In an internal memo sent to Xbox staff, new Xbox boss Asha Sharma has reportedly said the platform’s subscription service has become “too expensive”. The memo, seen by The Verge, also points to a potential reworking of the subscription model.
“Game Pass is central to gaming value on Xbox. It’s also clear that the current model isn’t the final one,” Sharma wrote in the memo. “Short term, Game Pass has become too expensive for players, so we need a better value equation. Long term, we will evolve Game Pass into a more flexible system which will take time to test and learn around.”
It comes six months after Xbox Game Pass’s most recent price hike, which many considered a tipping point for the service. Game Pass Ultimate increased by 50% per month, from $19.99 to $29.99 per month, while PC Game Pass increased from $11.99 to $16.49.
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Over time the simplicity and value of the service has become a bit mangled: initially, back in 2017, you’d pay $9.99 and get access to the whole Game Pass library. Nowadays, what you get depends on whether you’re subscribing to the Ultimate, Premium or Essential models. Which one has Silksong and brand new Xbox games, like the forthcoming Fable, at launch? You’ll probably get a headache trying to figure it out (hint: it’s the Ultimate tier).
Aside from the diminishing value proposition for users, the very concept of a ‘Netflix for games’ has started to sour, especially among developers. “If you give stuff for free, what you’ve done is told people not to pay for it,” said the director of Revenge of the Savage Planet after the game blew up on Game Pass but failed to make much actual money. Only months before, former Bethesda VP Pete Hines said “the majority of game adoption on GP comes at the expense of retail revenue”.
Former Sony executive Shawn Layden was unequivocal last August when he likened game subscription models to wage slavery.
When changes do come to Game Pass it’s likely they’ll be big: under Sharma, Xbox looks set to refocus its efforts on the sanctity of its console hardware, resulting in the memoryholing of its ‘This is an Xbox’ marketing campaign. Despite emphatically losing two console generations, Xbox has already confirmed it will try again in the form of Project Helix.
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