JOYCE LIN: Hi, everyone. Welcome. We're really
excited to be here with you today.
My name is Joyce Lin,
and I am here with my colleague Eugene Kim.
We have the really fun job of working with creators like
you to bring amazing games to the Game Pass portfolio.
Really excited to talk to you today about
how to maximize the total value for your game.
Whether you're new to working with
Game Pass or you've
partnered with us a bunch in the past,
I think there's something fun
and interesting for everyone.
Let's dive in.
I want to start with this idea of
what is the total value for your game?
Is it gold coins raining from the sky?
That might be part of it, but we also
think there's more to it than that.
What might be some of the options?
Glad you asked. We've got some a little pop quiz for you.
Is it A, reach more people,
B, create new fans,
or C make more money?
Really good options, all of them.
You probably guessed it already,
but the answer is D all of the above.
We actually think that's
really exciting news for everyone here.
Let's talk more about how those three things
fit in with what we talk about with total value.
Our total value equation has three components,
and keep this in mind because we're going to
revisit them in a lot more depth later on.
The first one is discovery.
Game Pass is a powerful engine for
discovery because we help your game stand
out on our surfaces and
channels and help you reach new audiences.
Two, Game Pass creates
new fans and in some cases brings back old fans.
We ultimately help you reach
the most engaged gamers on our platform.
Lastly value, Game Pass
helps you unlock additional financial upside with
a combination of business models
and by connecting you with
an audience that's willing to
invest in their gaming experiences.
It's this combo of discovery, engagement,
and value that we really need when we talk
about this concept of total value for your game.
That all sounds great.
But we know there's hurdles and obstacles to
overcome and it can be hard to achieve these goals.
The main challenge to achieving these goals is
that consumers have more choice than ever before.
We're not just talking about gaming,
we're actually talking about all forms of entertainment.
Think of the example, when you finish dinner,
you're sitting down on the couch at 8:00
PM and you're like, what should I do?
You're really not just thinking
about your gaming choices.
You're thinking, "Hey, maybe I'll turn on
Netflix and watch a TV show.
Maybe I'll turn on Xbox."
But we know that consumers have a lot of
choices for their free time.
As a content creator,
you're really competing with
this huge spectrum of entertainment options,
and it's a real challenge to
stand out amongst all of these choices.
We have a lot of sources of
entertainment competing for attention.
The average US household has nine subscription services.
That's a ton. Soon we're going to need
a subscription to manage our subscriptions.
We have more ways than
ever to connect with that content,
25 connected devices per household.
People are spending on subscriptions,
nearly $300 a month per household.
Then lastly, just to bring it back
to the gaming industry specifically,
the options and content have grown
a ton. On Steam alone
there's 10,000 new games launching in a year.
That's almost 30 games a day that are launching.
With so much content competing for consumers attention,
the real challenge for you is how do you stand out?
That's really where Game Pass can help
you and where Game Pass really shines.
Our vision for Game Pass is to be
the ultimate discovery engine for your game.
How we do this is by curating
a catalog of great gaming experiences across
multiple end points and
continuing to invest over time to make
your game stand out and surface
it to the right people at the right time.
That's really the power of Game Pass.
This vision is also reflected in how we talk
about the value prop for our customers.
You may have seen our tagline,
which is discover your next favorite game.
Again, our vision is really to help people
discover great content, including yours.
Content has always been at the center of
our vision as we've built the Game Pass product.
From the beginning we focused on
delivering a really high quality library of games.
I personally love this stat,
which is that since launch Game Pass has launched
over 60 games of the year winners from over 30 awards,
and this is across first party and third party.
The reason I love this stat is because it just
speaks to the quality of the library,
the quality of the creators that we get to work with.
Ultimately, when your game is
in Game Pass it elevates your game
too and helps you stand out amongst
all the choices that gamers have.
Whether your game is a new launch
or it's been around for
a while, Game Pass can play
a role all throughout your game's lifecycle.
Again, it's through this combination
of driving discovery,
engagement and total value.
Just a few specific examples of where
Game Pass can be a tool in
your toolkit for new game launch.
Maybe you're thinking about maximizing
your reach Game Pass can do that.
Maybe your game is well into its life cycle
and you're thinking more about lifecycle management.
Again, Game Pass is
a proven vehicle to reignite interest in your game,
both with new and lapsed players.
It's also a proven way to accelerate
transactions and spend again
because you're reaching an audience that is
willing to invest in their experiences.
Or maybe you're thinking about building a franchise and
maybe thinking about launching
that next installment in the franchise.
Again, Game Pass can help you grow
that audience and widen the funnel for your franchise.
As you can see, Game Pass is a powerful tool
for creators like you to maximize discovery,
engagement and value for your game.
I will now hand it over to Eugene to take
you through each of
those elements in a little more detail.
EUGENE KIM: Perfect. Thank you, Joyce.
As Joyce mentioned, my name is Eugene Kim,
I work on the content planning team here for Game Pass.
Very excited and delighted to be here with you today
because I actually really enjoy using the service.
It's been a great way for me to keep in touch
with family and old friends during the pandemic.
Let's dig in. Let's start with discovery,
which we define as reaching more gamers.
We spend a lot of time in the upfront about how
Game Pass can be that discovery engine for your game.
Let's look at some insights.
First, we find that after our members join Game Pass,
they play more games.
To be specific if you compare
the 90 days before and after someone joins Game Pass,
they play on average 40 percent more games.
Importantly it isn't just about playing more games,
our members are trying new genres.
This is important because our own research
shows that gamers get into a comfort zone,
where they know what
they like and they keep playing what they like.
But in the 90 days after someone joins Game Pass,
we typically see that they play
about 30 percent new genres.
This also dovetails with
some info that we have from our own members.
Over 90 percent of our members have
actually told us that they play games
they wouldn't have otherwise tried without Game Pass.
Now this is User behavior, as a Platform Holder,
we also have some additional analytics
and insights that we can share.
Let's start with what we call Back Catalog
games and the impact on audience size.
Here you can see again comparing
that 90 days before and after Game Pass entry,
the average player left for
games on the Xbox ecosystem that enter Game Pass.
On average a game that
enters Game Pass will see player lift
evolve over eight times after it enters Game Pass.
Importantly there is a range on this,
if a large healthy game
with a very large player base will see
a smaller but still substantial lift of around
in the lowest sample from our study 60 percent.
But I want to call your attention to the right side of
the graph with this is
what we call our Hidden Gems Category,
and many of these games are from independent creators.
What we find is that in the highest sample in our study,
almost 30 times as many people play
the game after they entered the Game Pass catalog.
Those are back-catalog games.
As Joyce mentioned, we also support new launches,
here we can look at two data points of interest.
The first is if we compare
games from large publishers that launched into
Game Pass and compare their audience size in
the first 30 days versus similar games.
We find that on average
this player lift is over three and a half times.
That's really significant particularly given
the size and scale of
the titles that are in this category.
For Independent Creators,
there's even more benefits.
You see on the right side here that if we
compare games that launch day one into Game Pass,
we see a 15 times player lift
for Independent Creators games,
again in that first 90 days.
Now that's all well and great,
that's data from the Xbox ecosystem.
In fact, we can actually compare
this against Steam and we know Steam is
an important marketplace for so many creators and
so many games, let's dig in.
Over the past two years,
we've partnered with third-party creators on
over 100 different titles to launch into Game Pass.
If we compare the audience size between
our Game Pass members and first 30 days owners on Steam.
We find that on average a title that participates in
Game Pass benefits from
a three and a half times lift versus Steam owners alone.
This is really significant when
you think about our vision for Game Pass,
which is to become the discovery engine for your game.
Let's turn the page here and talk about engagement,
or what we call creating new fans and bringing back
old ones including our Halo superfans here in this image.
First, we really think
Game Pass can create a cultural moment for your game.
If we look at the 90 days before and after it's
a theme of the social conversation volume.
Specifically, if we look at tags and
mentions on Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook,
all of the various channels and compare it to
the 90 days after we've
announced that a title has come in Game Pass,
we see that there's three times as much conversation.
We can really help create that cultural moment or
buzz for your game so that everyone is talking about you.
As fun as social media is though,
it isn't just about getting you
a lot of mentions on your favorite channel of choice.
We've actually discovered that
our members are our own best advocates.
If we look at social connections
within the Xbox platform,
we find that Game Pass members have
three times as many social connections as other players,
and in a way, that network effect
really becomes incredible marketing for your title.
For those of you who have multiplayer experiences,
it also makes the barriers to entry so much lower.
It's as simple as right-clicking
on someone's profiling and hitting "Join".
This really shows that our members in a way,
are becoming the best advocates for your content.
It's not just about playing together though,
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention streaming.
I want to shout out here Ninja in the lower
left," You got to start playing
Halo," way back in the day.
That is an ancient photo,
but you don't have to be as famous as he is
to be an influencer for Game Pass.
Here we can see a couple of senior leaders
at Microsoft having a lot of fun playing Monster Train.
Anecdotes aside, what we've actually
discovered is that Game Pass members are
about four times as likely to stream
themselves playing on Twitch.
That's really significant, again going with the themes of
the Discovery Engine and then
creating and bringing back fans.
We've covered discovery and
engagement let's get to the good stuff.
Total value, what we call driving financial upside.
We mentioned at the beginning of the presentation
that our members are some of
the highest engaged and highest propensity to
spend members of our ecosystem,
and we can actually put
some facts and figures behind that.
If we compare spend
between Game Pass members
and what we call look-alike users,
similarly highly engaged,
high propensity to spend gamers.
We find that on average,
our members spend about 50 percent more in the ecosystem.
Now importantly that is not
limited to one category or the other,
this lift in spend is consistent across Base Games,
Add-ons, and Consumables.
I want to dig in on those latter two categories
in particular because
we actually have some additional data showing
how Game Pass accelerates transactions.
If we look at the volume and the revenue
generated from Game Pass PSM
as we call it post-sale monetization.
That's Add-ons and Consumables from the previous slide,
and we compare the 90 days
before and after a title enters Game Pass.
We find that on average PSM transactions
increase almost three times,
that's a massive increase in revenue.
Importantly two-thirds of this revenue increase
is driven by Game Pass members,
and 50 percent of
this revenue increase is coming from members
who've never played the game
prior to it being available in our catalog.
This really shows that
the three pillars are working together,
helping our members discover new games,
making them fans of your game,
and in the end coming back to buying game content.
However, it isn't just about in-game transactions.
For those of you who have free to play
games and we love all games,
our Ultimate Perks program is yet
another way for us to partner with you and drive value.
I won't belabor the details on this slide,
I'll just simply point out that our members have spent
over $175 million in
free-to-play games where we've
partnered through our Perks program.
I want to close with one slide that points to how
our business model has helped
unlock value for independent creators.
Here in the graph, you'll see two bars.
The left side is total revenue
for independent creators in 2016,
and the right side is total revenue
for independent creators in 2020.
What you'll find is that first,
there's been a 300 percent or 4x increase in
independent creator revenue in
the four years of our study.
Much more significantly for Game Pass though,
if we look at the portion that's actually coming from
Game Pass participation fees
and our performance bonus programs,
two-thirds of this growth is being driven by Game Pass.
Again it comes back to that theme that
our business model is
helping drive creator success and value.
JOYCE LIN: That's all we have for you today,
hope you've enjoyed it.
I know we've had a lot of fun
walking you through these insights.
If you're already partnered with
Game Pass, big thank you.
We're almost as happy as
these two cute dogs in the picture,
and let's keep talking about opportunities.
If you're new to Game Pass, welcome.
We love all games and we would love
to talk to you about your game,
and here are a few ways to reach out to us.
I hope you-all enjoyed the time
with us today. Thank you so much.