Over the past week, Xbox has burned away what little goodwill it gained this year under newly appointed CEO Asha Sharma with widespread, ongoing layoffs and studio closures, leaving storied teams like Double Fine hanging in the balance. With the console giant now once again circling the red ring of death, everything is under scrutiny – including Game Pass.
Developers were reportedly told to focus on critical hits that win awards and grow subscribers, not commercial blockbusters, and those same developers are now being punished by new management for doing exactly that.. The sustainability of the service and its future are being questioned, with Duke Nukem creator George Broussard telling the industry, “Where did Game Pass come from?”
As wccftech reported, Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler of No Rest for the Wicked and Ori fame responded with what reads like a post-mortem, claiming that Game Pass could work if it had a catalog worth looking after.
“The Game Pass strategy could work if people came to it,” he said. “The problem is they didn't, and the software catalog wasn't nearly good enough to make people happily pay a subscription every month. It's the same with streaming in the movie business: I'll happily pay for my HBO subscription because HBO has amazing content that I want to watch. I'd keep the sub just so I could binge on The Sopranos, The Wire, [Game of Thrones]etc. But with games, “NEW” is very, very important to players for some reason. And if your new content doesn't even remotely match the quality of your old content, you've got a problem.”
Would an Xbox Game Pass subscription save more “cultural events”?
Mahler argued that Game Pass needed studios to produce “blockbusters” and “cultural events,” contrary to what the developers — the award-winning critical darlings — had been told. However, with no Xbox exclusives nominated for GOTY since 2010, even that proved elusive. “Which big Xbox game in recent years was just amazingly good?” Mahler continued. “That game doesn't exist. Almost every first-party studio has floundered in recent years. You wish Bethesda would make a 'Skyrim in space' that should be better than Skyrim because it was an old game: But instead we have Starfield.”
His post goes on a bizarre tangent, comparing Game Pass to communism, suggesting that “if you don't give people a strong incentive to roll up their sleeves and go the extra mile, they won't do it. And then if you don't get the quality you need, it all falls apart because players won't pay unless you basically force them by making content that's so good they won't miss it.”
Game Pass is a bit like communism in some ways. And just like in communism, if you don't give people a strong incentive to roll up their sleeves and go the extra mile, they won't.
There are of course holes in Mahler's argument. Starfield wasn't supposed to be a Game Pass title because development started before Microsoft even acquired Bethesda. There are also some notable hits under Xbox's belt, namely Forza Horizon and Indiana Jones. The reality isn't that developers aren't given a “strong incentive” to make good games — as Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier put it, “it's really hard to make great art when you're working in fear of layoffs and turbulence and cancellations and shutdowns.”
Likewise, the idea that Game Pass will be saved by “smash hits” and “cultural events” is dubious, as launching day-and-date flagship exclusives risks cannibalizing premium sales, as we've seen with Call of Duty – only further hurting studios. Xbox's problems run two generations deep, and the desperate attempt to close the gap between PlayStation and Nintendo by piling billions of dollars into acquisitions has only exacerbated the problem. So while Game Pass may have its faults, the problems on Xbox's first-party PC run much deeper than a lack of hits.
I don't care if closing an Xbox studio makes financial sense, they're still shit
Xbox will be unrecognizable by the end of this month.
