When Microsoft announced Game Pass in June 2017, a different monthly subscription service was headed for a dizzying flare. This was MoviePass, which slashed the subscription price from as low as $50 to $9.95 per month. Suddenly, subscribers can watch a movie every day of the month for less than the cost of a single ticket in most cities. It was too good to be true, and millions of people gleefully tapped as MoviePass bled money and tried to forcefully weaponize the movie industry in a deal that would save it from itself.
It was great while it lasted.
Now, five years later, Microsoft’s Game Pass has surpassed the potential for an amazing flare-up. It’s proven successful: there’s no reason to worry about Game Pass closing any time soon, as more than 25 million subscribers pay each month to access hundreds of games. If you are an active gamer and have diverse tastes, this is the best deal in gaming.
Like MoviePass, I think Game Pass is too good to be true, but on a much longer schedule. It will not be a flame. Instead, the deal is only going to get a little worse as we keep paying for a subscription that looks as universal as Water or Netflix. An industry analyst recently suggested there’s no reason to worry about the future as a Netflix-like service dominates games, but I think Game Pass may eventually reflect some of the worst aspects of Netflix’s recent history.
A price jump (almost) is inevitable
Game Pass is still in the subscriber building phase, with net profits secondary to attracting new users. That doesn’t mean it’s burning cash, though: In an interview conducted in November 2021, Phil Spencer said Game Pass “is very sustainable as it is today.” One can argue Any thing Sustainable in a company worth more than $2 trillion, but let’s say Game Pass is either profitable or it will get there. Microsoft will be fine. The most likely outcome here is that Game Pass will become a worse deal for subscribers over time.
In 2014, Netflix cost $8.99 for the standard subscription and $11.99 for the premium; The price has since gone up five times, and is now $15.49 and $19.99. It nearly doubled in less than a decade. Inflation can’t explain it: The 2014 price is about $11 in 2022, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculation.
So far, the price of Game Pass hasn’t risen from $10, though Microsoft has added a $15 tier in Game Pass Ultimate, which includes Xbox Live Gold, cloud gaming, and more. But like any publicly traded company, Microsoft needs to make more money each year, and Game Pass accounts for a large portion of Xbox revenue. Seems to increase prices approx It’s inevitable once Microsoft gets enough subscribers hanging with its library.
Xbox Live subscribers responded when Microsoft tried to drastically raise the price of Xbox Live in early 2021, so the company quickly fell back. Next time Microsoft is likely to raise its subscription prices like it’s boiling a metaphorical frog: slow and steady, and nobody gets too upset. The only reason Microsoft might be keeping Game Pass cheap is because the company takes 30% of every digital purchase on Xbox — a win-win for keeping more people in the ecosystem. can The benefits outweigh the increased price of Game Pass (and the inevitable loss of a few subscribers). But let’s be real: Microsoft will want to make more money both ways.
Deal gets worse for developers
In the first two years of Game Pass, indie game developers praised the deals Microsoft made to get their games in the library. Their games can become profitable even before they even appear, and Game Pass doesn’t seem to negatively affect the number of copies they sell elsewhere. I asked an independent publisher if the good deals to be included in Game Pass would still be popular. “The general consensus is that [Game Pass deals] They’re still good.”
It will probably go on like this for years, but it will always be in Microsoft’s interest to prioritize the games that most subscribers play. In the long run, this goal likely won’t resonate with creators making games that fall outside of certain demographics. It’s also not likely to mean re-scaling deals for games that have already spent time in the Game Pass library, as opposed to flaunting the new additions.
This has become a major point of criticism with Netflix, which aggressively cancels shows after a season or two even if they are doing well. The creator of The Baby-Sitters Club, which was canceled after two seasons despite doing “much larger numbers” of HBO shows like Succession, said it appears that “Netflix’s internal metrics can change from month to month.” Financially it makes sense for Netflix to kill the shows you do Fine To spend money on a new offer can lead to new subscriptions instead.
The industry analyst who spoke about Game Pass at GDC wondered if the mix of first party games and other major franchises would “squeeze” smaller games in terms of discoverability, and whether “the conditions for acquiring these games or putting those games in [Game Pass] begins to deteriorate. With the full production of Bethesda, Activision Blizzard, and other first-party studios on Game Pass, Microsoft can maintain a healthy subscriber base going into the future without ever worrying about third-party games.
Subscription wars
Nobody is happy with the state of streaming TV these days, with shows and movies split between Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon, Apple TV+, (hiss) Paramount+ and Peacock. And that’s even before you step into the boutiques of streamers like Criterion and Shudder. It wasn’t always this way: In the early years of Netflix streaming, it secured huge swathes of shows and movies on the cheap because the networks didn’t have their own streaming platforms. NBC now wants you to pay $5 a month just to watch The Office.
So far, games haven’t seen the obnoxious proliferation of subscription services, but few publishers have dip their toes. Ubisoft owns + Ubisoft, and EA has EA Play, which is also currently integrated with Game Pass. Sony’s upcoming rival subscription program is already bad news for PC gamers, making it more costly to stream games on PC, and it’s easy to see Game Pass’s growth inspiring more competition down the road than Take Two, Epic, Square Enix, Tencent or Embracer Group .
Even if the same hateful dichotomy plagues gaming subscription services, it won’t be at least as annoying as with TV and movies – games are still easy to buy on the first day, which is often not an option at all with Netflix shows. But there are still all kinds of potential futures where subscription services make gaming worse:
- Game Pass loses the best third-party games against competing services
- Publishers require subscriptions to get early access a week before you can buy a game, like EA did with EA Play
- Playtime measures encourage boring and grinding games
- More levels pop up to gate access to big games or expansions
- The phrase “I’ll wait to be added to a sub” begins to hamper direct sales
- NFTs destroy everything, somehow
Game Pass on PC remains frustratingly limited
Game Pass has been in use on PC since 2019, and in that time it has improved quite a bit. The game selection was solid from the start, but the Xbox app that was used to access it caused a lot of frustrations. It was better than the Microsoft Store, but it was still slow and this store was taken advantage of as a wallpaper. The games were compiled differently than their Steam counterparts and often had unique performance issues or other flaws that weren’t fixed.
It took until March 2022 to update the Xbox app to allow us to choose a custom game install folder and add mod support, but this mod support remains spotty and buried, a far cry from Steam Workshop’s dead simple mod or simple laissez-faire. A DRM-free game from GOG.
It was easier to overlook the shortcomings of PC Game Pass when Microsoft first released it in beta. But the app is still bloated and luxurious. It’s really weird that the company that makes Windows is responsible for the worst apps and not the best. Three years ago I was more optimistic that we would see regular overlap between Game Pass versions of PC games and Steam versions, and that Microsoft would move quickly to improve the application used to play games. PC Game Pass has improved, but much slower and intermittently than I would have liked.
Since 2019, in the meantime, Valve has been making Much With Steam, launching Proton for Linux compatibility, overhauling the store, library and download manager experience, creating a playtest feature for developers, extending the remote playback flow. Friends list and invite system are still miles ahead of Microsoft’s Xbox Live integration though, once again, Microsoft makes Windows.
This is where Netflix isn’t a great counterpart to Game Pass, but Amazon Prime Video is: Just the thought of running this sluggish, ad-ridden, and horribly designed app is enough to make me want to watch something on another streaming service instead.
An analyst who recently spoke about Game Pass at the Game Developers Conference predicted that subscription services will represent just 8.4% of the total game market by 2027. Right now, that percentage is around 4%. So it’s not as if the near future of gaming will mirror TV or music streaming or share the same pitfalls – I’m certainly not worried about Game Pass revoking game ownership. Game Pass remains a great deal for now, but the final push to generate more revenue and a curated library of the most attractive games on a large scale is looming.
And at least on PC, I find myself less interested in subscribing for longer as the app is simply a worse way to play games that I can get on Steam. The novelty of a huge library that’s cheap enough to focus on specific games has faded away, and I can often buy those for a one-month subscription, instead.