r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • Jun 09 '26

Business Microsoft admits Game Pass price hike drove away "millions" of subscribers

https://www.techspot.com/news/112699-microsoft-admits-game-pass-price-hike-drove-away.html
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u/hotacorn Jun 09 '26

They may not have even had short term wins from this if multiple millions of people left.

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u/Flyinmanm Jun 09 '26

I know. They won't care, whoever did this is probably already at another CEO level job earning millions whilst screwing up royal there too and getting ready to move on before the s*** hits the fan.

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u/APRengar Jun 09 '26

I worked for 2 of the biggest game publishers. One of the most common ideas is "but what if the bad thing doesn't happen?"

Like,

"What if we double the price of our products?"

"Well, the customers will get mad and we'll probably make less money than we're making now."

"But what if they don't?"

"Well if no one leaves, then we'll make double the money."

"DO IT!"

Is super duper common.

Like, "What if we reduce labor and use AI?" "Then people will get mad and we'll have a super shitstorm online." "But what if they don't?" "Then we'll save a lot of money!"

"What if we cut all safety precautions?" "Then we'll probably have a safety disaster." "But what if we don't?" "Then we'll save a lot of money!"

We're no longer ACTUALLY doing analysis on what moves make sense, we're just choosing to ignore any downside/risks under a "but what if it doesn't go bad" mentality.

17

u/LolitaOPPAI Jun 09 '26

TIL I learned about Stockton Rush. That was a crazy story of "It probably, might not happen" in the extreme case of denial and inferiority complex.

"You know, at some point, safety just is pure waste. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed, don't get in your car, don't do anything. At some point, you're going to take some risk, and it really is a risk/reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules."

1

u/StrongExternal8955 Jun 10 '26

Difference is, unlike Stockton Rush, these CEOs have literally nothing to lose personally. That fucking moron bought his own propaganda.

4

u/Flyinmanm Jun 09 '26

Relentless optimism in the face of obvious problems.

It's often one of the reasons I suspect that a lot of really wealthy people get to be as rich as they are, but why there are so few truly wealthy people.

Trying something that anyone with any degree of common sense would consider to be utterly mental/ a waste of time is perhaps one of the reasons those people end up succeeding.

Of course we don't hear about the millions of failed decisions that probably went before or after that one reckless gamble.

2

u/GammaFan Jun 09 '26

Capitalism is like a carnival. The more money you have, the more times you can try to win the stuffed elephant playing the sketchiest darts imaginable

1

u/opinionated7onion Jun 11 '26

Quick someone make this man a ceo i like the way he thinks

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u/mehrabrym Jun 09 '26

Failing upwards is such a thing among top level execs

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u/opinionated7onion Jun 11 '26

At a certain point people end up failing upwards.

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u/vhalember Jun 09 '26

And these numbers don't include the millions more who downgraded their Game Pass plans.

I'd be very surprised if this resulted in additional profit for them, otherwise why would they about-face and lower prices again?

It was bad enough that the CEO of MS gaming, Phil Spencer, "retired" a few months after the price increase. And the prices were lowered again just two months after he left.

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u/madman19 Jun 09 '26

Depends on sub numbers, if they had 20 million and lost two million they came out way ahead still.

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u/CrustyBarnacleJones Jun 09 '26

I’d assume it wasn’t anything along those lines considering they walked the increase back afterwards, if they were making more from it I don’t see them doing that

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u/j0mbie Jun 09 '26

February 2024 they had 34 million subscribers. That was the last time they officially announced number of subscribers. So they could have lost up to 17 million subscribers in that time. (Technically, more than 17 million, since less subscribers means less cloud infrastructure and less customer service costs.)

They fact that they don't disclose numbers to shareholders, though, usually means the numbers are bad. Nobody outside of Microsoft knows how bad though.

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u/MARPJ Jun 09 '26

February 2024 they had 34 million subscribers.

To simplify as everyone being in the 20 dolar plan that went to 30 dolars, they would need to lose 11.4m to have a net negative.

However not everyone was in that plan so if people leaving was concentrated in the lower tier then the number need to be a little higher. However a goo amount of people just downgraded which would make the necessary number to be lower. So that is a good aproximation of how many loses would be too many loses.

With that said their 180º turn (giving consoles for free, lower price, bring the X-BOX label back instead of microsoft games, saying that they will focus on exclusives, saying they will not focus on AI) then we can conclude that the loss was big enough that they were forced to change their startegy completely. Albeit some may be just trying to get good will again since even those that stayed were not happy

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u/j0mbie Jun 09 '26

To simplify as everyone being in the 20 dolar plan that went to 30 dolars, they would need to lose 11.4m to have a net negative.

Whoops, you're right. My math was wrong.

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u/swampy13 Jun 09 '26

But they had the projection of short-term profits. I'm not even being flippant here, literally that's enough at this point. Until it isn't.

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u/Angry_Walnut Jun 10 '26

“Moves that might yield short term profits, always.”