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Report: Microsoft paid Big Cheese $600,000 to bring Cooking Simulator to Game Pass

Eddie-Griffin

Eddie-Griffin

Banned
Microsoft paid "Big Cheese" $600,000. The money itself is "Big Cheese" you see, slices of cheddar.

https://game-news24.com/2022/08/15/microsoft-paid-600000-to-bring-chef-simulator-to-game-pass/
https://www.aroged.com/2022/08/16/microsoft-paid-600000-to-bring-chef-simulator-to-game-pass/
https://wtftime-ru.translate.goog/a...tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
Cooking Simulator, which was released on Steam back in 2019, will be included in the Game Pass subscription. Because of its reports made by Big Cheese Studio, developer of the game, we can understand how much that is.

To add the game to Game Pass, the corporation paid 600,000 dollars to the developers of Cooking Simulator in a one-time payment. That’s a good deal for Big Cheese Studio: Microsofts money equals roughly 22% of its revenues in the last fiscal year.

The game will be expanded after the appearance of Cooking Simulator in the Game Pass library. It is unlikely that this will negatively affect the sales of the project: based on SteamDB data, the games audience has dropped a noticeable proportion since the release. Today the highest limit online in the game is 300 people.

According to Polski Gamedev, Cooking Simulator has sold more than 700,000 copies. The developers sold more than one thousand copies of multiple add-ons.
Click to expand...

This makes me wonder what they are paying for to bring other games to Game Pass that don't join voluntarily? Especially AAA games? $6 million? $60 million?

I know they want to have a large library but if they are paying that kind of money for small indies I think they may be going about this the wrong way. Cooking Simulator isn't the type of game to attract a large audience to sub to Game Pass, and it's not a console seller either.

Of course, this depends on how reliable this information is but given that Big Cheese is a polish studio and all the links are European related gaming sites, there is a high likelihood on their accuracy but always use caution.

I think Microsoft needs to be a bit more careful with what companies they throw their money at, the game isn't bad but $600,000 could have been used to grab a game that would be a bigger drive to the service or the Xbox console at large. That's a lot of money for a game that may bring in less interest to Game Pass than Luckys Tale.

And they paid them 22% of their revenue, talk about overkill.
 
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twilo99

twilo99

Member
Also, they are technically just renting the games for a certain amount of time. I wonder how long would that game be on there for .. 600k should give them at least 3 months lol
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Member
Well we know Guardians of the Galaxy was $10 million and that was well after its initial release, so we can extrapolate from there, roughly speaking.

One of the reasons MS have been going for games like Cooking Simulator is because any other, larger 3P AAA release for at least the next year or two exclusive to Sony or where Sony has marketing rights on, will 100% be off-limits for GamePass. But the people who get mad at Sony for that are getting caught up in their feelings. Sony was making some of these deals as far back as 2020, 2019 even 2018 in some cases, so the bigger question should be WTF were Microsoft not doing during that time to simply not be at the table?

Same way people who get mad at Microsoft buying Zenimax and ABK because it might complicate the situation of some games for Sony's platforms; nothing necessarily stopped Sony from making a move on Zenimax, or even ABK (well, theoretically in that one's case). But they already had their own strategy that didn't account for buying those publishers out, so it is what it is.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Member
yazenov said:
Why does Microsoft need to pay indies to put their games on Gamepass if it increases game sales? Shouldn't they be lining up at MS's office to sign the deal without any financial incentives since Gamepass is such a money maker?
Click to expand...

Well I think we both know the answer to that question. That answer's also partially the reason they have gone out to purchase Zenimax and ABK; the chances of them putting their own big AAA releases on GamePass Day 1 were virtually nil without an acquisition.
 
Eddie-Griffin

Eddie-Griffin

Banned
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
Well I think we both know the answer to that question. That answer's also partially the reason they have gone out to purchase Zenimax and ABK; the chances of them putting their own big AAA releases on GamePass Day 1 were virtually nil without an acquisition.
Click to expand...

Except there are studios that have joined the program voluntarily.

The problem is in this case it's some european indie that already sold 700,000 copies and unlikely will generate more subs so i don't get why they would spend money on this instead of a more advantageous Indie game with bigger mindshare that hasn't joined by themselves.

BTW, Zenimax had some games on gamepass day 1 before the buyout so I don't think that acquisition was for Gamepass.
 
Ass of Can Whooping

Ass of Can Whooping

Gold Member
Last edited:
Leyasu

Leyasu

Banned
Eddie-Griffin said:
Microsoft paid "Big Cheese" $600,000. The money itself is "Big Cheese" you see, slices of cheddar.

https://game-news24.com/2022/08/15/microsoft-paid-600000-to-bring-chef-simulator-to-game-pass/
https://www.aroged.com/2022/08/16/microsoft-paid-600000-to-bring-chef-simulator-to-game-pass/
https://wtftime-ru.translate.goog/a...tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc


This makes me wonder what they are paying for to bring other games to Game Pass that don't join voluntarily? Especially AAA games? $6 million? $60 million?

I know they want to have a large library but if they are paying that kind of money for small indies I think they may be going about this the wrong way. Cooking Simulator isn't the type of game to attract a large audience to sub to Game Pass, and it's not a console seller either.

Of course, this depends on how reliable this information is but given that Big Cheese is a polish studio and all the links are European related gaming sites, there is a high likelihood on their accuracy but always use caution.

I think Microsoft needs to be a bit more careful with what companies they throw their money at, the game isn't bad but $600,000 could have been used to grab a game that would be a bigger drive to the service or the Xbox console at large. That's a lot of money for a game that may bring in less interest to Game Pass than Luckys Tale.

And they paid them 22% of their revenue, talk about overkill.
Click to expand...
600k is nothing, and will probably keep the game on there for eternity.

People talking about big AAA not being on there should think about it before asking the question. Publishers would probably be asking for more than the game costs to make. Why would Microsoft pay that when they ain't the publisher or don't have it exclusively.

It works out better in the long run to buy/acquire the I.Ps and the talent to make the games..... Anyone see the correlation with what they have been doing the last few years??
 
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Leyasu

Leyasu

Banned
Ass of Can Whooping said:
Yeah not a very concrete source. That number still seems way to low even if it was flop.
Click to expand...
Low perhaps, but the game had been out for months and was probably selling not a lot. A few million to rent the license for a fixed period is nothing to be sniffed at by the publishers.
 
Stuart360

Stuart360

Member
Leyasu said:
600k is nothing, and will probably keep the game on there for eternity.

People talking about big AAA not being on there should think about it before asking the question. Publishers would probably be asking for more than the game costs to make. Why would Microsoft pay that when they ain't the publisher or don't have it exclusively.

It works out better in the long run to buy acquire the I.Ps and the talent to make the games..... Anyone see the correlation with what they have been doing the last few years??
Click to expand...
Well i mean people are looking at it as $600k for 'trash' when these kind of games do very well on PC, hense the 700k sales for this 'trash'.
PC is quite different to the console market games wise in a lot of ways.
 
Leyasu

Leyasu

Banned
Stuart360 said:
Well i mean people are looking at it as $600k for 'trash' when these kind of games do very well on PC, hense the 700k sales for this 'trash'.
PC is quite different to the console market games wise in a lot of ways.
Click to expand...
Trash or not, it is still content that some people ( I probably wont) will download and play.

600k is but a smidgen of the monthly revenue that they are pocketing from GP subs.
 
Stuart360

Stuart360

Member
Leyasu said:
Trash or not, it is still content that some people ( I probably wont) will download and play.

600k is but a smidgen of the monthly revenue that they are pocketing from GP subs.
Click to expand...
No you didnt get what i mean, i agree with you. I mean there are people saying they paid 600k for some trash, when in reality these kind of games are very popular on PC.

Its back to the old 'AAA or bust' with many on here.
 
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Bragr

Bragr

Banned
Banjo64 said:
Ok, I didn’t know that.

I’ve just checked Metacritic though, and the only platforms with reviews are PC and Switch, and it looks dog shit on both?

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/cooking-simulator

https://www.metacritic.com/game/switch/cooking-simulator
Click to expand...
The PC version is OK, but it's an incredibly odd game.

The campaign is based on time trials, you have to serve customers before they get angry, but by playing like that, it becomes incredibly stressful and hectic. What is fun in Cooking Simulator is taking your time and cooking the meal right and learning how to make stuff. But the campaign works against that, it rather wants to be a stressful time trail campaign where you sprint back and forth throwing shit into a pan. This is the main reason for the bad reviews, it's just a bad way to experience the game.

And for some weird reason, they added these weird physics, for example, when you turn quick, all the food fly off the plate. Combined with the hectic pace of the campaign, this means you will run around spilling food everywhere. It's like playing one of these comedy games like surgeon simulator.

The game is really cool early on in the campaign when it goes slow, but it turns into a different annoying sort of game after two or three hours.
 
Banjo64

Banjo64

cumsessed
Stuart360 said:
No you didnt ghet what i mean, i agree with you. I mean there are people saying they paid 600k for some trash, when in reality these kind of games are very popular on PC.
Click to expand...
The Xbox is a game console, not a PC.
Stuart360 said:
Its back to the old 'AAA or bust' with many on here.
Click to expand...
Fake news. I listed 3 indies above which I’d consider a better use of funds. There’s tonnes of quality indie games that aren’t on Game Pass, it’s just whoever is in charge of identifying games seems to be a glue sniffer at present.


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