That one hurt

afgavinstan wrote:

regmcfly wrote:

Still, I'm getting Diablo 4 let's go @afgavinstan

I think there's gonna be a problem in that the GP launch is happening mid-season, which I've already made paragon on. Rattle the campaign in time for the new season late April and we'll shoot that up together.

Sounds a plan

Nae borrar I'm free Ultimate on the phone plan

And that’s why they’re having to go multi format. Giving this shit away with phones now.

yourfavouriteuncle wrote:

But we have 35 million subscribers!!!! 456 of who actually pay full price.

I'm seeing a couple of places (one being PishSquare who I'm not a massive fan of) that the increase from 25mil GP subs to 34mil is largely because they rebadged Gold to GamePass Core.

It has been confirmed by The Verge (who I do trust) that the 34mil does include GamePass Core subs. Push Square are claiming there were 12mil Gold subs before the change. Can't see that number anywhere else but only because I can't see anyone saying any number.

So potentially not really growing then.

Typo stays.

LivDiv wrote:

I'm seeing a couple of places (one being PishSquare who I'm not a massive fan of) that the increase from 25mil GP subs to 34mil is largely because they rebadged Gold to GamePass Core. It has been confirmed by The Verge (who I do trust) that the 34mil does include GamePass Core subs. Push Square are claiming there were 12mil Gold subs before the change. Can't see that number anywhere else but only because I can't see anyone saying any number. So potentially not really growing then. Typo stays.

As you've said, the 34m includes the converted Core subscribers, those who pay full whack (like me currently), and those who get it free or stacked on the £1 deal. It's an impressive number, but at the same time it is very limited growth and below the projections that came out of the ABK merger papers. If everyone was paying full price, it would generate a handsome income of around $4b a year, but I doubt that's the case currently.

Big difference between turnover and profit though and when you then start to factor in the cost of developing games for the platform - Starfield reportedly cost between $300-400m, and Spiderman 2 (for comparison) was around $300m - you can launch 12-13 similar games a year to break even on those titles. Game Pass, however, has hundreds of games available from multiple publishers, all of which will be licensed at a cost to the platform. Plus there's the actual costs of running all the severs, etc.

I'm sure people will see the number 34m and rightly go 'wow', but it doesn't surprise me that MS have aimed for 100m subscribers over time, as that must surely be when it starts to make financial sense. Either that, or the number of big first-party titles going on to the platform needs to be kept much lower, which they've distanced themselves from, by saying all their big releases are coming to Game Pass.

You know what got lost in all this game back and forth?

Big Phil saying the next gen is going to be the biggest generational jump ever.

Given these consoles are Pcs nowadays, and watching what they do, I'd be fascinated to know what this is, bigger than 2D to 3D? Do it big man.

Unless he's pulling some infinite power of the cloud shenanigans.

Phil Heath I assume.

afgavinstan wrote:

There is only one Big Phil and it ain't Spencer.

Didn't know you were a Scolari mark.

I found that "biggest leap" thing quite Trumpian. Just rang hollow. I'm sure in some way it will be the biggest leap but what that means who knows. Most GB of ram added big whoop.
It's not going to match 2D to 3D.

My concern is that the whole industry is crying out that they can't get games done, budgets have gone nuts. What is this power leap going to do to help that situation?
Probably should be talking intelligent design rather than power arms race.

Plot twist: It won’t even be actual AI, just a different name for procedural tile generation and shit.

AI is going to be that short to medium term answer to intelligent design and reducing budgets. People don’t want it, or say they don’t, but it will become part of game dev as it is across all other creative industries.

As for the leap I actually do hope it’s some ridiculously amazing handheld that is as powerful or more than the Series X. Full GamePass on the go, slap your proprietary memory storage in it, then get home and pop that same card into the back of the Series X and carry on.

If Moore’s Law is declining, won’t the biggest generational leap ever end up making the console cost like £1000? I’m not really seeing it.