Analyst: Call of Duty Will Have a Notable Impact on Game Pass Subscriber Numbers - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 13 December 2022 / 2,325 Views
Piers Harding-Rolls, the research director of Ampere Games, has said that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard if approved could help grow video game subscription services.
"As we know, the games sector is not like other entertainment markets," said Harding-Rolls via GamesIndustry. "In-game and DLC monetisation dominates the wider sector and is the largest part of the console market, although the monetisation share is much more even than, say, the mobile games market.
"The ability to deploy hybrid monetisation, for example subscriptions and in-game monetisation or advertising, adds to the commercial viability of services such as Game Pass. I’m not expecting subscriptions to dominate the games sector, but I do believe that adding new releases into these services gradually undermines the commercial robustness of the premium business model for console games."
He added, "Premium games will continue to exist of course, especially the biggest titles, but I do think there is an inherent tension between these monetisation models, which is really only strongly evident in the AAA games market, centred on console."
Harding-Rolls believes if Call of Duty is added to Xbox Game Pass on Day One it would have a notable impact on the number of subscribers for the services.
"If Call of Duty is added day-and-date to Game Pass, it will have a notable impact on subscriber numbers," he said. "Additionally, the inclusion of Warzone with added Game Pass perks will help with engagement and retention. Call of Duty is regular and big enough to provide a meaningful bump to the subscription opportunity, which in turn may result in publishers reviewing their AAA budgets, product, and monetisation strategies."
He added, "Activision Blizzard has been inactive in terms of bringing its games to content services so far, so the extent of positive impact is not really known. It is difficult to say whether this would amount to a tipping point in publisher attitudes towards subscription services. Commercially, there are still lots of question marks in terms of balancing the books for many publishers and the service catalogues are small compared to the broader platform game collections."
There was a report that Microsoft offered Sony the right to add Call of Duty to its PlayStation Plus subscription service if its deal to acquire Activision Blizzard is approved. This offer would be in addition to the guarantee that Microsoft will release Call of Duty games on PlayStation, Nintendo, and Steam for the next 10 years.
Microsoft last week announced Microsoft has entered a 10-year commitment with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms if Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition is approved.
The company offered the same deal to Valve to guarantee the series on Steam, however, Valve President Gabe Newell says he did not sign Microsoft's long-term Call of Duty commitment has he trusts their intentions.
It was announced in January of this year Xbox Game Pass had surpassed 25 million subscribers.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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No shit Sherlock xD, it's only the 4th biggest selling game series of all-time. Of course it is going to drive many millions of new Gamepass subs. It's one of the main reasons why Xbox wants to acquire Activision-Blizzard, not to make it exclusive to Xbox to drive Xbox hardware sales as Sony seems to believe, but rather to massively boost their Gamepass subscriptions. Xbox fully intends to keep CoD multiplat, that is why they are willing to make the 10 year deals with Nintendo, Sony, and Steam, but they definitely want that day one Gamepass on it. However, we now know that they have offered to let Sony pay to get it day one PS Plus alongside their own day one Gamepass, which would cut Gamepass' growth potential, but would also give them a nice fat payment from Sony on each CoD game to compensate for those lower Gamepass subs.
This analyst is some sort of genius.
He doesn't believe subscription services will take over? That's weird. I think they will. Just as they have for music and movies. Why should games be any different?
All i care about is WoW being on GP.
How much is GP on pc per month?
No idea, but im sure its cheaper than the WoW sub
not really, but you would definately get more out of gp. But then again you would not have time to play anything else anyway soooooo
Well atm, you can buy game time for 2 month sub for nearly £20
Regular sub per month is £8.69
if it's cheaper than the per month sub, then that'd make sense, if not, you'd kinda have to pay constantly for GP to make WoW more affordable and thus it would hold more prominence in that GP line-up (I think if you are a vivid WoW player, it should hold sway over the rest of each months GP line-up, if you wish to pay to access it per month).
Oh I also forgot that you can buy WoW tokens, which can either be exchanged for game time, or used to sell in WoW's AH for in-game gold (either that or you can use your in-game gold to effectively buy a WoW token, thus earning game time or Blizzard battlenet points to spend on other games/DLC).
Would be more convenient to have everything fall under the one sub model. WoW is $20 a month and GP is $15 a month so if they can put WoW on their, its a $25 saving for me.
$20 a month?, but I just saw the sub plan in GBP as 8.69, that'd mean the sub in USD would be around $10 something.
Game time isn't a sub, but a one time purchase of 2 months sub time, that would cost $20, that's what I pay for, because they fucked over the one month game time option (they removed it entirely at the start of this yr, so now I can only go for the 2 month game time option).
I still believe the month to month active sub via credit card is the way to go, so unless GP is cheaper than £8 on PC, I wouldn't be saving money.
I am already a GP subscriber so having WoW part of the plan means 1 less sub to pay.
I quit WoW 6 months ago because i am struggling to justify it, only resigned up to check the new expansion but not sure how long i can last paying for it anymore.
Honestly, DF feels like such a rbeath of fresh air compared to SL/BFA.
I've yet to make a thread on it (mostly don't bother these days since my threads tend to die within the day they are posted), but so far the reception for it has been warm and welcome.
My only nitpicks are professions needing more tuning and to be a little more rewarding for casual players, and for raids to allow for Raid Finder (raids just opened today, and there is no RF for them, which is a let-down for me wanting to advance the storyline).
That indie team that Blizz bought out worked wonders when they added dynamic dragon riding to the game, feels far superior to vanilla flying, to a point where enarly all of us want that as the staple flying from here on out.
Storyline this expac is simple, a bit hammy with the villains (which I prefer over the super serious and depressing Jailer crap), and also brings back familiar characters (we also think Titan keeper Tyr is gonna come back, but we don't know yet fully).
I would absolutely say you should give DF a go, it's very alt friendly, colourful, OST is memorable and charming, art style for the new zones gives me huge BotW vibes (they also increased view distance to accommodate for the increase in art style fidelity), Dragon Riding is fun, there are no extra stupid mechanics that you feel you need to keep up with, just do quests, get loot, craft loot, do dungeons and that's basically it, no extra strings attached.
I am already lvl 69 (Nioce) and so far am enjoying the changes.. for now. Iv seen it all before with previous expansions but hoping they have learnt their lessons with this one.
The flying is a great addition. The change makes it more interactive and less boring.
The Talent system is a return to form. I absolutely hated the previous talent system. The Tree system was always the way to go.
The content is neat, however hoping blizzard really just let classes have their way and fun rather than nerfing the unpopular ones to the ground and buffing the fan favorites like they have for years. I swear the devs must play Rogues and Mages.
Well current Raid 90th percentiles just came in lol, Rogues are the very top, most melee are in fact, and Aff Warlock just went last season from the very top to absolute rock bottom:
https://external-preview.redd.it/oJjR38w6nt2NB2mRHj8iLH3lMQxs8NKug-uw5POSw20.png?auto=webp&v=enabled&s=a92c2e4f3d47ca283e3daa843292e8cedf020136
I am fully expecting Rogues to either get some nerfs or caster classes to get buffs all around. Blizz did also just recently nerf the tanks a bit, since they were just running around dungeons, pulling nearly every mob in sight without dying (which made it annoying for me as a Warlock to execute my spell rotations).
Frost mages are near the bottom as well, and all (and I mean all) dungeons in DF so far have horrid movement mechanics or silence ones, meaning us caster classes either have to move or take the hit, but either one of those fucks with our spell rotations anyway, so I feel like the Dungeon designer for this expac REALLY hates caster classes a lot.
Doesn't surprise me that Melee are near the top though, the current President of Blizz is a Warrior main, just like how FF XIV's president mains a Black mage, and we saw how those turned out.
But either way I'm enjoying myself doing the storyline/side content. I don't think I'm gonna get to raid this expac, or do Mythic+, because both of those require guilds, and LFR isn't up yet, so I'm probably just going to keep doing dailies/World Q's and hunt down them extra mounts/cosmetic goodies till the next patch drops and lv up more alts (I'm still on my main btw, haven't gotten to my Rogue/Shaman/Priest/mage yet).
Watch Rogues get a slight buff as usual when they are OP. Locks have always fallen off blizzards care factor, same with Warriors however maybe the president is making some calls because my Warrior is going very smoothly so far. Good rotation and actually hits like a truck, like it should be.
I mainly PvP so my opinions is based around that than actual PvE, hence why Rogues and Mages constantly get good buffs.
Mages wont last long on the bottom of the food chain. They will get a monster buff soon that will make them OP if history serves me right.
Well Aff locks just lost soul tap, and I've no idea as to why they thought removing it for the upcoming patch was a good idea (all the other locks in the forums are confused as hell, esp with aff locks being at rock bottom of the raid dps list).
Us Warlocks never had a dev representing us in the forums like all the other classes get, and I believe that is mostly why we get less care given to us (also doesn't help that the last good warlock dev left after Mists, which explains why Warlocks during Mists were the best they ever were).
PVP wise rogues are still gonna be kind, esp sub rogues and outlaw (mainly outlaw for roll the bones), but afaik, Demo and destro can be good for pvp atm from what I've seen.
I haven't touched BG's since Mists, so I could stand to try getting back into that sometime (esp now since Dragonflight allows us to earn PVP gear a lot faster).
I do feel like casters have had it a bit harder this expac, between the dungeons and raids having silly movement/CC mechanics. I think they should let most casters have at least 3-4 spells that can be cast on the move, instead of the usual 1-2 (most of those 1-2 spells go on CD, which doesn't help much).
