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While fans love the value of Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, this Netflix-style subscription service for games hasn’t come without some obvious questions about its economic sustainability and impact.
For just one monthly subscription, users get access to a library of hundreds of games across generations of consoles and sizes ranging from big-budget AAA titles to small indie titles. That said, titles can (and have been) pulled from the lineup at any time, and not all are winners.
For the value it offers though, and especially with its availability on PC, it’s a boon to consumers. Still, one wonders how much cost Microsoft is absorbing at this point to let it succeed, and what impact that will have on game developers at third-party studios.
On a recent earnings call, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick discussed the financial situation surrounding services like Game Pass and said he didn’t think the launch of major new games on the services made a lot of financial sense for his business:
“Our views remain unchanged. We think a subscription model might make sense for in-depth catalog titles, but it doesn’t really make sense for frontline titles. For a business model to be meaningful in the entertainment industry, it must work for the creators of the entertainment as well as for the consumers of the entertainment. I think the catalog can make sense for publishers, it can make sense for consumers who are greedy, who really want to have access to a lot of products. But if you’re getting into first-line products, the economics are a lot harder to figure out. “
Zelnick also says that gaming consumption patterns are different from other forms of entertainment like movies or TV, where you browse more titles much faster:
“Consumers involved in interactive entertainment have different consumption patterns than those involved in linear entertainment. Linear entertainment consumers consume approximately 150 hours of programming per month. It’s probably well over 100 different titles.
In the case of interactive entertainment, consumers consume about 45 hours per month, which can be one, two, three, four titles. But it is certainly not 100 titles. So from a consumer perspective, it’s not clear that a subscription model really makes sense, for the majority of consumers.
We are open-minded. We have made catalog titles available for subscription services. Very occasionally we have also made frontline titles available. But we see it more as a catalog offering than a frontline offering. “
Microsoft’s proprietary game titles like the upcoming “Forza Horizon 5” and “Halo Infinite” appear to be coming to Xbox Game Pass at launch, but third-party titles have so far been limited to most catalog titles and titles. smaller independents.
Take-Two owns 2K and Rockstar, creators of franchises like “Grand Theft Auto”, “Red Dead Redemption”, “Bioshock”, “Borderlands”, “Mafia” and “X-COM”. The company has seen some catalog titles added to Game Pass in the past, but didn’t dwell on them for long.
Source: GameSpot
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