There’s no doubt that Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass are the best game deals for us consumers, but the developers who make these deals with Microsoft have shared very different ideas about it. Xbox boss Phil Spencer has claimed that being on Game Pass helped games sell more in 2018, but that’s not the case. At least not anymore.
On GamesIndustry.biz, you saw the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) interim report on the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and it includes the following statement:
“Microsoft also reported that its internal analysis shows a (x)% drop in base game sales twelve months after they were added to Game Pass.”
Even Activision has made its concerns about this clear in the past, as the report also claims that the Call of Duty publisher believed putting its titles on Game Pass could:
“(…) severely cannibalize B2P (buy-to-play) sales, especially for new releases.”
It makes sense, right? Word of mouth will surely generate sales and maybe more people will subscribe to Game Pass. The success of Hi-Fi Rush on Steam is the most recent example, but the fact that nearly 30 million Game Pass subscribers are receiving “free” games will hurt most titles in terms of sales. The only questions are: how much do developers and/or publishers get paid to bring their games to Game Pass, and how much more do they spend on microtransactions and the like to support games that use this offer?