Xbox Game Pass Was A Good Idea Despite Layoffs, Says Forza Director

Xbox's sole goal over the last decade has been to increase subscriptions to Xbox Game Pass — the wave of acquisitions overseen by Ex-Xbox head Phil Spencer was all in pursuit of turning Game Pass into a thriving service on par with Netflix.

Unfortunately, Game Pass started well but failed to sustain the growth needed to justify Xbox's spending spree. The service also had the additional consequence of depriving studios of guaranteed revenue from their core audiences, turning $40-$70 releases into $10, as people subscribed to Game Pass, finished the day-one release and then unsubscribed from the service.

The release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 day-one on the platform was a 'final gambit' for Spencer's grand plan, but clearly the growth needed to justify the revenue lost from the Call of Duty faithful—who were going to buy the game anyway—wasn't achieved.

Now, Xbox Game Studios is undergoing successive waves of mass layoffs, as new management closes studios and cancels projects in an effort to bring the Microsoft subsidiary back to profitability.

Game Pass Was A Good Idea Despite Its Failure

In a recent interview with MinnMax, Mike Brown, creative director of Forza Horizon 5 who departed Playground Games in 2023, offered his take on Xbox and its push towards Game Pass.

"They've honestly invested a fortune in the concept of Game Pass as a service, which lead to loads of teams being acquired, loads of games being funded, loads of people getting jobs, all with a vision of getting regular games landing in this service for players. I think the reality is not enough people have subscribed to it at the prices that they needed to pay in order to make that business viable," Brown said.

"We're now going to see studios getting shut down or spun off," he continued. "Loads of people are going to lose their jobs and that is honestly just a result of a well-meaning, player-focused concept of Xbox Game Pass not quite landing. I think that's just a real shame and as much as people point fingers and call different people within Xbox the villain of the piece, the concept of Game Pass was good. Like, it's a good idea. Let's have a subscription, make it affordable, try and get games to more people. We'll have a really diverse selection of games on there. We'll get a load of studios involved. We'll make some games that probably couldn't exist otherwise..."

Brown makes some compelling points, and Spencer's approach to acquisitions would have been a sound one had everything gone according to plan. Unfortunately, Xbox failed to release strong enough games to maintain the momentum of Game Pass. Nobody could have predicted the mediocrity of Starfield, the turmoil within Halo Studios and just how long some of these projects took to create.

In terms of development cycles enabled by a service like Game Pass, the only one that springs to mind is Pentiment. An excellent, critically-acclaimed game made by a small team within Obsidian in a genre that probably doesn't have mainstream appeal, but is perfect for a subscription service.

Unfortunately, there were too few of these gems on Game Pass, and Xbox's heavy-hitters also failed to deliver projects in time to save the grand plan.

Xbox Game Pass