Game Pass bought installs, not players: what actually brings someone back

Microsoft is reportedly ending day-one first-party releases on Game Pass and capping cloud gaming hours. Most people read that as a subscription story. On this episode it turns into a much bigger one.

Greg Posner is joined by Simon Pulman, Justin Ruiss and Colan Neese for an hour that opens on Control Resonant shipping eight weeks before GTA 6 and closes on Blizzard reopening a twenty year old back catalogue. Four separate stories, one argument underneath all of them: almost every way this industry gets a player in front of a game is a cheque somebody else can stop writing.

In this episode:

Control Resonant landed at 84 on OpenCritic with a 6 and a 10 in the same week, and why the spread is more interesting than the average

Why review scores arrive too late in the funnel to move units, and what a strong score actually buys you

The release-date rule almost nobody follows: do not ship the same day as EA FC

What success even looks like for Remedy, and why that question cannot be answered without knowing the budget

Everyone's top three game trailers of all time, including one a panellist can still quote thirteen years later from a game he did not like

The leaked Game Pass changes, and why two million players on a free tier is not two million players

The case for advertising inside games, argued by the people who would get blamed for it

Blizzard, BlizzCon, and the millennial nostalgia wave landing inside a single month

Never Entertained is live every Friday at 10am ET.

Full written recap: https://playerdriven.io/live/never-entertained-why-players-come-back

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