An analyst has given a rare glimpse into how much Microsoft might be spending on bringing games to Game Pass.
If the rumours are to believed, Sony is preparing to announce any day now; although it’s assumed that, being a smaller company than Microsoft, they won’t be able to match all the features, especially having first party games available from day one.
How much it costs Microsoft to run Game Pass is, like the details of how many consoles it sells or how many subscribers it has, , but one analyst has suggested that costs around $5-10 million.
The figure isn’t official but MST Financial senior analyst has been covering Square Enix for 15 years and claims the estimate is accurate.
Even assuming the figure is correct, the peculiar nature of Guardians Of The Galaxy makes it difficult to draw conclusions about how much is being paid for other games.
Although it was a big budget title based on a popular licence, Square Enix itself admitted that , despite . Sales have apparently improved over time, but in large part simply because it’s been widely discounted at retail.
That means that Microsoft presumably only had to pay a fraction of what they normally would’ve spent for a high-profile title, especially as the game came to the service five months after its initial release.
At the very least though it does indicate the sort of money Sony would have to spend to get prominent third party games on its Game Pass equivalent, if it didn’t want to add its own first party titles.
A this month also revealed that Microsoft has paid indie developers – which most certainly does not include Square Enix – £1.9 billion in revenue from Game Pass, answering a long held question of how, and how much, developers are paid for having their games on Game Pass.
Although it’s less common with indie titles, in a lot of cases companies make much of their money through the sale of DLC and microtransactions, from players discovering the parent game through Game Pass.
Guardians Of The Galaxy has neither though, which was seen as a positive by many players but further reduces the chance of it making a profit and leading to a sequel.
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