Meanwhile, Microsoft’s subscription service may be facing another price hike, despite a recent move by the Redmond-based company, which could really stagnate the user base.
Brad Hilderbrand, who until May was senior PR manager for several Microsoft studios (343 Industries, The Coalition, Compulsion Games…), spoke on LinkedIn about how every single game that appears on Xbox Game Pass isn’t selling that well, and all of them are unable to meet sales targets. Some of the games available on the service are compensated, but most of them can only stay on the charts for a month or two, and as we wrote yesterday, demand for the service is not growing at a high rate, and the amount of money spent on games is not keeping pace with the budget.
With Microsoft’s acquisition of both ZeniMax and Activision Blizzard, that’s over $70 billion that needs to be recouped, and the cost of Game Pass isn’t what it used to be. Hilderbrand says that new exclusives (Redfall, Starfield) were supposed to pull in the market, but they didn’t deliver, so now they can hope for Call of Duty. But if they launch that on launch day, they will see a drop in revenue, which is what Microsoft promised back then. Activision Blizzard’s titles are also slowly making their way to the service. Diablo IV was the first at the end of March. However, if Microsoft fails to keep its promise, it will be their reputation that will suffer, not their financial results.
According to Tom Warren writing for The Verge, Microsoft still hasn’t decided whether to put Call of Duty on Game Pass. Matt Booty, head of Xbox Studios, recently said that smaller games are needed, which is ridiculous since the just-closed Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush was one, and it won several awards. Then we hear that Game Pass Ultimate is going to have another price hike (and this time the US might not be left out like last time). There’s even the question of whether Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II will be an Xbox exclusive. A PlayStation 5 port is already planned, but even that might not be a commercial success…
So the Game Pass doesn’t look very promising at the moment.
Source: WCCFTech, WCCFTech, LinkedIn, The Verge, The Verge
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