The numbers don't lie: Game Pass is a complete failure

[Serotonin]

When Game Pass released, it became one of the few competent things the declining Xbox brand had going for it. It was so good it was carrying Xbox by it shoulders and forced its competitors to adapt (PS+ and NSO). After early success, Phil Spencer went all in.

The Game Pass dream was what pushed Microsoft to buy Activision Blizzard, a very controversial but promising avenue to sell Game Pass subscriptions. After all, day one Game Pass Call of Duty would in theory be a no-brainer for Netflix-addicted normies.

Shortly after the acquisition, Microsoft reported 34 million Game Pass subscribers. They wanted 77 million subscribers by 2026.

It didn't go up. It went down to 30 million.

This is very disturbing because we now know that MS's acquisition philosophy was built entirely on Game Pass subscription potential - doesn't matter if the game sold well or was critically acclaimed or had large customer retention, if it didn't result in a Game Pass jump, the developers suffered.

The saddest thing is that good people have to suffer because of the brunt of Microsoft's excess. The excellent Hi-Fi Rush was shadow dropped to test the online-focused Game Pass. Despite being the best thing Microsoft has released since the 360 generation, its company was nearly shut-down. Asha's 'reset' is only going to make things worse. id Software are one of the gaming industry's most important companies, but because Doom: The Dark Ages didn't result in a billion Game Pass subscribers the company was decimated. And god forbid you if you're a smaller/AA developer that MS only bought for indie cred, like Double Fine.

So what now? What does Xbox do? They seem to be going for desperate crowd-pleasers but a third version of Halo: CE now on PlayStation isn't going to mend the damage caused. They can't decrease the quality of Game Pass nor can they convince gamers to jump on it.

 

[Neb Lleb]

And so... The damage caused by the current ongoing Video-Game Crash has finally begun to rear its ugly head. They tried to turn gaming into an always online subscription-based service, and it has begun to backfire horribly.

First the stocks crashed, and now the anti-consumer practices are beginning to reek havoc on those who implement them.

 

[Vardalis]

Rip bozos.

Really though, the entire strategy was flawed for a medium where most cash is generated through initial sales, DLC and microtransactions. People already embedded in an ecosystem, like Steam or Playstation, aren't going to jump ship because of Gamepass. People who buy Fifa, CoD and nothing else aren't likely to keep forking out month after month for Gamepass. People who have dozens of subscriptions for things like Netflix, Prime, Doordash, etc, aren't going to be as enticed as opposed to just buying a game outright. They also kept giving out cheap or extremely discounted periods of Gamepass. What was the retention rate on those? It's also the thing of when a game leaves the service that's it. You don't own it. You're doing rentals on things that tend to last longer than a box set or series of movies on a streaming service, and if you ever wanted to play them again after they're gone you'd have to buy them anyway. So why not buy them in the first place.

Not to mention the whole "everything is an xbox" campaign muddying the waters and general signposting and consumer awareness being extremely poor during this period of Xbox. I couldn't even tell you what the most recent powerful version of the console is called as someone embedded in the hobby.

 

[Anim8rDude Anim8rDude]

Not really all that surprising. When the gamepass price almost doubled in Canada I just put my Xbox away in the closet for good. Sad to see'em go but not much sympathy.

 

[ArchienineZXAdventArchienineZXAdvent's icon]

I think that we can start to say goodbye to ID and other companies brought by Microsoft