Xbox's only goal for the past decade has been to increase subscriptions to Xbox Game Pass. The wave of acquisitions, overseen by former Xbox chief Phil Spencer, were all aimed at turning Game Pass into a thriving service on par with Netflix.
Unfortunately, while Game Pass started off well, it couldn't sustain the growth needed to justify Xbox's excessive spending. The service also had the added consequence of turning $40-$70 releases into $10, taking guaranteed revenue away from studios' core audiences as people signed up for Game Pass and then canceled their subscriptions to the service after finishing the first release.
The first platform release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was a 'final ploy' for Spencer's grand plan, but it clearly didn't deliver the growth needed to justify the lost revenue from Call of Duty faithful who would buy the game anyway.
Now, Xbox Game Studios is experiencing a series of mass layoffs as new executives shutter studios and cancel projects in an effort to return the Microsoft subsidiary to profitability.
Game Pass was a good idea despite its failures
In a recent interview with MinnMax, Forza Horizon 5's creative director Mike Brown, who left Playground Games in 2023, gave his thoughts on where Xbox and Game Pass are headed.
“They've invested a lot of money into the concept of Game Pass as a service. It's led to a ton of teams being acquired, a ton of games being funded, a ton of people getting jobs, all with the vision of making sure that regular games are included in this service for players. The reality is, I don't think enough people are subscribing to it at the price they have to pay to make that business viable,” Brown said.
“We are now going to see studios closing or being spun off,” he continued. “A lot of people are going to lose their jobs, and that's honestly just a result of the well-intentioned, player-centric concept of Xbox Game Pass not taking hold yet. I think that's a real shame, and as much as people are pointing fingers at other people within Xbox and calling them the villains of the piece, the concept of Game Pass is a good idea. Let's subscribe, let's make it cheaper, let's make games available to more people. We're going to have a really diverse selection of games. We're going to get a ton of studios on board and make games that wouldn't exist otherwise. I will make…”
Brown makes some compelling arguments, and if all had gone as planned, Spencer's approach to the acquisition would have been sound. Unfortunately, Xbox hasn't been able to release enough games to keep Game Pass's momentum going. No one could have predicted the mediocrity of Starfield, the chaos within Halo Studios, or how long some of these projects would take to produce.
In terms of the development cycle enabled by services like Game Pass, Pentiment is the only one that comes to mind. It's a great, critically acclaimed game from a small team within Obsidian in a genre that doesn't have mainstream appeal but is suitable for a subscription service.
Unfortunately, Game Pass had too few of these gems, and even Xbox powerhouses failed to deliver the project in time to save its grand plans.
- Number of concurrent devices
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5 people, with friends and family (in select countries)
- number of accounts
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1 primary account holder
