Game Pass can increase game sales in general, but not necessarily titles that are part of Microsoft’s service catalog.
It seems like Game Pass has a negative impact on video game sales. No, these are not words of competitors or authors of reports based on incomplete data. Microsoft itself has confirmed this. in the context of the ongoing discussion on the acquisition of Blizzard by Activision.
For the record, the company has made no announcement on this subject. The information is due to the UK’s Consumer Protection Authority (CMA), which recently released a report outlining an investigation into the aforementioned transaction.
On page 57 of the document available on the agency’s official website, we read that Microsoft’s internal analysis showed a drop in game sales in the year after the title was made available on Game Pass. The public version of the report does not say exactly how much of a drop is registered (the number was hidden).
Game Pass can help developers, but not necessarily increase sales. Source: Microsoft.
We find a similar statement elsewhere in the report. Here too, the “censorship” has done its job, but internal Microsoft documents show that “Adding titles to Game Pass would cannibalize game sales.” This is supposedly the reason Activision Blizzard has refused to offer “new content” on this service (page 101).
At first, this seems like an obvious conclusion: a lot of people pointed this out five years ago when the service hit the market. However, as recently as 2020, Microsoft claimed that Game Pass not only wasn’t holding back, but was actually increasing game sales.
So, was the Redmond giant wrong? Not necessarily. Yes, three years ago, Sarah Bond, of the Xbox division, informed the Bloomberg agency of the positive impact of Game Pass on game sales. Only, according to him, it was supposed to manifest itself by an increase in spending on games in general (by 20%), and not on the games available on the Microsoft service.
More dubious is Phil Spencer’s claim from 2018. At the time, the Xbox boss said in an interview that Game Pass could boost sales of titles added to the service.
It’s worth noting that Spencer was specifically referring to “games like Forza Horizon 4 and State of Decay 2” and not every title in the service’s catalog. However, most players tended to read this in a broader sense, as seen in player discussions of the information included in the CMA report.
Passionate about video games (and others) for years, he completed an MBA in linguistics, defending a thesis on games. He started his adventure with GlobeLiveMedia in 2015, writing in the editorial department, then also covering movies and oh, horror! – technology (also a contributor to the Games Encyclopedia). He started with platform games, which he still loves (including metroidvania), but he also likes card games (including “analog” games), fighting games, soul games and virtually any other kind of game. Don’t ask about the graphics: after a few hours of exposure, you can revel in pixelated game characters reminiscent of the days of the Game Boy era (if not older).
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