I've never seen someone say gamepass is bad for third parties. But I try to stay off twitter.

Wise.

Recently Xbox admitted that Game Pass cannibalises sales (which was obviously going to happen at some point) and I'm assuming that some Twitter console warriors are therefore concluding that Game Pass must be bad for developers without knowing the financial agreements between Xbox and said developer, that is what I'm assuming Mike is responding to.

If I were to guess the line-up order, I'd say - Tomb Raider > Fable > Perfect Dark > Deus Ex > Eidos New IP.

Xbox have never given any real clarification on the topic but it's definitely on a game by game basis a great indie that was on no ones buy list would make it's development budget back from the sign on fee and then boost the sales from word of mouth and positive views leading to greater success but a terribly received AAA game if something like Saint's Row remake or Forspoken launched on Gamepass could hurt the sales even more as people would just play it "free" on Gamepass instead.

They also never included the most important parts of revenue + profit since unit sales is a redundant figure of success for anything except Nintendo published games such as if game sales are 10-20% lower did more people buy DLC or expansions at $15-20 or people buying the Ultimate upgrade designed for Gamepass on games like FH4+5 because they effectively got the game for free on their sub.

Yeah, these people act like these 3rd party devs are giving their games to Xbox to put onto Gamepass for free, or that Xbox gives the devs only a chump-change payment. That very clearly isn't the case. For instance we heard that Xbox's Gamepass payment for Guardians of the Galaxy was between $5-10m, and that wasn't even a day one Gamepass deal, that came to Gamepass 4 months after release, and considering that Guardians of the Galaxy had fallen as low as $20 per copy at that point, it means that Xbox effectively paid Square Enix for 250-500k lost sales as a result of being on Gamepass. And of course some will have taken advantage of the Gamepass discount to buy copies of the game as well.

I can safely guarantee you that these larger day one Gamepass deal payments are well over the $5-10m for Guardians of the Galaxy, which came 4 months after release. Day one Gamepass deals on big games like Atomic Heart, Wo Long, Back 4 Blood, Sniper Elite 5, and Outriders likely all had payments of $30m or more associated with them, $30m is enough to compensate for around 428k lost sales at a $70 price tag as a result of being on Gamepass. 

5 AAA games in 5 years is a lot for 2 studios

It is but Eidos is huge (600+ Employees) so I don't imagine they'll have much issue as Fable is a Co-Development with Playground Games whose Fable team is probably nearing 200 (and they keep moving Horizon employees over to the Fable team).

Crystal Dynamics may be a little tighter, Tomb Raider and Perfect Dark but The Initiative is tiny and only leading the creative, Crystal Dynamics is around 300-400 employees as well but according to an accurate leaker, Tomb Raider is a lot further along in development than everyone thinks and should actually release before Perfect Dark.

Really hope it is something they have actively been working on since Wolfenstein Youngblood, if it is, it should be nearing the finish line now with soon to be 4 years of development. Imagine Wolfenstein 3 coming as our Q4 AAA exclusive this year, that would be super dope. 

Tomb Raider before Fable? That would be a bit surprising to me, seems Crystal Dynamics did the bulk of Avengers which only released in 2020, and they left a team on it to do DLC until just recently when they closed ongoing development on it. Crystal had 273 devs as of the Embracer acquisition last summer according to Embracer documents, so let's assume they left 50 devs on Avengers DLC and bug fixes after it's 2020 launch and kept them there until only recently and have 150 devs assisting The Initiative's 50 devs with Perfect Dark. That leaves just 70~ devs working on the next Tomb Raider since Avengers released in 2020. I'd be shocked if we see Tomb Raider before late 2024 personally. 

According to an accurate leaker, Tomb Raider is a lot further in development than everyone thinks and will release before Perfect Dark, I believe he said he thinks they'll be a year between them so with that being said, I would assume that Tomb Raider was in production before Perfect Dark and has the bulk of Crystal Dynamics on it.

He also said that Tomb Raider transitioned from UE4 to UE5 very smoothy as well.