I'm confused what we're debating about honestly. Are we trying to blame Game Pass for the current issues? Lol. Game Pass has absolutely nothing to do with the current issues, Game Pass literally saved Xbox from Satya killing it and today it is profitable. Game Pass wasn't the reason Unity, EA, Embracer, Sony, Epic, Take-Two, Riot, Twitch, Sega, Niantic, Ubisoft, Amazon Games, CDPR, etc, had layoffs.
The simple explanation is that what is going on is a combination of.
A. Current issues in the industry which are affecting everyone, a stagnant market which isn't growing, investors aren't happy with flat growth and they aren't happy with 1% growth, it has to be big growth otherwise it's not good enough, it has to be infinite growth otherwise investment slows down and/or stops, the gaming industry overall lately is flat.
This leads to Microsoft making moves like releasing on PS/Switch and Sony releasing on PC.
Hi-Fi Rush flopped on PS and Steam as well.
B. Acquiring ABK. When you have a division (XGS/Zenimax) which has a combined profit margin of under 10% and then you acquire a publisher which has a profit margin of around 30% then as a financial person you're going to ask the question "Why can ABK do that but XGS and Zenimax can't?" and projects like Hi-Fi Rush do not bring in big money or big profits.
Coupled with the success of the Fallout show they're probably like "Why the fuck do we not have Fallout in development? Why don't we have multiple Fallouts in development?" What they're going to do is layoff employees and then use that freed up logistics/funding, etc. To then hire people to work on Fallout/Core IPs so they can get them out faster.
These problems would exist with or without Game Pass, these layoffs would have happened with or without Game Pass, I would argue without Game Pass, Xbox would be in an even more dire situation because they have a lack of exclusives and flatlining console hardware, Game Pass is a key reason to remain locked into the Xbox ecosystem now.
