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| Otter said: I feel like people who are pointing at gamepass forgot where Xbox was last generation... MS wasn't going to justify or sustain huge investments in modern day first party exclusives with a dwindling 50m userbase who have a predominant preference for online shooters and 3rd party offerings. Without gamepass there would be no competitive edge to Xbox the last decade, there would be even less first party development & way less investment overall. You would still have a dwindling <50m userbase but it would likely be even smaller, as the limited exclusives Xbox has would not be packaged in such an attractive deal. So you have an even small userbase and yet still ever increasing game budgets. Xbox would absolutely need to put their games on other platforms. Accountability means you can't just blame gamepass for people not doing their jobs properly. The "supposed custodians" of these mismanaged projects have all the autonomy to put good management in place but Xbox was not built on that principle. Projects like the Initiative failed because Xbox did not put importance in management not because the Activision acquisitions meant they could not manage. It would be like blaming live service games for Sony failing with Concord instead of blaming Sony for not identify what makes a promising GAAS in a saturated market. Gamepass is being used to explain away 15 years of bad Xbox management. I won't argue gamepass was that best innovation they could offer but it clearly gave them a competitive edge and kept them in the market where they otherwise lacked any meaningful recent software output. If you removed the recent acquisitions and looked at Xbox's output of big hitters since the series X/S Launched you are essentially left with Halo Infinite & Forza Horizon .. It's not a reasonable assessment to even suspect that a quarter of the revenue Gamepass has generated would somehow be replaced by premium sales of the meager 2-3 games from Xbox's slim 1st party line up. Gamepass was a lifeline, They'd honestly be doomed without it making their offerings more attractive. The question should be how did their output become so bad that they needed to buy the likes of Activision & Bethesda to make themselves look worthwhile to stakeholders. Gamepass is not the culprit, It's the consequence. |
Yes, gamepass helped XBox One a lot. But the mistake was sticking to day 1 launching on Gamepass.
Halo Infinite and Forza Motorsport definitely suffered from day 1 release on gamepass. MS knew this would eat into their own sales, hence going on a buying spree to add more content, instead of focusing on making Halo and Forza great.
Gamepass is not the culprit, It's the consequence.
It goes both ways. Gamepass both helped XBox and changed the way games were made/published. "Good enough for Gamepass" didn't become a theme for nothing. Gamepass is a symptom of the underlying management problems at XBox game studios, a band-aid.
The focus on service instead of 1st party games led to the meager 1st party line-up and buying up studios.
Gamepass didn't fix any of the underlying problems. It slowed down the dwindling user base while the internal rot keeps on festering. So many great IPs MS could have continued on, instead they chose to focus on service rather than making games.
