Eiichiro Oda’s 1999 manga One Piece has spawned one of Japan’s most popular media franchises over the past decade, which includes an anime series, film festival, and no fewer than 14 animated movies. The latest of these, One Piece: Stampede, will be available on the anime streaming service Funimation this week.
One Piece: Stampede can be streamed on Funimation for a limited time from Friday, May 22. In addition, new dubbed episodes of the One Piece show will available from June 2. There are currently 13 seasons of the series to watch on the platform.
One Piece: Stampede was released theatrically in Japan in August 2019, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fantasy adventure franchise. The movie scored the largest first-day attendance in Japan in 2019, and grossed more than $93 million worldwide.
One Piece’s Straw Hat Pirates recently gave fans some advice about dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Last month, Toei Animation released a video featuring Luffy, Usopp, Nami, Robin, Chopper, and Franky offering advice on how to stay clean amidst the concerns about the virus spreading, and just healthy overall.
On this week’s episode if IGN’s weekly PlayStation show, host Jonathon Dornbush is joined by Brian Altano and Max Scoville to discuss the news that Sony will “soon” announce PS5 games. What do we expect to see? What do we (and you) hope might be announced for the next-gen launch? We talk about that, plus dive deep into Jonathon’s interview with Sucker Punch’s Jason Connell about the Ghost of Tsushima State of Play.
Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima has been a long time coming. The game was officially revealed at Paris Games Week in 2017, but development on the project began shortly after the release of Infamous: First Light in 2014. The studio has been working on the game for close to six years, a development cycle that almost encapsulates the PlayStation 4’s entire lifespan. Whether by design or by fortuity, Sucker Punch showed off what Sony’s console could do in its infancy and now is poised to show how far it has come in its maturation.
The game they’ve made to show off that growth is, in the team’s own words, more ambitious than anything Sucker Punch has done before. Ghost of Tsushima is an open-world, stealth action game that draws its inspiration from classical samurai cinema, but also looks to tell a grounded, poignant story about struggling against oppressors and the extreme lengths a person will go to in order to preserve their culture and community.
Ahead of Ghost of Tsushima’s release on July 17, we talked to creative director Nate Fox about the studio’s journey, the inspirations behind the game, and the intricacies of its gameplay.
It’s been around six years now since Ghost of Tushima was announced, what is it like to be actually able to talk about the game finally?
Click To Unmute
Ghost of Tsushima Gameplay Showcase | State of Play
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.
This video has an invalid file format.
It’s fantastic. You make the game that you always wished somebody would make and you get to play it every day at work and you get more excited about the features. Then to be able to show a big chunk of gameplay to the world and then have people like it, it feels magnificent.
You mentioned there that it’s the game that you wanted to make. You can see the DNA of Sucker Punch in Tsushima, but the historical focus is very different for the studio. How did you reach that point?
Way back when working on Sly Cooper, I was writing the dialogue for the game. [Sly Cooper] features anthropomorphized animals. It reminded me of a comic that I had read years before that I started reading again aggressively to get a feel for how characters can speak to each other with a lot of respect. It’s this comic called Usagi Yojimbo. You ever read it?
Oh yes, it’s excellent.
Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai
Right. So I’m reading Usagi Yojimbo and it’s this big collection of stories about a samurai who wanders feudal Japan, walks into town, and uses his wits and the edge of his sword to solve problems. I thought, “Man, this would be a dynamite thing.”
Move forward in time. We make the InFamous series. We get done and we’re looking for something else to do, and the whole time I’ve been thinking, “How come nobody’s made a wandering samurai game?” And now we’re looking for something to do, so it’s something that I personally got very excited about because it was the game that I had been waiting for for a long time to see in the world.
That’s really cool. I never expected Usagi Yojimbo to be an influence but I am glad it is.
Sucker Punch is known for parkour and traversal, but this has a whole new set of gameplay disciplines. What did you identify as needing to really get right to realize that wandering samurai vision?
Well, when most people get asked what a samurai means to them, the … As a matter of fact, I asked this question of all my colleagues, and the winner was the movie Seven Samurai, which I’m a big fan. Have you ever seen it?
Yeah, I love it.
It’s a masterpiece. There are all these conventions of classic samurai movies that we thought, “This is it. If we can take these conventions, the swordplay conventions, the way nature is shown, the way that respect is traded between samurai and the peasants and other swordsmen, if we can capture that and put it into this game we will have something that is really special.” So we became students of these movies and turned some cinematic convention into interactivity.
How do you balance what a samurai was in real life versus what people may have seen from media–the fantasy and expectation that creates?
A lot of the samurai identity comes very much from samurai film. However, we wanted to do right by providing a feeling of authenticity, and that meant admitting that a bunch of American developers did not know what they were talking about, and drawing in experts from many different fields to teach us what it was like at that time. We have experts on religion, on costume, on motion. We brought them in early and often to review the game.
It helps, of course, that we’re part of Sony. Early on, Japan Studios actually took us on a tour of Tsushima Island for research. They even went so far as to help us with audio recording so that the game sounds right. It’s those partnerships that bring the feeling of the game so that you are wandering through feudal Japan.
You talked about how important exploration is. How are you striking the balance between making sure people are finding things naturally in the way that you want, but aren’t wandering around aimlessly? How do you push people to the right point without them being able to feel the hand pushing them there?
I think the best example of that is the guiding wind that we showed in the State of Play demo. You might choose, as a player, by going to the map and saying, “I want to go right here,” and you go back into the world and there’s no UI. There’s just this in world wind that points you in a direction. It doesn’t tell you how to get there, it just says, “It’s over here.”
Click To Unmute
Ghost Of Tsushima Gameplay: Exploring The Island
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.
This video has an invalid file format.
As you’re traveling through the landscape, you’re going to get distracted. Maybe you see a bunch of Mongols raiding a farm, or in the State of Play there was a bear that was mauling someone. These are things you could just choose to engage in as you explore Tsushima. When you know you chose to set the wind to go right here, that doesn’t mean you have to do it. In fact, I would hope that you don’t. I would hope that you find yourself looking at a hill and seeing some fire and thinking, “Well, somebody lit that fire. I don’t know if they’re friend or foe but somebody’s up there.” And when you go up there, you’re rewarded with content or a secret that makes your curiosity justified.
How do these moments materialize as gameplay? Does it always inevitably end in some sort of combat scenario or is there gameplay variety in those moments?
Certainly there is a fair amount of combat in the game, but there’s more to life than just sword fighting [in Ghost of Tshushima]. There’s a lot of people in need and a lot of ways in which you can serve them. This game, while it tracks Jin’s trajectory from this samurai to giving up his identity to become the ghost, there are characters you’ll meet along the way that, if you decide to, you can get invested in their stories and in helping them out. It’s part of discovery. The game is an anthology of stories that get you to say, “What’s over that hill? There’s probably somebody there that could use help.” And it’s not always fighting at all.
The goal of the game is to get the Mongols out of Tsushima to save the people of your home. And that takes a lot of different forms, like the shipyard in the State of Play demo, or helping somebody recover a loved one that’s been taken by the Mongols, or finding something that’s just been lost while fleeing, looking for food, that kind of thing. This is a wartime epic where you get to know a lot of people who are struggling to survive inside of a very harsh landscape.
In the combat you showed Jin doing these almost instantaneous sword slashes. How do I play that? Is it a Batman-style counter system?
The game definitely features counters. If you have the patience and the skill to read what the enemy’s going to do and then time it right, you can unleash a really devastating counterattack. That’s not the only way you can play. You can also force the attack. You can go after them. It’s not just a waiting game. It’s a very skill-based experience.
One of the things that we strive for really, really diligently is to keep swords lethal. To feel like those samurai movie battles, enemies have to die with a few strokes of a katana, otherwise it’s not a katana, it’s a Nerf tube. That means that when they hit you with swords, you also are going to die in a few strikes. It’s very challenging.
Does that mean the customization that you showed off isn’t as focused on the sword itself? It’s more about armor?
The player gets to decide the growth they want the ghost to have. In this game, it’s not a binary choice. It’s not like you’re a samurai, you fight with swords, or, you’re the ghost, you use stealth. You start the game as a samurai and you’re an expert sword fighter. Those skills never go away. You always have them the whole game through, it’s just that you pick up more stealth abilities as you go and you also get skill points which you can use in a tech tree .. Players get to decide how they want to fight, and the choice of armor that you get or how you upgrade it is just another manifestation of that.
It looked like there were sword styles that you switch between. How does that work and when would you do it?
The stances are new to Jin. He was raised by a samurai and taught to fight in a very traditional style. These Mongols come in and they’re using weapons that he’s never seen before, stances that he’s not used to. On the fly, he’s inventing new ways to fight in order to more directly combat Mongol troops, be more efficient with his sword. It’s a tactical choice what stance you want to use against the makeup of Mongols that are coming at you.
This is a bit nitty-gritty but I need to know: What are the yellow circles and the red bar at the bottom of the screen?
We tried very hard to not have UI because it hurts immersion. However, there’s something where UI really is helpful and a health bar is one of them so the red bar is health. The golden spheres are Jin’s resolve. He uses these to regain a little bit of health. Also, it’s his grit to perform his most devastating attacks. These attacks drain him a little bit, [so] you have to make a tactical decision if you’d rather heal or really bring the fight.
In the original Paris Games Week reveal there was the duel sequence, an element of the game that wasn’t shown in the State of Play thing. They’re a big part of samurai movies, but we didn’t get to see much more of it. Are duels still there and how do they work?
A big part of the samurai films are duels, as you point out. It’s a classic. It’s two highly trained warriors meet and it is going to be an apex challenge in the game. There are a number of them in Ghost of Tsushima where you have to study the person you’re dueling, how they attack, how they move, read attacks, counter, and then look for a window. These are the most challenging encounters you have in the game and it’s just a one-on-one.
Jin is evolving to fight the enemy that he now faces. The Mongols are also now encountering a force that is unusual to them. Is there an element of the Mongols also evolving to meet the new challenges they face?
The Mongols come to Tsushima and they’ve got weapons that the Japanese have never seen before. Gunpowder and all sorts of military structures that allow them to sweep through the island. Jin is fighting in a way that they did not see coming. He’s not adhering to the samurai style that they have prepared for. He starts getting the upper hand and of course, they react. They have numbers on their side.
In their mind, their goal is to bring peace to the people of Tsushima by bringing them into the Mongol empire. They won’t know any strife anymore because they’ll just be part of this big clamped down organization. When Jin is making that impossible to do through completely non-violent means, they just want the people of Tsushima to surrender, they have to intensify, take their own action, which elevates the stakes for the people of Tsushima.
Do you explore both sides of that? Are there people on the island who think, “Maybe the Mongols are good for us. Maybe we should get involved and allow them to govern us”?
This game is a big anthology of stories where you get to know a lot of different perspectives on the war. That’s absolutely the kind of thing that we do, where it’s not clear from everybody’s perspective that they shouldn’t just surrender. Certainly the Mongols believe that they’re providing something that’s really useful to the people of Japan so long as they fall in line, but the people on the island have different opinions about, “What’s the right way to treat these invaders?” who by all accounts have already won.
How do you actually show off Jin’s impact on the world? I imagine the things he’s doing are having a profound effect on Tsushima. Are you exploring that more in a way that’s more than just, “Oh, look, this encampment is now free of Mongols and it’s on fire”?
Certainly he’s fighting back against the Mongols. You learn about what he’s done both through seeing the landscape change, but also the way people talk to you. Jin is transforming from the samurai into the ghost and not everyone thinks that’s great. Characters that you get to know inside of the game might treat you differently depending on how Jin has evolved and comment on that. The whole story really revolves around this transformation, and the characters were put into the game to give another perspective on that change.
You said earlier Usagi Yojimbo was a big inspiration, as was Seven Samurai. What else has been inspirational, or what should people check out to give them a deeper understanding of Tsushima?
I would take a hike. Go someplace where there aren’t the sounds of the city and you can hear the wind going through leaves and appreciate that, because it has its own magic. Of course, you could also watch 13 Assassins or watch Seven Samurai. I think those are pretty good primers if you’re interested in the genre.
Pulling back to just talk about the studio as a whole briefly. Your last game for the PlayStation 4 was the InFamous Second Son and First Light. Now you’re about to release Ghost of Tsushima. What’s it like to have essentially bookended the generation for PlayStation 4 in that way? Do you feel the pressure there?
Right after First Light we started working on Ghost of Tsushima, and we want it to be great. It’s an ambitious product. We’re making a huge world. We’re going after this samurai cinema feel. The years start going by and it’s getting better and it’s getting better and we see that we’re almost done. It just happens to be that we’re done on July 17th of this year. It’s just how long it took to make the game.
What we want to do is just make the best Ghost of Tsushima we can. All of our energy is just polish, polish, polish, polish. I’m glad that we’re very close to the point where we can put it out in the world and everyone can enjoy it.
Hulu’s days of being the odd man out in Disney’s streaming empire are finally coming to an end as the platform is getting a brand new user interface, Adweek reports. The new interface will help not only improve the accessibility of the app but also bring Hulu more in line with its sister services Disney+ and ESPN+.
The UI is set to go live today for certain TV-connected app users and select Roku devices. According to Adweek, the new interface will support vertical scrolling through different content categories and horizontal scrolling through select titles in given categories.
“This navigation pattern is something our viewers are accustomed to and matches the navigation pattern across Disney+ and ESPN+, making it easier for viewers who subscribe to the Disney bundle to switch between services and navigate with ease,” wrote Jim Denny, Hulu’s VP of Product Management about the upgrade.
If you’re not currently seeing changes to your interface, don’t panic–the upgrade may take months to reach all platforms.
Meanwhile, take a look at the new offerings heading your way to platforms like Netflix and Disney+ for the upcoming month, including The Simpsons with an updated aspect-ratio.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Kerbal Space Program 2 has been delayed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The Kerbal Space Program 2 development team put out a tweet on May 20 telling fans that the game has been delayed as a result of COVID-19 and will instead launch in fall 2021. The game was set to be released sometime in Take-Two Interactive’s 2021 fiscal year, placing it between April 2020 and March 2021.
“As you all know, we’ve been working hard to make the best and most authentic KSP sequel possible,” the developer’s announcement reads. “This is an ambitious goal. We are making a big, expansive game loaded with new features, but doing so will take longer than we previously anticipated. With everything going on in the world today due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we’re facing many unique challenges that require more time to safely iterate, create, test, and make KSP2 as great as it can be.”
The announcement goes on to say that despite the delay, fans can continue to expect updates in the form of feature videos, developer blogs, and more leading up to the game’s launch in Fall 2021. The game was originally announced to be coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The announcement did not mention any change of plans in that regard.
Amazon is making its first major push into AAA games began today with the release of the hero shooter Crucible. The free-to-play game is available through Amazon for PC or via Steam.
Crucible is a third-person hero shooter, so it has some elements similar to others in the genre. It adds a PvE element to the mix, though, spawning beasts to defeat throughout the world that help you rank up your team for when they run into other human players. It has 10 characters, each with their own variety of abilities. The characters largely don’t fall into familiar archtypes like tank or support. Instead, their abilities let them plug into multiple functions in the heat of battle. Instead of ammo drops, each character has their own weapons and abilities with cooldown timers. You can also use the environment to set traps.
It’s launching with three game modes: the capture point Harvester Command, team doubles Alpha Hunters, and PvE-focused Heart of Hives. While it has some elements of battle royale like care packages and a tightening play area “ring,” it’s not a typical battle royale. However, it does include a battle pass to unlock cosmetic rewards.
In Take-Two’s latest earnings call, the company confirmed that Rockstar Games’ hugely successful open-world game Grand Theft Auto V has now hit 130 million units across all platforms worldwide.
The entire Grand Theft Auto series has sold more than 325 million units worldwide to date, with GTA V making up approximately 40 percent of the franchise’s sales. (It’s worth noting that these GTA V sales figures don’t include the free giveaway Epic Games is holding until May 21 at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET.)
Just checked the numbers and the GTA franchise has sold more than 325 million units in total. 130m means GTA V is 40% of total GTA game sales. Borderlands around 60m, Red Dead around 52m, Bioshock around 35m, NBA nearly 100m.
In addition to this GTA V sales milestone, Take-Two confirmed some figures for other titles. This includes Red Dead Redemption 2 (31 million units), NBA 2K20 (12 million units, Borderlands 3 (10 million units, up 50 percent versus Borderlands 2 in the same period of time), and The Outer Worlds (2.5 million units).
In other GTA V news, Rockstar Games is celebrating the open-world game by giving away some free guns. Until May 21, you can pick up a variety of pistols for free from the Ammu-Nation gun store.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Kerbal Space Program 2 has been pushed to fall of 2021, past its previous target of releasing by March 2021. Take-Two Interactive announced the delay in an earnings statement, chalking it up to complications from the coronavirus. It said this will give the development team the time it needs to create the “best experience possible.”
The dev team itself also chimed in on Twitter with a statement.
“As you all know, we’ve been working hard to make this the best and most authentic KSP sequel possible,” the statement reads. “This is an ambitious goal. We’re making a big, expansive game loaded with new features, but doing so will take longer than we previously anticipated. With everything going on today due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we’re facing many unique challenges that require more time to safely iterate, create, test, and make KSP2 as great as it can be.”
The statement went on to say it will keep fans updated with developer blogs and video features leading up to launch.
Kerbal Space Program 2 is the follow-up to the engineering simulator that has you build spaceships to launch beings called kerbals into the atmosphere. As it turns out, designing spacecraft and breaking free from a planet’s gravitational pull is actually very difficult, leading to hilarious mishaps as your attempts go horribly awry.
The game is planned for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
One of the key pillars of Microsoft’s next-generation strategy is Xbox Game Pass, and it could be a game-changer for the Xbox Series X and Microsoft’s overall ambition for the future of gaming long-term. Xbox Game Pass is so much more than a catalog of games you can play–it’s also the foundation for where Microsoft believes gaming is headed in the future. And with the launch of Xbox Series X this holiday season, Microsoft has a chance to start this next generation on a much stronger footing than the current one and better set itself apart from its competitors.
Microsoft’s bold new vision for the future of gaming is rooted in its past. Microsoft came up short against Sony in terms of current-generation console sales. Some estimates state that the PS4 outsold the Xbox One by a 2:1 margin. There are plenty of reasons for that, including Microsoft’s hubris around the launch. After a strong Xbox 360 era, Microsoft announced policies around the new Xbox One that fans immediately and loudly rejected, including internet check-ins, a lack of used game support, and bundling Kinect with every system. The console retailed for $500 USD at launch, a full $100 above the price of the PlayStation 4.
In an interview just ahead of launch, I remember asking then-executive Albert Penello about the price gap, and he shrugged his shoulders, appearing confident that it would not make a difference. But it did. Even if some of these digital-centric policies might now be considered by some to be forward-thinking, 2013 was clearly not the time for those ideas to thrive. The Xbox One could never fully recover from its initial launch struggles, but things are different now, and Microsoft is putting itself in a very strong position as it heads into the Xbox Series X era and beyond.
Selling a lot of consoles is good, of course, for bragging rights and revenue, but the real money in games comes from software and services. Phil Spencer, who took over the Xbox business from Don Mattrick, lays it all out in a 2019 interview with The Verge:
“The business isn’t how many consoles you sell. The business is how many players are playing the games that they buy, how they play. I think it’s easy from the outside to judge the health of our business around how many consoles any company sells. In the end, how many subscribers you have to something like Game Pass, how many games people are buying, those are much better metrics on the health of the business.”
Of course, Spencer would say this. Given the beating that the Xbox One took at the hands of the PlayStation 4, it makes sense that Microsoft would look to any metric beyond console sales to rate the success of its business. But Phil Spencer is not just in car salesman mode here.
It’s a fact that game consoles are historically sold at a loss. This has been the case for generations of home consoles and this trend is expected to continue for both Microsoft and Sony with the new generation. Microsoft hasn’t announced a price for the Xbox Series X, but the company is expected to lose money on every unit sold and make up the difference with revenue from software, services, and subscriptions. The future of gaming is about establishing a wide install base and creating an ecosystem where people can connect and play together, no matter what platform they choose to play on. Xbox Game Pass unlocks the first steps in this vision.
Phil Spencer has boldly claimed that Microsoft is intent on reaching the 2 billion gamers in the world. That’s an impossible goal if the requirement is for people to own a game console. It just won’t happen. But you can reach an audience that factors bigger than the current market of console-owners by making games available where the audience is–and that’s everywhere. Xbox Game Pass allows for this, especially with xCloud scheduled to be integrated into the service later this year.
Once xCloud becomes folded into Game Pass, Microsoft will edge closer to creating the elusive and potentially lucrative “Netflix of Games.” Currently, Xbox Game Pass subscribers must download games. And with file sizes for some larger games stretching beyond 100 GB, and possibly growing even larger in the next generation, this can be a long and laborious process that creates friction. Integrating xCloud will allow you to stream a service already available on console, mobile phones, and PC, increasing the addressable market for Xbox. Microsoft still wants to sell you a console, and for the next 10 years or so, a designated piece of gaming hardware will most likely remain the best and most reliable way to play games. It may always be the preferred way for some to play games. But Microsoft is planning for the future where it’s not the only way.
Netflix is not a true parallel for Xbox Game Pass, however. Phil Spencer has been quick to point out that one of the key differences is that Xbox Game Pass gives you the option to buy games through the Xbox ecosystem, whereas Netflix’s content is only available through the subscription fee.
“I love the fact that games are for sale and people can go buy them. We have no goal, there’s no slide deck anywhere that says, ‘Hey, we want to turn everyone into a subscriber, nobody should buy.’ That why sometimes when people use ‘the Netflix of games,’ I bristle a little bit, because Netflix doesn’t sell the content that’s in Netflix,” Spencer said in an appearance on the Gamertag Radio podcast (via USGamer). “For us, if people want to go buy their games, we think that’s a really healthy part of the industry. If there’s games that you’re not gonna go buy, and you want to subscribe to get access to them, we see that as a strong part of Game Pass.”
Click To Unmute
Project xCloud – Official Trailer
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.
This video has an invalid file format.
The key metric to success for Xbox in this new world is Xbox Live users. That’s more important than the number of consoles sold. An Xbox Live Gold user is either paying Microsoft at least $10 every month or $60 a year (at least), and this is the kind of steady, recurring revenue that any business wants to see. Every person on earth who owns a connected device–a phone, a tablet, a PC, or a console–is a potential Xbox Live user, and Spencer’s new vision for Xbox is making a run at bringing them into the Xbox fold. It’s a big and bold move, and Xbox Game Pass is central to that goal.
Xbox Game Pass only works if Microsoft has a steady flow of games to support it. And to that end, Microsoft is bigger than it’s ever been in terms of its game-development footprint. The company now operates 15 internal studios as part of its Xbox Game Studios label, and this is to say nothing of the third-party companies that Microsoft works with. Microsoft has been planning for this moment and investing in its future with its series of acquisitions and the formation of new studios like The Initiative.
Microsoft has never had more game development talent under its umbrella than it does right now–all 15 of Microsoft’s internal game studios are working on next-gen projects currently. If Microsoft, under the direction of Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty, can successfully line up production pipelines and schedule out releases from its internal teams (and others) on a regular cadence, it could create a Netflix-type scenario where there is always something new and interesting on the horizon.
Just look at what’s been announced so far. Halo Infinite, the flagship launch title for Xbox Series X and no doubt one of the biggest projects across the entire gaming industry right now, will release on Xbox through Game Pass. Obsidian, the Microsoft-owned developer of Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds, is making a delightful-looking, colorful, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids-meet-Rust game called Grounded, while Ninja Theory is supporting its melee-focused hero shooter Bleeding Edge and developing a sequel to its acclaimed game about mental health and Norse mythology, Hellbade.
Then you have Turn 10, which is all but surely making a new Forza game for Xbox Series X, while Rare is following up Sea of Thieves with Everwild, a fantastical adventure game. The Initiative, meanwhile, is creating a new game with an all-star team of talent that includes Red Dead Redemption’s main writer. This is just what we’re currently aware of in terms of what the Xbox Game Studios are working on, but it’s clear Microsoft spent what must have been many millions of dollars to scoop up studios to fill out its portfolio across genres to appeal to the widest possible audience. This was all made possible with the financial backing of Microsoft, a trillion-dollar company whose CEO, Satya Nadella, believes in Phil Spencer’s vision for Xbox and is willing to put up the money to support it.
Click To Unmute
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II – In Engine Announce Trailer
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.
This video has an invalid file format.
With every first-party Xbox game launching into Xbox Game Pass, the program becomes a must-have offering for those who play enough games on Xbox. At $15/month for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (which includes a Gold subscription that’s needed for online multiplayer and offers a monthly rotation of free games), you can get your money’s worth quickly, but that’s not a complete or a fair representation of the overall Xbox Game Pass value. Microsoft’s own recently released data shows that Xbox Game Pass subscribers are playing more games, making more friends, and trying genres they might have otherwise overlooked. Anecdotally, you might see the same results.
I tried the XCOM-style Mutant: Year Zero, which is out of my normal shooter/sports game wheelhouse, and I quite enjoyed it. For any platform, from Xbox Game Pass to Netflix, the main goal is to draw people in and keep them consuming content–and spending money. The early results show that Microsoft is succeeding in this department, with 10 million subscribers and counting. (Sure, Microsoft offered a sweet deal–$1 for 3 months–to grow the base, but 10 million is still a strong achievement and it speaks to the growth trajectory of the service).
Another benefit of Xbox Game Pass is how the new subscription model could lead to more creatively unexpected games from people and teams we might have otherwise never heard of. Like Netflix, which is greenlighting and funding the kinds of TV shows and movies that traditional studios might not take on for a variety of reasons, Xbox Game Pass is seemingly setting up something similar and allowing developers to take greater creative risks. A developer can launch their game into Xbox Game Pass with the understanding that the built-in audience from day one is already millions-strong.
It’s a risk, for sure, and success for smaller, lesser-known titles could depend on how Microsoft and Game Pass present and recommends games to people based on personal preferences. But it’s apparently already working based on the recently released Xbox Game Pass data. It appears some developers are already looking at Xbox Game Pass to try to cash in on this new trend. Take, for example, the indie game Moving Out, from Australian developer SMG Studio. The game was surprise-released on Xbox Game Pass in April alongside its paid versions for PS4, PC, and Switch. It’s too soon to say if it was a successful move, but it’s an intriguing data point to consider when looking at the overall appeal of Xbox Game Pass to developers and consumers alike. One game that has massively benefitted from releasing on Xbox Game Pass is Bohemia’s DayZ. The studio recently announced that “hundreds of thousands” of new players jumped into the survival game after it was added to Game Pass earlier in May.
“Xbox Game Pass is a great opportunity for us to open the game to a different audience, and to let a massive number of new players experience DayZ in all its crude harshness and beauty, together with the veterans,” Bohemia publisher director Vojtěch Ješátko said in a news release.
Microsoft appears to be the only one of the Big Three platform-holders to make such an aggressive push into a subscription offering. While Sony’s full PS5 plans have not become clear yet, the existing PlayStation Now program doesn’t offer what Xbox Game Pass already does. The Last of Us: Part II is not releasing into PlayStation Now for subscribers. Spencer previously spoke about how Microsoft sees Amazon and Google as its main competitors in the gaming space, not Sony or Nintendo. That’s not as incendiary a comment as it might seem. Right now at least, Microsoft is the only one of the Big Three that is making a dedicated push into a subscription offering of this nature and scale, so it makes sense that Microsoft would be considering Google and Amazon–with their own vast server and network capabilities–as their top rivals instead of their traditional competitors.
I do believe in Microsoft’s vision for the future of gaming, but I am still left with some lingering questions. I wonder if subscription services like Xbox Game Pass will end up devaluing games in the long-run, and if so, if that is a problem for Microsoft or its development partners to bear. The latest GDC State of the Industry survey showed that more than a quarter of surveyed developers believe a subscription model erodes the value of a game, puts a greater emphasis on advancing the interests of AAA games, and pushes away smaller-tier games that often get overlooked. Some developers are already feeling this pain. The co-founder of Devolver Digital, Graeme Struthers, tells GameSpot that “the world of subscription is a worry.”
Devolver is supporting Xbox Game Pass-as well as PlayStation Plus and Apple Arcade, but at the same time, he said he concerns. “You do wonder if it’s going to lead to a situation where there is so much content that you kind of fall off the edge. That’s the one that keeps us up at night.
We may never fully or completely understand the economic realities of Game Pass. Microsoft does not share any key data about revenue-sharing or its specific agreements with studios related to bonus payments or funding. Microsoft paying for exclusives–or buying entire studios as has been the case in the past–to help bolster the Xbox Game Pass catalog might be an attractive proposition for developers who are understandably looking for comfort and sustainability in a historically volatile industry, but I do wonder whether the rise of Xbox Game Pass and other subscription offerings will having a lasting unforeseen consequences on the games industry in the long run.
“You do wonder if it’s going to lead to a situation where there is so much content that you kind of fall off the edge. That’s the one that keeps us up at night.” — Devolver Digital co-founder Graeme Struthers
Looking at other entertainment industries that have shifted to a subscription model, like the music business with the rise of Spotify and Apple Music, there are countless stories of artists earning less and less compared to the direct-sale model of the past. At the same time, subscription services in the music, movie, and TV fields have opened up all manner of new possibilities for new content that we might have otherwise been denied, not to mention affording consumers the easiest path to accessing content.
With its deep pockets, Microsoft can buy up games and studios and put them to work on Xbox Game Pass titles that will keep users engaged with the service, which is the top objective to begin with. People often observe that Netflix is willing to pay for more content–whatever it is–just to have more for the purpose of keeping users on the platform for as long as possible. It certainly seems possible that Microsoft might adopt a similar strategy with Xbox Game Pass. Gigantic titles like Halo Infinite, Red Dead Redemption II, and others may pay for the more niche titles. But they all have value in terms of keeping users plugged into Xbox Game Pass.
There is also the matter of, as a consumer, further ceding ownership of your games to a monolithic company that can change its policies whenever it pleases to achieve whatever goals it has that have nothing to do with you. I also wonder if a subscription model is truly sustainable. Netflix is billions of dollars in debt right now as it borrows more capital regularly to fund more exclusive content as part of a model that some analysts and media-watchers claim to be problematic. The Xbox team has the backing of the wider Microsoft–a trillion-dollar company–but questions remain about the long-term sustainability and viability of a subscription program in games.
There has never been a games subscription program as big and ambitious as Xbox Game Pass. Would Microsoft have pursued such a bold strategy had the roles been reversed and it was Xbox that came out on top this generation? We can never know, but it certainly feels like a watershed moment for gaming–and that’s something to be excited about at the start of a new console generation.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
It’s hard to keep up with the onslaught of game deals each week, especially considering console storefronts and retailers seem to be offering even more deals than usual on digital games. Whether you have a PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, or PC, there’s probably at least one or two deals that will catch your eye. We’ve rounded up all of the best digital game deals in one place to make it easier to sift through the many, many discounts available right now. From some of the best games of 2019 like Control and A Plague: Tale Innocence to gems of years past such as Watch Dogs 2 and The Witcher 3, you can find deals on a wide assortment of stellar games this week.
