By In a recent Q&A, former GamesIndustry.biz chief Christopher Dring has spoken about the impact that launching a title on Xbox’s Game Pass subscription service has on potential unit sales of a video game.
Game Pass is a subscription service charging a monthly fee and giving Xbox console and PC gamers access to a rotating library of several hundred video game titles – including the big selling point of ‘Day One’ releases from Xbox’s first-party studios.
The service initially saw quick growth but has subsequently appeared to have stalled in recent years. Once embraced by its community, scepticism is higher now following game studio closures, Xbox’s struggles, a lack of major Xbox exclusives, and the perception that the service (like many other subscription services) are raising prices while offering less content or lower content quality.
As of February last year, Game Pass had 34 million subscribers. The launch late last year of “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6” on the service reportedly introduced a larger number of players to the service.
Now, speaking to Install Base (via The Gamer), Chrs Dring explains the impact being on Game Pass can have for developers:
“Anecdotally, games that are in Game Pass can expect to lose around 80% of [their] expected premium sales on Xbox. That’s the figure that gets thrown around. It’s less if it’s a big mainstream release, but generally… look at how low Hellblade 2 charted. Or where Indiana Jones came. Or even Starfield. Game Pass clearly hurt sales of those titles on Xbox.”
Dring is not all doom and gloom though, he says that for multi-platform releases being on Game Pass “can be beneficial” and those games that get a boost in players through the service may result in “a strong impact on sales on PlayStation”. Dring adds:
“I am actually torn on subscription. I believe it can lead to lost revenue, and services like this make it harder for everyone else. Try being an indie game on Xbox right now that’s not on Game Pass. But also, getting people to play your game in 2024/2025 is so, so, so hard. And subscription gets games in front of lots of people.
We know from data that there are a lot of people that only play Call of Duty. And if some of those people decided to get Call of Duty this year via Game Pass, and those very same people took the opportunity to play some other Game Pass games, games they wouldn’t have otherwise played… it’s hard to argue that’s a bad thing..”
He goes on to talk about the overall trajectory for the market saying although subscriptions have a decent audience, there’s hasn’t been much growth recently. Then he says that with the biggest games in the world right now being free (ala. “Fortnite,” “Minecraft,” “Roblox,” etc.”) and hundreds of hours long, a subscription service seems ‘fanciful’.
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