Is it possible that in the future there will be games available on Xbox Game Pass that cannot be played without joining Game Pass? Phil Spencer: No. That's not it. What we want to offer is choice.
Is it possible that in the future there will be games available on Xbox Game Pass that cannot be played without joining Game Pass? Phil Spencer: No. That's not it. What we want to offer is choice.
Translation: Yes. But, we won't announce that until you've got no choice.
"You have the choice to either pay for game pass or not play any games."
"hey gang, who wants to go sailing with me?"
"yarr!"
I see you person from 2027 looking back at this post finding statements to prove how they were lying when they said this.
It'll be interesting to see how close your date prediction ends up being
RemindMe! 4 years "How close was this prediction?"
Sorry I'm actually here trying to find radio parts for my time machine from the lanternfly famine timeline
Forget all that shit, anyone have an IBM 5100 lying around?
We offer choices. But, we will continuously revert your choices whenever we can.
I disabled Cortana, windows updates itself so we re-enabled it for you.
I disabled Edge as my default browser, windows re-enables it for me... choices!
I disabled the stupid search online via Bing feature... guess fucking what! Re-enabled.
If Xbox ever gains majority market share your choices go out the window. What he should say is we offer the illusion of choices.
Microsoft Monopoly 2: Digital Boogaloo
That search online feature is ass, I do a quick search in the start menu for a program and I get a fucking edge page of results wth
Nonsense like that pushed me right back to Macs again; touching a Windows computer is just horrific now.
All of those plus the re-enabling of automatic restarts for updates are the reasons I dropped Windows for Linux. I couldn't be happier with the decision.
If Xbox ever gains majority market share your choices go out the window.
Wasn't there a quote from a Microsoft exec stating exactly that is essentially the only plan. They either have majority market by 2027 or they leave the gaming industry.
I love how it's all or nothing, they don't care about gaming. Even if that exec quoted didn't have the power to are the division, it shows a lot about what their plans are. And as always, it's not good for the consumer.
The best thing the consumer can hope for is they grow too big and regulatory agencies grow some balls and split them up like old Bell. That's the only way I could see it benefitting consumers in the future. Even if MS left the gaming industry, they are not selling everything off piecemeal like a tag sale. It's all getting sold to Facebook or a better fit would be apple. They already have the hardware side, they could whip up a console real quick, and they already have the marketing on their side. Although both FB and Apple have tons of cash to burn, I could see FB buying it, developing a sub par console in the hopes it can bridge the gap until they can get everyone in VR goggles. That would be almost as bad for consumers as MS' Monopoly...
Also, I am not implying either of those companies could afford to buy those purely with cash. It's just if you have massive cash reserves it's usually indicative of planning on new investments. Looking at the list again, and sorting by reserves as a percent of value, I could also see Google and Amazon being contenders. Amazon already has spent money developing devices, although that has turned out poorly for them, so they might be hesitant to dump a huge amount of money into something that hasn't worked well for them in the past. Google has the money, they have power, but little to no experience in gaming world beyond mobile gaming.
Yeah, I call complete bs. Should they ever get a large amount (majority) of marketshare with the Xbox brand, they'll absolutely do that.
Microsoft is gonna Microsoft. Just look how they abuse their Windows marketshare to try and shove Microsoft Edge down your throat. The latest trick I encountered at work was that Outlook now has its own setting for which browser to open links in, it doesn't respect the OS default browser anymore by default.
The problem with statements like these are even if Phil is telling the truth right now there's no saying what will happen 7 years later.
- Xbox could be losing much more badly than they are now and could try new ways of getting exclusives
- shareholders could want more and more
- Phil could be replaced by the next Don Mattrick
Consumers don't own games especially on consoles where they are too tightly tied up with the company who made the hardware. Don't take this statement too seriously because you never know what will happen.
But he’s not even telling the truth right now. All the FTC documents have shown everything he’s publicly said in the last 5 years has been nothing but lies.
Of course they will claim stuff changes, but the internal documents show that it’s always been lies, always.
I would like to register my future reference of calling bull, hello future me.
Why would they do that? They would absolutely make another more expensive game pass ++ pro tier and keep the exclusives there
See... Choices!
This guy is that one puzzle guy where everything they say is a lie
I understand the reflexive hate for tech executives, but you can do a lot worse than Phil Spencer.
Currently? Not really, not one thing he has said has head of Xbox has turned out to be true.
He seems nice and is probably a gamer. But if Microsoft doesn't profit enough on games I believe all the niceness will quickly disappear.
Oh, I don't know about that. He's got this fascade of I'm just like you, but then goes and acts exactly like every other Microsoft exec from the past 30 years. I know you'll want to compare him to Don Mattrick to excuse that. Oh, he's a good guy... in comparison. Nope.
He is actively seeking to damage the industry as a whole to further his career ambitions inside Microsoft and to make Microsoft crazy money in 20 years. He's a bully in the industry, and just like every other big tech disruption from the past decade and a half, from Uber to netflix, none of it is in favor of the consumer
- That's their internal deadline to be profitable. Before that you can enjoy all the sales and cheap games.
How did you shift the text out of the usual comment space?
It's not about whether they say they will, it's about whether they can
Isn't this true for Steam?
Bull shit, one of their conditions for a game to be on game pass is it can’t be on another streaming service. How is that choice…?
You're confusing Game Pass for PS+