Despite a marketing blitz to convince us of the opposite, it feels like the Xbox brand is in its death throes. Microsoft’s excessive wealth could conceivably keep its gaming division running indefinitely, profitable or not, but if newly appointed CEO Asha Sharma and company want to keep the brand afloat, it may be time to make a difficult decision: phase out Xbox Game Pass.
I’m as much a fan of Game Pass as anybody. There simply is not a better value proposition in gaming. Under former CEO Phil Spencer’s stewardship, Xbox completely transformed its business to center around Game Pass, seemingly on the ambitious idea that the subscription service would become ubiquitous. Xbox became a way to play games, and not the place to play games. Sharma is now reinventing Xbox once again, but Game Pass in its current form is fundamentally incompatible with the brand’s new strategic vision.
The “Xbox Reset” Does Not Focus On Game Pass
On June 10, Xbox Wire published a company-wide message sent from Sharma and CCO Matt Booty to all Xbox employees about an initiative being called the “XBOX Reset” (all-caps XBOX is another part of the rebranding). What the memo fails to address is yet another wave of mass layoffs coming in the near future, per Bloomberg. It curiously also only mentions Game Pass explicitly once. There are other vague allusions to Xbox’s “services,” but it’s a sharp contrast to what we’ve come to expect from the brand’s corporate speak, which was dominated by Game Pass and Play Anywhere in the last few years especially.
About Game Pass specifically, the memo only has this to say: “Our Game Pass team set to work fixing our offering and after 8+ months of decline, our service has started to grow again.” While brief, it does show that Xbox executives have identified an issue with Game Pass that needs “fixing.” Two key changes have been made to Game Pass since Sharma took over. First is a price decrease, and second is removing Call of Duty as a day-one addition to the service. More changes appear to be on the way, but the former is likely the biggest contributor to Game Pass’s recent growth – and I suspect Forza Horizon 6 caused an uptick in subscribers.
The conundrum that Xbox will continue to face is the fact that Game Pass is an exceptional deal for consumers, a deal that’s frankly too good to remain tenable. Game Pass is a massive revenue stream for Xbox, but having failed to reach a critical mass, an ubiquity that makes it self-sufficient, it will continue to fuel the brand’s downfall unless it is reevaluated at a fundamental level.
Game Pass Devalues Xbox Exclusives
Xbox can tinker with Game Pass prices, exclude games here and there, bundle it with various other services, and finagle the financials in any number of other ways, but the service is diametrically at odds with the renewed focus on exclusives. Gears of War is abandoning PlayStation 5 shortly after its arrival on Sony’s platform as E-Day restarts the console exclusive initiative later this year, to be followed by Clockwork Revolution in 2027. This is the most concrete signal yet that the new Xbox – Phil Spencer’s Xbox – is dead.
The grand experiment to make every device an Xbox is over, and we’re re-embracing the old ways. I think the logic tracks, to some extent. If Xbox wants to remain more than just Xbox Game Studios, more than just a publishing conglomerate, it needs to incentivize its hardware, and in gaming, exclusive games is how you do that. There are so many other factors to consider, but I can’t fault the new executive team for its reassessment. Looking back, the brand’s pinnacle was the Xbox 360, a console that succeeded because it had great games.
Where Game Pass conflicts with an exclusive-first strategy is a simple numbers game. Take Gears of War: E-Day, for instance. You can pre-order E-Day right now for $69.99, but that’s not the game’s real price. E-Day‘s real price is $22.99 on Xbox and $13.99 on PC because those are the monthly rates for Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, respectively. Why should I, or any consumer, pay $70 when E-Day is available through both of those Game Pass tiers on launch day?
Triple-A games are often priced at $70 (or more, looking at you, Mario Kart World) for a reason; they’re expensive to develop and need to recoup that cost. All other financial analysis of Game Pass pales in comparison to the simple fact that Xbox is offering its first-party games for up to 80% off at launch. This is the kind of value deficit that leads to the mass layoffs that are coming as part of the “XBOX Reset” (and those that already happened under Spencer).
Exclusives are bad for consumers. Gutting Game Pass is bad for consumers. If it were financially viable, I would prefer Xbox continue its multi-platform approach and embrace a new identity as a publisher first. But more than that, I want all the developers at Xbox Game Studios to keep their jobs, and if the brand is committed to staying in the hardware race, then Game Pass – at least in its current form – needs to go.
Xbox Game Pass Cannot Continue Like This
There is no reality in which Xbox just pulls the plug on Game Pass, so the question then becomes what to do with it. The answer is, unfortunately, to make Game Pass worse. Xbox executives already know there’s a long, difficult road ahead for the brand. Sharma and Booty are talking about rebuilding Xbox from the ground up; “We have the foundation in place.” Most of the marketing Xbox has done in recent months boils down to an elaborate mea culpa, followed by a promise that this new direction will “revive XBOX.”
After years of trying to make it work with Game Pass and rampant studio acquisitions, it is in some ways refreshing to hear Xbox commit to making Project Helix a great console with enticing games, but there’s a refusal to rip off the band-aid. Removing day-one exclusives from Game Pass is sure to make subscribers irate, but it’s the only way Xbox hardware and first-party releases will eventually be an attractive offer in the console market. All you have to do is look at Xbox’s two biggest competitors.
PlayStation and Nintendo both have their own subscription services. Pay-walling online multiplayer like this is still a ludicrous scam, but that’s an entirely different conversation. PlayStation Plus is far more similar to Game Pass than Nintendo Switch Online is, but Sony has never deigned to devalue its exclusives in the same way – in fact, it’s so protective of its first-party brand that single-player PS5 games will no longer receive PC ports. God of War Laufey will not come to PlayStation Plus on day one, and you know for a fact Nintendo would never even consider charging less than full price for the Ocarina of Time remake.
But you can get Gears of War: E-Day for $23. And Clockwork Revolution. And Fable. And Halo: Campaign Evolved. And State of Decay 3. And Forza Horizon 6 and every other first-party game before it. Xbox wants to rehabilitate its brand but refuses to address the single biggest contributor to the devaluation of its exclusives. Removing Call of Duty from day-one Game Pass status shows that Xbox knows it’s leaving money on the table. Xbox Game Pass is such a great deal it is sinking the entire brand, with thousands of jobs along with it. It’s time for Xbox Game Pass, as we know it, to die.
- Number of Devices Concurrently
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Standard subscription plan allows two accounts playing at once, with four accounts playing at once on Friends & Family plan
- Highest Resolution
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1440p streaming
- Number of Accounts
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~35 million subscribers
- Compatibility
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Xbox Series X|S, PC, ROG Xbox Ally, Android, iOS, Samsung & LG TVs, Meta Quest, Web Browser
- Price Per Month
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Essential $9.99 | Premium $14.99 | Ultimate $29.99
- Price per year
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12-month membership codes only available at certain retailers