Launched on Xbox One in 2017 and later on Windows, Microsoft’s Game Pass is an idea that, on paper, seems intriguing: adapting Netflix’s then-trendy new model—subscription-based online video-on-demand—to video games. It’s interesting because it makes sense: video games remain a form of entertainment that can be consumed “on the fly” on a whim. Except that, unlike video (movies, series, documentaries…) or audio (music, podcasts…), in practice, a video game remains a commercial product that is much harder to make profitable due to the nature of its production.
The question of the profitability of new games released directly on Xbox Game Pass was actually already being raised “back then,” particularly among indie studios that saw their profits impacted by the fact that their titles were available “almost for free” on the service (revenue provided directly by Microsoft to include the games in their subscription). Today, following the backlash from the closure of several Xbox studios, including Tango Gameworks (which remains baffling), we now have Microsoft itself asking (finally!?) whether it might be unprofitable to see their newly acquired Call of Duty IP—the commercial pinnacle of video games—released on day one via Game Pass, a service they seem to view as more important than the Xbox brand itself, even though in 2023 this certainly wasn’t a point of internal debate…
It’s clear to me, after all this, that Xbox Game Pass should have been limited to older games released before the console’s launch, with perhaps a few exceptions—or maybe even a system of periodically rotating new games that have been available for several months. On Xbox One, for example, Game Pass should have only included Xbox and Xbox 360 games from Microsoft and third-party developers who accepted the offer, and perhaps even implemented a periodic rotation of Xbox One games owned by Microsoft to introduce them to players—but the idea should have been to offer a catalog of games that the Xbox One doesn’t natively support. On Xbox Series, it’s the same, but this time they would have gradually added their Xbox One catalog to the service—it’s that simple!
Because that’s exactly what Nintendo is doing with the NSO subscription right now: a catalog of older games that started with NES and SNES titles, then expanded to Game Boy and GBC, and later added GBA and N64 games in a new upper tier (including Switch game DLC and Sega Mega Drive games). We’ll see how Nintendo continues its offering on the “Switch 2,” since we already have access to almost all Nintendo games and we know officially that the NSO will continue on that platform. But one idea (it’s just an idea) is that the “GBA+N64” tier merges with the base tier, and in the upper tier they gradually add GCN and Wii games (hard to say about DS and 3DS games), with—why not—a new partnership with Sega and their Dreamcast games, for example (it’s just an idea that Nintendo certainly won’t do, but we’ll see, who knows).
Xbox’s decision to release new first-party games on Xbox Game Pass is questionable. It’s a double-edged sword, and back then, Microsoft certainly had everything to gain by launching this service to stay competitive with PlayStation. In my view, it would have been viable only for small- to medium-budget games, such as Hi-Fi Rush, for example, while keeping the big-name titles available exclusively for purchase. And with the approach I described above, Microsoft could have released its “Xbox Game Pass” wherever and however they wanted, just as they do now, and it certainly wouldn’t have had the cannibalization effects on the games in question that we’ve seen over the past few years. It might even have encouraged players to discover their new games and platforms.
Specifically regarding the “Game Pass” service (because there are obviously other issues to address, notably the acquisitions that have weighed heavily and have now directly led to the closure of Tango Gameworks), the Xbox brand has been paying the price for the past 2–3 years for a strategic misstep: having to manage a subscription service on top of their own console, a decision that wasn’t sufficiently thought through from the very beginning of this service project.
