Former Xbox Executive Confirms Game Pass Creates Tension With Developers

Xbox Game Pass may be a big value for players, but it is a divisive service among those actually making the games. Back in 2017, Xbox introduced Xbox Game Pass, a service that allowed players to play select titles from a digital library at no extra cost. It was a great deal and allowed players to find games they may not have otherwise discovered, let alone paid money for. It’s also a great way to find co-op games without having your whole friend group break the bank on something they may not enjoy. The service only got better in 2018 when Xbox began adding first-party games to the service on release.

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While many would agree, it’s a great service to have if you don’t want to spend hundreds or maybe even thousands of dollars on games every year, its actual viability has been called into question. How can a service that only generates roughly $20/per user every month allow blockbuster games with multi-hundred million dollar budgets to become profitable? How does all of this math shake out? It may make sense for older games that have already sold the bulk of their copies, but for day one releases, it’s a harder path to see. It has been a debate for a while and while Xbox claims Xbox Game Pass is profitable, it does still apparently lead to tensions internally.

Xbox Game Pass Is a Source of Tension With Developers

Bethesda’s former Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications Pete Hines recently talked about Game Pass and how despite it leading to games getting heaps of players, it hasn’t stopped the studios behind them from being shut down.

“I’m not working in any of these companies anymore, and so I don’t assume that everything I knew while I was in the industry still holds true today. At the same time, I’m involved enough to know I saw what I considered to be some short sighted decision making several years ago, and it seems to be bearing out the way I said. Subscriptions have become the new four letter word, right? You can’t buy a product anymore,” said Hines in an interview with DBLTAP.

“When you talk about a subscription that relies on content, if you don’t figure out how to balance the needs of the service and the people running the service with the people who are providing the content – without which your subscription is worth jack shit – then you have a real problem. You need to properly acknowledge, compensate and recognize what it takes to create that content and not just make a game, but make a product. That tension is hurting a lot of people, including the content creators themselves, because they’re fitting into an ecosystem that is not properly valuing and rewarding what they’re making.”

His comments were echoed by former Xbox Game Studios Vice President Shannon Loftis on LinkedIn. The former executive spoke about how although some games found success on Game Pass where they otherwise wouldn’t have, it has created problems and tension for other games, particularly ones that don’t have any in-game transactions or major post-launch monetization strategy.

“As a longtime first party Xbox developer, I can attest that Pete is correct,” said Loftis. “While GP can claim a few victories with games that otherwise would have sunk beneath the waves (Human Fall Flat, e.g.), the majority of game adoption on Gap comes at the expense of retail revenue, unless the game is engineered from the ground up for post-release monetization. I could (and may someday) write pages on the weird inner tensions this creates.”

Ultimately, it seems like there were concerns raised about the viability of Xbox Game Pass internally and maybe they weren’t all heard or acted upon, leading to problems. Nevertheless, Xbox remains committed to the service as it tries to bring it to as many devices as possible. Xbox’s end goal is to have Xbox be more than a console, but a service that allows you to game through things like the cloud on your smart TV or computer. Today, Xbox even announced it has partnered with LG to bring cloud gaming to screens inside of select vehicles, which could be huge for those going on long road trips with their family.

Some Xbox Game Pass critics have also suggested the service has conditioned players on Xbox to not buy as many games, as they just hold out for the release on Game Pass. There’s no actual hard, official data to support this, but there are probably people that would rather just wait for an eventual Game Pass release, which means games that don’t even arrive on the service take a hit too.

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