Jim Ryan, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment and PlayStation, recently stated that PSPlus is a more "meaningful" subscription service than Xbox Game Pass. During an analyst Q&A session (disclosed via leaked FTC court case documents against Microsoft), Jim Ryan responded to questions about XGP's business model issues and the challenges of adding a AAA game with a budget of over $100 million to the subscription service.
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The question asked if Microsoft wanted to add these games to XGP, would it have to provide publishers with a minimum revenue guarantee, or would it need to buy more Activision-like assets to put on its platform. Ryan responded that he was convinced that Microsoft had tried to provide minimum revenue guarantees to publishers, but had not been successful, which in turn prompted Microsoft to make large-scale acquisitions.
Ryan himself has discussed the XGP model with all publishers, and everyone dislikes XGP because the service is not only disruptive to individual games, but to the industry as a whole. He pointed out that Microsoft announced in January 2023 that the number of XGP subscribers would reach 25 million, and he expected this number to be much more than that, because Microsoft has invested huge amounts of money in this service. In addition, he pointed out that PSPlus already has nearly 50 million subscribers, and he believes that PlayStation's subscription service is more meaningful, implying that XGP does not have such meaning.
Finally, he compared Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision with Sony's $3.6 billion acquisition of Bungie, believing that the value Bungie brings to PlayStation far exceeds what Activision can bring to Microsoft, and this is a comparison without considering transaction price comparisons.
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