There’s no question that Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass are some of the best deals we’ve got as consumers in gaming, but the developers who made these deals with Microsoft shared some very different thoughts on it. Xbox boss Phil Spencer claimed that using Game Pass actually helped games sell more in 2018, but that’s not the case. At least not now.
The good folks at GamesIndustry.biz have seen the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority’s interim report on the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard acquisition, which includes the following statement:
“Microsoft also suggested that its internal analysis showed that base game sales declined twelve months after adding the base game to Game Pass.[ē·Øč¼Æ]%ć
Even Activision has made its concerns clear in the past, as the report also states that the Call of Duty publisher believes that putting its game on Game Pass will:
ā(ā¦) seriously cannibalizing B2P[č³¼č²·éę²]Sales, especially in the case of new releases.
Makes sense, doesn’t it? Of course, word of mouth will obviously lead to some sales, and perhaps more people subscribing to Game Pass. Hi-Fi Rush’s success on Steam is a recent example, but having nearly 30 million Game Pass subscribers getting a game “for free” would obviously hurt most games’ sales figures. The only question is: how much are developers and/or publishers paid to bring their games to Game Pass, and how many people are spending more on microtransactions etc. to support games that receive this offer?