In the Xbox One generation, in the face of the aggressive Sony PS4, Microsoft sacrificed the game subscription service "Xbox Game Pass (hereinafter referred to as XGP)", and with the characteristics of playing more games at an ultra-low price, XGP gained more than 23 million subscribers after its launch 4 years ago. Although some players have previously worried about whether Microsoft will always let XGP "conscience", Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's game business, gave a positive answer last year that XGP has been sustainable.
Perhaps in order to prove the "conscience" of XGP, Microsoft recently announced that Hong Kong and Taiwan service users who have purchased and played "Halo: Infinity", "Forza Horizon 5" or "Age of Empires 4" on their computers before February 28, and have not subscribed to XGP, will be able to receive a free three-month PC Game Pass. Simply put, before March this year, no matter how or which platform purchased Halo: Infinity, Forza Horizon 5 or Age of Empires 4 on the PC side, these three first-party games launched by Microsoft will be given away for 3 months for free pc XGP members, and even players who have played Halo: Infinity free multiplayer mode can also receive it.
According to the current price of HK$29/month, this activity is equivalent to Microsoft sending HK$87 to players for free. In fact, since the birth of XGP in 2017, Microsoft seems to have been on the road to sending benefits to players, and even there are a lot of tutorials on the Network to teach everyone how to spend a small amount of money, you can experience Microsoft's super game production level and rich content accumulated in the past two decades and spent hundreds of billions of dollars.
Why has Microsoft maintained a staggering benefit for XGP, even at the expense of acquiring major game studios, and even acquiring giants like Activision Blizzard? In fact, XGP is a business model that fights against the traditional game industry and subverts the business model that has continued from the Atari era to the present.
After all, since the beginning of the mobile Internet era, mobile games relying on a new generation of general computing devices smart phones have ushered in rapid development, and the lower threshold and higher holding rate have also squeezed the market share of console games and PC games.
The reason why traditional console/PC games have entered the stage of weak growth is that the threshold of the game device itself has brought about the pain point of relatively low holding rate, and the traditional sales model of the game industry that makes money by selling discs and copies has become obsolete in the Internet era. It was in this situation that Microsoft chose to use XGP, a completely different approach from the mainstream business model in the industry, to sell games.
In contrast, XGP's biggest feature is that it has a lower threshold, and whether it is on Xbox or PC, or even through the cloud game streaming of Xbox Cloud Gaming, it can also play games on the mobile side. In other words, XGP has become a streaming service like Netflix, and it is possible to play games anytime, anywhere through a reliable carrier.
In a sense, XGP is quite similar to the services that did second-hand game rentals earlier and launched a one-year XXX yuan unlimited game change game, except that the operator has changed from a merchant who may run away at any time to a trillion-dollar giant Microsoft. In addition, the product has changed from a second-hand game disc/cassette that may be lost to a digital version that can be produced at any time.
Some insiders believe that the birth of XGP is extremely closely related to the increasing trend of eighth-generation console games towards service-oriented. The global game manufacturers have also gained valuable experience from domestic manufacturers, and the free-to-play + paid in-app purchase value-added model has brought amazing commercial benefits, and almost all game manufacturers have seen the charm of service-oriented games. At the same time, the "violent death" of EA's "Star Wars: Battlefront 2" also allowed game manufacturers to find that there are problems with service-based games with ontology fees. Microsoft's XGP is based on the experience of its predecessors, with almost free subscription fees to promote.
As a subscription service, measuring the business value of this business goes from how many games are sold to how many users you have. The low-cost benefits of XGP are undoubtedly its weapons to attract users, and the price of HK$29 per month is almost a takeaway money, which will of course make 23 million subscribers shout "true fragrance". But Presumably, you should also notice that the three games mentioned in this event, "Halo: Infinity", "Forza Horizon 5", and "Age of Empires 4", as Microsoft's first-party games, have actually joined XGP for the first time, but these three games also topped Steam's weekly sales list when they were released last fall and winter.
In other words, even though XGP has the advantages of low price and rich game library, there are still a considerable number of players who choose to buy games and are not sensitive to XGP. But this is actually because some of the multi-player consumption concept is still stuck in the past, from the Atari era to today, the mainstream sales model of the game industry is still one-handed payment and one-hand delivery, such players are more inclined to really own the game, which is also the digital game is to rent the game, there is a certain market reason in the player group.
In addition, the player's time is limited, so it has also led to market competition among game manufacturers, showing an either-or feature. According to incomplete statistics, the ratio of software and hardware to each generation of consoles is usually between 8:1 and 10:1, that is, in the service life of a generation of consoles, the average player will only buy one or two games throughout the year. Since you only buy a few games a year, it will obviously make players more conservative when consuming, and will tend to choose only the genre they are familiar with, which is why car gun ball will become the mainstream of European and American games, and "Call of Duty" has become a New Year game.
In other words, to this day, there are still a considerable number of players who believe that the purchase of games needs to be "safe", and they are not interested in the "rental" model of subscription services. This also led to the use of PC XGP to play "Halo: Infinity", "Forza Motorsport: Horizon 5", "Age of Empires 4", and the cost between direct purchase of the game is very different, but there are still players who do not choose XGP.
This microsoft activity is undoubtedly an accurate coverage of this part of the player, Microsoft's idea is undoubtedly to provide an opportunity for players who prefer to buy games but do not experience XGP, to feel the charm of XGP. Perhaps in Microsoft's view, the fundamental reason why players prefer to buy games instead of choosing XGP is that they do not understand XGP. And the way to make such players change their consumption concepts, using ear to hear is the most direct and impactful way to see and see.
Of course, in a sense, this is also Microsoft's attempt to challenge the Steam digital distribution channel on the PC side. After all, when players realize the benefits of XGP, it is estimated that it will be difficult to return to steam, which buys games and pays money.