Video Games Consoles – Billionaire365

Microsoft To Combine Xbox Live Gold With Xbox Game Pass [which just got Minecraft]

We just talked about the incredible sale of Minecraft in the past 10 years since it launched on PC, and it’s still rising. The sales will continue to get higher not just on PC, but also on more platforms if Microsoft will combine the two subscriptions into a single one.

As reported by Twitter user @h0x0d, we could see a new service from Microsoft called Xbox Game Pass Ultimate:

https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1114159135048646657?s=20

This person claims that the service will only be $14.99 per month, which is quite the bargain, considering Xbox owners will save almost $5 per month if Microsoft really wants to combine the services. As The Verge pointed out, Microsoft will certainly reveal something about this in the next weeks when they will unveil the disc-less Xbox One S All-Digital edition.

Why should we trust what @h0x0d tweeted?

It’s simple: it makes perfect sense, and it’s a good strategy, which has been used in the past by Microsoft. Remember the Xbox All Access subscription which bundled together with a leased Xbox One X, Xbox Live Gold, and Xbox Game Pass for $34.99/month? Probably that one-time offer was testing the reaction of users and how the bundling service was received by players.

Considering all the aggressive marketing around the Xbox Game Pass and the fact that the disc-less Xbox One is counting on the digital games offered through the Microsoft services, a bundle named Xbox Game Pass Ultimate isn’t far-fetched.

The games added to the Xbox Game Pass since it launched are Sea of Thieves and Crackdown 3, and Minecraft was recently added. Microsoft is also working on the xCloud streaming service to let players stream games on different platforms (PCs, smartphones/tablets, consoles).

Randy Smith

Nintendo Is Ready To Stop Video Games Consoles Manufacturing If The Market Changes

For more than 30 years, Nintendo has been involved in the video consoles industry. Now, the company’s president Shuntaro Furukawa stated that Nintendo is ready to stop video consoles manufacturing if the market changes. That information comes as a shocker for many fans, but, before starting to worry much about it, you should know that Nintendo is not planning to ditch the production of consoles anytime soon.

“At the moment we’re offering the uniquely developed Nintendo Switch and its software – and that’s what we’re basing how we deliver the ‘Nintendo experience’ on. That being said, technology changes. We’ll continue to think flexibly about how to deliver that experience as time goes on,” said Shuntaro Furukawa during an interview with Nikkei. “We aren’t really fixated on our consoles,” he added.

Nintendo Switch, however, is a great success as it sold more than 23 million units in 2018 and predicted it would sell over 17 million in 2019. Thus, Nintendo is on the wave so that it won’t ditch video games consoles manufacturing anytime soon.

Nintendo Is Ready To Stop Video Games Consoles Manufacturing If The Market Changes

“It has been over 30 years since we started developing consoles. Nintendo’s history goes back even farther than that, and through all the struggles that they faced the only thing that they thought about was what to make next. In the long-term, perhaps our focus as a business could shift away from home consoles – flexibility is just as important as ingenuity,” Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo president, continued.

Founded in 1889 as a playing card company, Nintendo moved to the video games industry in the mid-1970s when it started developing games.

Now, Nintendo is one of the most successful companies in the industry, and, according to its president, Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo should focus more on smartphone gaming segment which is “continuous stream of revenue.” Furukawa hopes to turn that into an about one billion dollars industry for Nintendo.

Anna Galvez