TapTechNews May 12 news, Brad Hilderbrand, former senior public relations manager at Microsoft, recently posted a long article on his LinkedIn homepage, mentioning that the Microsoft gaming department should currently cut costs. He believes that Xbox Game Pass may never be sustainable or profitable unless all major games in the world are open to it, such as Call of Duty or the upcoming GTA 6 scheduled for release next year.
TapTechNews note: Brad worked at Microsoft for four years and eight months, during which he participated in the development of multiple Halo series and Forza Motorsport, but was laid off in Microsoft's layoff in January of this year.
Brad analyzed that with the slowdown in subscription user growth and massive expenditures such as the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the revenue of Game Pass is no longer satisfactory. The biggest paradox of XGP is that basically every game added to XGP severely fails to meet sales targets. Since you can play games 'for free', why would you pay full price to buy them?
He believes that when Game Pass was growing rapidly, the system could be sustainable for a while, but now its growth rate has slowed down and game revenue cannot keep up with the budget for making games.
IGN co-founder Douglass Perry mentioned the possibility of Call of Duty landing on XGP in his comment, to which Brad responded that this idea looks impossible, but XGP has always been under pressure to become an indispensable killer app for users. I still believe the strategy when XGP was launched was correct. The world seems to be moving towards a subscription model, and its value proposition is also very high (there are many very good games on the service). However, as Xbox has always been in third place, I don't think they can reach the critical mass needed for profitability/sustainable development.
Brad stated that the only (external) opportunity is to include all the world's mega games in XGP and make them essential for players. Apart from Minecraft and Fortnite already added to XGP, the only ones left are Call of Duty and GTA 6. However, he also believes that GTA 6 is unlikely to enter XGP, and the same goes for Call of Duty. The risk of giving up guaranteed sales revenue in exchange for enough Game Pass subscriptions is too great.