State Of Decay 3 Could Skip Game Pass After Xbox Sales

Xbox is going through a crisis, having just announced a gigantic wave of layoffs involving almost every studio the company owns. For some, it's just layoffs, but Xbox has decided to say goodbye to some studios altogether, such as Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, Double Fine, Arkane Lyon, and Undead Labs developer State of Decay 3.

With the latter, it was revealed that Undead Labs had already been bought by another company. Xbox CEO Asha Sharman revealed in a statement today that Undead Labs has “entered into terms to join new ownership,” though the studio's new owner has yet to be revealed, with an announcement expected later this summer.

State Of Decay 3 Could Now Skip The Game Pass

While this is good news for Undead Labs, which will avoid layoffs and continue working on State of Decay 3, it poses some pretty interesting problems for Microsoft. For example, Game File claimed that part of the deal that allowed Undead Labs to be taken from Microsoft was the fact that the title was not required to be listed on Xbox Game Pass.

The Xbox CEO somehow wants “more than a billion people” to log in every day.

Despite all the challenges Xbox has faced and has yet to face, CEO Asha Sharma believes it can still entertain a billion people a day.

If you go back to the recent Xbox preview where State of Decay 3 had a fairly long gameplay trailer, almost every reveal was backed up by a statement that the game would launch on Game Pass. In fact, when we went through the demo, Xbox actually promises that you can play State of Decay 3 “day one with Game Pass.”

Of course, just because the new owner of Undead Labs isn't obligated to put it on Game Pass at launch doesn't mean it won't. Microsoft could probably make it happen if it wanted to, and probably should if it wants people to take its storefronts seriously in the future. Between this and Hellblade, it's hard to believe anything Xbox has to show, and taking away the promise of Game Pass probably won't help.