especially so at 12€ for PC it's still a great deal if you have time to beat even one day 1 title. Sometimes with Extra its difficult to justify paying 14€ when a good chunk of the games are quite low priced titles so you'd have to find the time to beat numerous games within that one month to win out on it.
These game pass tiers could not be more complicated. Just ridiculous
Nah PS subscription tiers are ridiculous 😂😂😂
“She doesn’t have an Xbox but has an Xbox controller on her coffee table.” 💀
Kyle is the kind of 40-something gamer that doesn't yet understand that you can just play most of the XBoc Game Pass Library via X-Cloud and you don't need a console, but you do need a controller. Which is the same kind of person who would spike the football of unprofitability when they are trying to claw back some of the money they will lose from their XBox CoD sales. Which is reasonable to do, but I would have preferred they just left Call of Duty outside of the service.
A multi-billion dollar example of the sunk-cost fallacy in action
I get your point, but this is not quite a "sunk-cost fallacy" situation. As far as videogames go, a true sunk-cost fallacy is in game production. "Well, we've spent $40 million so far on Concord, so I guess we're just going to have to pour another $40 million into end-production & support, release the game and try to support it, and hope we get somewhere near $80 million back!" Instead of just cancelling the game back in early 2023 when it should have been clear it was not going to succeed. If Sony had cancelled Concord 18 months ago, and eaten that loss, they probably would have lost less money than they will in the end. However, the PlayStation brand would not have suffered if Concord never saw the light of day. The player-base on PlayStation would be pretty unaffected, and a few of them would just buy a different game instead of Concord. No biggie.
In contrast -- with Game Pass, Xbox has been "all in" for several years. Game Pass with Day One first-party games is VERY CLEARLY the only reason Xbox is still even competing at all against PlayStation, Nintendo, and Steam. They CAN'T remove those Day One games from GPU, or millions of subscribers and Xbox players will leave the Xbox ecosystem instantly, like rats from a sinking ship. So Microsoft keep raising the price and hope for the best.
Day One first-party games on Game Pass was (financially) a terrible idea from the start -- as Kyle often talks about, and highlighted again in this video. If Xbox is going to survive 10-20 more years, they need to transition into something different, without giving millions of Xbox users the feeling that stuff is being taken away. How to accomplish that transition? I have no idea. No-one at Xbox does either, obviously.
@@sonicmania9993 You say it isn't, but in your comment you basically explained that in Microsoft's case the sunk cost fallacy is Xbox itself.
It may not be gamepass, it's Xbox that, if Microsoft as a company wasn't so disproportionately rich (thanks to their Windows monopoly), should have been closed years ago, but they keep pumping money on it hoping that one day it'll become profitable.
@@urracojalpa4481 Well first, I don't think that's what OP was talking about: wasn't it Game Pass? My argument was that once Xbox committed to going all-in on pushing Game Pass (including first-party games) as the primary way to attract and retain such a large percentage of their player-base ... they're just committed, and can't cut-and-run. To do so would kill Xbox for sure. "Sunk cost fallacy" implies situations where you are better off just cutting a program and taking the loss to that point, which doesn't apply here. It would mean the end of Xbox (maybe slow, maybe quick).
As for your larger point suggesting that Xbox should not still be alive, and that Microsoft should have cut Xbox off years ago ... well, that's a different matter. I'm not a huge Xbox fan, but I did buy an og Xbox day1 in 2001, had a great time with that console and with the 360 which I played more than PS3 (even though I'm more of a Japanese game guy). But XB1 and XBSX have been mostly Game Pass machines for me -- plus a few western action games -- while I mostly play on Switch and PS. There have been a catastrophic series of bad decisions at Xbox since the early 2010s -- mistake after mistake after mistake. And now like a lot of people I feel like they are incapable of managing their huge/expensive stable of studios to make good games. T-shirt wearing executives phoning in from Redmond doesn't cut it. It doesn't help that when those first-party games release, they are free to Game Pass subscribers, so are unlikely to pay for themselves.
The problem with Xbox is it relies too much on the unreliable array of western game publishers -- some of which they have "acquired", some not. Indie games in the west are super-interesting, but they don't really make much money. The AAA western game industry is set for implosion here in the next few years, and it is this sector that Xbox rests on. Steam is much more diversified. PlayStation is much more diversified, so that even though their first-party is stalling for a few years here, they still have tons of great games from Japan/Asia/the west, and many millions of players feel like it's the best place to play those games. Nintendo of course is its own thing, almost separated completely from western AAA publishers.
So I can not dispute your point that maybe Microsoft should have cut Xbox. Too many mistakes. I actually don't see how there will be Xbox to speak of in 15-20 years: Microsoft Gaming will be multiplat, figuring out how to make money that way.
This is what irked me about game pass, and XBOX since the latter half of last generation. It became increasingly obvious that their vision of competing was to out-spend anyone else. Sure, that might make the brand more attractive in the short term, but inevitably the perks gained by that will disappear. Maybe their hope is to get everyone too heavily invested in XBOX, and hope that when the platform becomes worse again, gamers won't leave.@@urracojalpa4481
@@sonicmania9993 I'm not even sure Microsoft _can_ transition into "something else". People keep bringing up "doing a Sega", but Microsoft --- despite all the IP they've bought --- isn't really a strong publisher.
They clearly have---and have always had---a hard time incubating games or developers. They buy up studios, mismanage them and shut them down. Their IPs they run into the ground.
As far as gaming goes, without the Xbox they're nothing.
I feel like the entire Game Pass ecosystem's single load-bearing pillar was an assumption on the part of C-suite executives that gamers are categorically poor at financial analysis. They probably think that simply buying numerous games would itself be classified as wasteful behavior, because they are practically worthless items in their eyes. When it's like...games themselves train their players to extract maximum value from the money they earn in games. The way people had been going through the tedious process of converting Xbox Live subscriptions to Game Pass subscriptions to shave even more of the price is off is kind of emblematic of that.
It reminds me of Asphalt Urban GT on the DS, where it wasn't even a very quick and especially wasn't a very fun way of making money, but the purchase price was like 500 dollars less than the selling price of a Corvette. So everyone would just buy and sell hundreds of Corvettes to rack up money in the game. This is exactly the kind of thing they'll try to do in buying games IRL, too.
All these big companies are in a race to see who could piss off most of their customers.
Thats its the best value in gaming
Legit thought the slide whistle was Kyle's work.
Everything is a subscription these days, and every company continually ups the price while reducing the value and/or shoehorning in a lower more restrictive tier. Par for the course since these companies are beholden to shareholders and they don't want some of the money, they want all of the money.
Wanna say how much joy I get every time a new video from you shows up in my subscriber box. Just wanted to thank you.
i knew after cod was announced to be included they would increase the price, which is complete bullshit for people like me who have 0 interest in cod, buying activision has been the biggest disaster for xbox, not only have we lost many studios with great games, but now we have to pay more for garbage
I knew when Microsoft announced game pass day one games the plan was bullshit the math never made sense.... It's sad anyone believed Phil Spencer's ridiculous lies
You don't have to pay. You can just buy games too. But one thing about subscriptions, they always go up in price. It's the same price as EA's and Ubisoft's plan on PC.
@@xabbott kinda defeats the whole fucking purpose of game pass
@@kamikazilucas Brother, a subscription only makes sense for business if it makes you spend more than you would otherwise.
"Wow, Xbox finally bought Activision, so we're getting new CODs on Games Pass day one!"
"Nope, gotta pay extra for that."
The line, the one on the graph, it has to go up, or end. You know this Kyle. And you want the line to go up
I feel like there should be 2 honks per episode.
as someone that enjoyed gamepass ultimate for 3 years since XSX launch by stacking up 3 years of games with gold and then 1:1 converting it to GPU, I think you’re right Kyle, and at this point I don’t think even COD will save gamepass. Personally I’m done with it
As someone who derives great enjoyment from xbox, I feel like the most tragic thing is that the company itself doesnt seem to be aware of the enticing aspects of the platform, and in turn the audience at large is not remotely aware of the cool differentiating aspects, and would be excused for thinking there arent any besides gamepass and xcloud.
And this isnt even commenting on mismanagement at large, because thats a very long tangent.
I'm gonna need a link to that slide whistle sound effect in the Xbox interview
Microsoft took one look at all the shit Adobe gets right now and said "we want some of that shit too" and procceds to use the same shitty subcription practices as Adobe.
You are criminally under watched bro. That commercial is mind boggling.
“Xbox will never win” episode still holds up
Oh also the fact that Xbox has yet again broken their agreement to buy activision.
They’ve broken two clauses already, one was that no one would be laid off after the acquisition, the other is that they would not raise prices after the deal finalized.
Oh look at that, the first two things they do are layoff employees and raise the prices!
Wow! You are clearly a 🤡 who doesn’t understand anything and is now making things up. 🤡
That's quite a disingenous statement from you that's clearly not true, you should probably go back to those statements and look at the actual wording they used. Using you wording their claims would mean they would never lay people of or raise prices in the future, something that would obviously not happen. Are you actually paying attention to whats happening to the economy, at some point they simply have to raise prices to keep up with inflation.
Ah yes, because Game Pass was always going to be the same price forever.
@@Velocifero here comes a trillion dollar corporation defender
@@yomamasohot6411 So pointing out that an increase in inflation leads to an increase in prices counts as defending corporations now does it? I don't give a shit about MS, just calling out a disingenious argument.
They reached saturation before they thought they would, and after crunching the numbers, realized it wasn't going to work at that price. Now that they're making the deal worse, it will be interesting to see what happens next...
Nonsense. It was obvious this was the long term plan from day 1. Current pricing was not sustainable especially not after the massive acquisitions. It's still very cheap on PC and I could see them trying to drive that price closer to 20 a month over time as well.
PLOT TWIST BRO...
...GAME PASS RIGHT ABOUT Y- *violently falls down flight of stairs*
Lets take a second to appreciate how Kyle stagecraft has improved over the years, specially this last year. Bravo
kyle coming out here on a friday in a silver shirt and telling us the gravy train is over
Complify and Simplicate!
Dread it, run from it, Kyle is right about Gamepass once again.
Note of interest before they raise the prises: you can stack up to 36 months of game pass until 18 sept. After that date you can only stack max. 13 months (you don't lose the months you bought after that date)
5 seconds in and I feel personally attacked Mr. Bossman
One of these days Kyle will become a Xenoblade fan and pay for his words and deeds.
I don't disagree that these changes are adding confusion as to what Game Pass actually is but... GP Ultimate is *still* one of the best deals in gaming if you play a wide variety of different games every year.
Sure, it's not for everyone (what is?) - especially if you only play a couple of new games a year, or just *REALLY* want to own everything you play for some reason. But I think it's still the best deal for the majority of people who want to play a wide variety of games.
7:00 I could be wrong, but I don't think it's possible to subscribe to both GamePass Console (the one that's discontinued that has Day 1 games but no online play) and Core (the XBL Gold rebrand) at the same time from the same account. If you want COD and want to play it online then Ultimate isn't just the optimal way, it was already the only way. Unless I'm mistaken.
It’s… nano time
You and Colin Moriarty are having a field day with this lol. Jokes aside, at best I always thought game pass would be a service that would have a Netflix or Amazon type trajectory, taking losses initially to grow towards a profitable plan that also offered a great value to the consumer. These changes “may” be their plan towards that but I’ll say that now more than ever the unsustainable plan of gamepass is evident.
#kylewasright #colinwasright
Colin acts like he was the only one whoever thought it though which is always the funny part
@@wooordwooord4712true! Lol
There's one problem with what you expected, Xbox. Xbox doesn't know how to make games. Their leadership would never be able to hold a job, let alone a managerial position, in any other big gaming company . It's a company run by failures who have managed to manipulate their delusional fanbase into believing they are successful. Sony could actually make GP successful but they do not have the infinite cash bag that Microsoft does. So we will never know.
"a broken clock is right twice a day" is the most charitable i can be for an insufferable twat like Moriarty.
@@wooordwooord4712
in his defense - people excessively shat on him for his views on Game Pass from day one and especially during the ABK deal.
Yet time and time again his points have been proven right, so I get why he relishes in it.
As do I btw. People went completely unhinged the moment you dared to criticise the Game Pass model or Microsofts aggressive consolidation strategy.
I'm one of the people who only uses the console tier on months where a game comes out that I'm interested in, so Xbox has certainly wounded me
I can't wait for the inevitable Emio episode once the game is fully announced.
Even Kyle can be right once in a blue moon 😂
This is why owning games will always be the smartest choice. That way these companies can not just willy-nilly manipulate prices or remove games from existence altogether.
Rewinded the silly sound effect part so much 🤣🤣
I am waiting for the day when the after-credits is longer than the actual episode.
I feel like Game Pass, while a great deal in gaming, is only worth it for those who just don't tend to finish their often-lengthy games. Or maybe just don't play 1-player games with end credits. Or whatever the opposite of my fav genres are. I mean, going from Horizon FW to Zelda TOTK and then to FF7 Rebirth is many many months of commitment to just 3 games, but I can't say I didn't get my money's worth.
MS has pretty much told us this was coming back with the party line that Game Pass being the “Netflix of video games”.
Translated the investors like the subscription model and incrementally raising the price and artificially creating a value proposition by removing benefits to lower tier subscriptions.
I think in this case, being "finally right" just means that you were right all along.
If Emio is a Xenoblade game I think I'll be sick lol
No way.
No it is obviously MOTHER 4
wow that start was amazing thx kyle great episode ,)
Nothing as exciting as finishing the episode and seeing there’s 4 whole minutes left
This was just an inevitability, the math never made sense, and for any elite status executive without any common sense which is most of them... No amount of advertising will make as many people who watch movies start playing games... Netflix model to gaming is impossible unless there are 25 billion more people on this earth
I don't get why microsoft didn't go with two tiers: Game Pass Day One and Game Pass Standard. One will get all day one games and the other won't. Gold and Cloud for both
I think this is a pretty good route for them to take with two issues I can think of:
1.) this would require them to charge less for GP Standard than they'd want to, because the pricing for whatever the minimum subscription needed to play games online is needs to be "competitive" (I think $60+ a year, now $75; is already ridiculous.) Then they'd need to undercut that even more with a yearly price option (like how Core is now $75 for the year but $9.99 a month.)
2.) I imagine this would create multiple new things to consider for Cloud. One for example is that they've never had to gate that library in any way since it's always been exclusive to Ultimate so that would require some work on the software front.
LMFAO!!! 1:17 Bossman, why you fuqing arou…. *continues to watch* oh! that wasn’t you!…. hahahah!!
For better or worse, Xbox has trained their player base not to buy games and embrace the gamepass model. If you normally would buy a handful of games a year, this is a great value and offers a ton of variety. Even with the price increase, it's still a great service imo, assuming you're open to trying new games and don't just play the same game or two.
The big question is, can all these first-party games finally deliver and make it a great service. They certainly don't have the track record, but I think there's room to be cautiously optimistic.
I don’t think they will ever win the battle of the bands🤣
Battle of The Brands*
@@gaztheman7879 with meeeeeee we'll catch fish in the sea
I think what they should have done to advertise the advert is make that "creepy voice on the phone" and have it around, and at the end reveal its Phil Spencer by making him walk into the room and hanging up the phone, making this the advert would make people think "if I play Psyconaughts 2 on my FireTV Stick, Phil Spencer will appear randomly in my room!"
"People don't like it when you're right too soon."
I like the symbolism of your shirt this week Kyle. You had a gold one before, but now it's a silver one, a metaphor for Microsoft's inevitable Never-The-Best-ness. Poetic.
VIVA GAME PASS!!
At least for me, is the same thing. I pay for ultimate and enjoy it a lot 😊
Same here. Ultimately any subscription is as good as the individual finds value in it.
VIVA GAME PASS
Kyle in his bag rn
Online play has to go free for all games at this point
It's free on consoles for F2P games but it's not enough
buying a multiplayer game and needing to pay a subscription to be able to play it sucks
Gamepass core needs to GO
That shirt makes you look like a background character in Galaxy Quest.
Phil Spencer: We are so close. I can feeel it. (Just 1 more Nintendo or EA or Ubisoft, come one guysss)
Game Pass Ultimate is really the only worthwhile tier. It’s unfortunately pretty expensive
love ya kyle... i sub on twitch etc but rooting for a consumer friendly option to fail isn't the W you think it is.
Wait, price increase means unsustainable... okay, netflix is unsustainable...
Not what he said
In December 2016 I was waiting in line with my wife for the second day of the Playstation Experience (PSX) in Anaheim, California. As the doors open a guy next to us in the line screamed "XBOX SUCKS" and we were all cheering and laughing. He was right back then and he's still absolutely right today, indeed Xbox sucks. Thank you random guy in the line!
A good Boseman episode.
that sound effect bro omg
Can't wait for the next Xbox charade: Phil Spencer renames Windows to Game Pass OS then tells us "Game Pass just added a billion subscribers!"
Does anyone remember what episode Kyle explains the tweet he has hanging up behind him?
I feel like anyone who's already playing CoD is either doing so on PS4/5 or PC. Oh yeah, BLOPS 6 is going to be on PS4 and Xbone, absolutely crazy.
i trust this kryptonian.
Do you ever leave your log cabin in those shiny tops?
Not gonna lie the unknown shadow in the XBox commercial gave me Energizer bunny vibes for a minute and now I'm worried Microsoft is gonna gobble up that poor fucker with an acquisition too...
They got tired of people subbing for one month and paying as little as possible for full-price games. I would be, too. The fact they even have a lower tier for more casual players is surprising, but great. If you yourself admit Ultimate is the best value and largest playerbase, why add value to that? It's already doing its job. This is only news because they're already essentially the only gaming sub worth their salt.
I don't subscribe to videogames - I buy them in tangible form and have for many years. 100 games on the pass? I already physically own around 300 games I love across several consoles and decades, so that's really not impressive or a draw to me. Especially since I know that the games on the pass aren't tailored to my exact taste in games like my personal game library is.
Those who would actually buy subscriptions to mass, preselected libraries of games are far too lazy, fickle, and capricious to rely on for supporting gaming. They choose subscriptions because they are too casual to invest in actually finding and buying specific games as individual packages. So they say "here's a fee, now dump a bunch of games on me because I don't have time to go pick out individual games I would want." Casual people are not reliable customers. Their patronage shifts and disappears like the changing wind. The consumers who really support the industry and keep it going long term are the hardcore gamers, those who collect games across generations and invest in it thoroughly, long-term. Something as flimsy and fleeing as a subscription to digital games isn't NEARLY robust enough for such people. So of course subscription gaming services are bound to fail. Gamers are not to be treated as "Netflix customers." There really is a difference.
Wait... Is there a new Xenoblade yet?
Kinda expected Kyle to somehow mention that Sakurai talked about Mega Man Legends.
Can’t wait for core to put ads into gameplay
I kind of just miss the suit and tie
Love the space-suit shirt
Welp, at least they held it out longer than movie theater companies' unsustainable memberships.