Does Gamepass give the benefit of MS first party sales obfuscation?

If it were intended that way, sure. MS can obscure number of sales for a select game. That being said, MS has become less and less about total sales figures, and more about users/revenue. Metrics have changed somewhat.

The people who track sales are generally fanboys. If its not sales its going to be subscribers, views or some other metric. Not sure why folks spend so much of their time on how much money a multi-billion dollar company makes and brags about it as if its a personal accomplishment. But, people do it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I also find it strange people track individuals behind games.

This!

I don't care about Game Pass. It's a subscription Service. I don't care about the service, but the games themselves; which right now Game Pass doesn't really have any worthwhile exclusives. There's a reason Netflix has exclusive shows, to keep people coming to them. It's why Netflix is atop the subscription movie/TV game. Want to know why vudu sucks? It doesn't have any unique content

Lamepass is becoming one of the most overhyped things in gaming right now lol. I remember years back if I said PS Plus games were free, someone would say, "they're not free. You don't own them." Yet this thing is no different. You're basically paying to rent the game, and you're only renting what MS is willing to give you.. for that time.

It actually seems like a great way to take control sales data to sell to third party if microsoft stonewalls and paywalls the info.

I'm not exactly sure but there are apparently companies that make money off of these. Some marketing data collector or what not. I'm not exactly sure what these corps are called.

Exactly dude Games > Gamepass its so obvious a service is never gonna be better than great games.

Sales are not what is important for gamers. The quality of the games is what matters. Game Pass is an amazing deal and MS first party games should be a lot better next-gen.

Shouldn't sales matters? Don't you want your favorite devs sell to make profit and secure more opportunities in the future?

I'm guessing this is also one reason why Naughty Dog and Santa Monica have less output than last gen. They haven't recouped enough profits to maintain output.

@rzxv04: Gamers shouldn't be concerned with the business side of things. All that matters is quality. Gamers are consumers and their role is to consume. So, support the games that you like. High quality leads to high sales/revenue anyway. Leave it up to the companies to worry about the sales, marketing, etc..

What data would they be selling and to what type of company? I am not sure how or why they will charge companies for this information.

Sales doesn't matter because this applies to first party developers. All third party developers can sell their games independent of Gamepass. You are confusing Xbox Game Studios which are Gamepass bound to regular studios.

Who claimed that Gamepass games are free? You are describing the service as if we don't already know how it works.

Of course that's what they're doing. If MS can't win, or the odds aren't in their favor, then they try to create new rules.

Don't have new games ready for your next console? Play up crossgen as a virtue

Game library slacking? Emulate some games from last gen and pretend its the most important console feature ever

Can't boast sales numbers? Report arbitrary figures like player counts and zombies killed

New games sell like shit? Throw 'em in a sub service. Proclaim their value... lose billions

@BenjaminBanklin: Your bitterness is always a joy to read. 😂

ILFTYTR

MS gave up on giving sales numbers long ago because they were to embarrassed.

Digital sales through platform-owned marketplaces have already muddied the waters plenty. It's just way too open to manipulation by platform holders. The sooner sales stop being used as a marketing tool, the better.

How enigmatic. I like it.

I Look Forward To Your Tears of Rage?

Well done. 😎

successkid.jpg

8 million played Forza 7 sounds way better than 2 million Forza 7 copies sold.

Can be a double edge sword, atleast 12million ID played bloodborne but where the fu is my sequel Sony??

I think it's about sales and marketing data. I forgot the others but there are companies like NPD or some other market research groups.

I am not sure of this list:

https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_market_research_firms

This is just a guess but publishers will probably pay for these data and instead of 3rd party collecting and selling such as npd, first parties might be better off hoarding the data and directly selling to publishers or other interested groups.

I'm not sure if this article is legit though but it seems it's already been happening:

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/254774/why-sales-figures-matter/

“We don’t have enough information; NPD releases fewer and fewer bits of data every single year because the publishers have wrestled that control away from NPD. Steam releases precious little data about PC sales, and what this allows video game companies to do, and valve is culpable in this as well, is paint their own narratives.

We don’t have enough information to actually accurately talk about any of this, and that’s what's frustrating, because people are so quick to grab the first piece of data that fulfils their own personal narrative; whether it’s the console war, or a game that they’ve bought that they wanna validate that it’s sold really well. We just don’t have enough information to make any of those arguments, so that’s what makes any of these arguments so God damn frustrating; it's cause you’re arguing over nothing, cause the games industry has systemically removed every piece of information that allows us to even make a credible data-driven argument about the state of the games industry.”

I'm not sure about your last statements. I think sales matter regardless, at least so far as my mind can change on this, because its as positive feed back for the industry, team, devs, opportunities. If first party, gamepass, etc. get more sales, there's more opportunity for more and quality games as those two don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Still, I think that poor sales actually might result in another creative products like how good things can come out of desperation and with this, poor sales might be a net positive.

Now I'm confused.