Xbox Studio Heads Say Game Pass Ruined Their $40+ Games’ Value
▼ Summary
– Xbox laid off 3,200 employees by July 2027, and Game Pass subscriber numbers dropped from 34 to 30 million, contributing to the division’s struggles.
– Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier predicts Game Pass will continue but may remove day-one access for major games, as already done with Call of Duty, due to financial unsustainability.
– Several Xbox studio leaders reportedly hate Game Pass, believing it devalues their games by making them available for a monthly fee instead of full purchase price.
– The article notes Xbox’s low 3% accountability margin and suggests CEO Asha Sharma, unlike Phil Spencer, can shift strategy away from Game Pass as a core focus.
– Large upcoming games like The Elder Scrolls VI will likely be excluded from day-one Game Pass availability and added later after full-price sales are completed.
Following the announcement that Microsoft would cut 3,200 Xbox employees by July 2027 , a figure that doesn’t even include co-development partners and vendors , industry analysts and developers have been dissecting the division’s downturn. A recurring theme in these postmortems is the underperformance of Game Pass. A recent report revealed that the subscription service’s user base actually shrank from 34 million to 30 million. Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler noted that the platform simply hasn’t delivered the blockbuster titles needed to sustain a subscription model.
The pressing question now is what happens next for Game Pass. On the latest episode of the Triple Click podcast (#313), Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier offered key insights. He doesn’t foresee the service being shut down entirely, but he does expect Xbox to remove day-one access for many of its biggest releases due to financial unsustainability. This shift has already begun with Call of Duty, and other major titles could soon follow. Furthermore, Schreier revealed that several leaders of Xbox-owned studios resent Game Pass, believing it has devalued their work.
Schreier explained, “I think they keep it going, but at some point, they’re just going to remove day one sales, because that makes no sense anymore.” He pointed to South of Midnight as an example: a $40 game that resonated deeply with its niche audience. “On Game Pass, you can get it for, what was it, $15 a month, $20 a month… not only is that kind of this load on it that I can’t really support as being part of the subscription service, it also is being completely devalued to the point where people might be like, why would I spend $40 on this when I could just get it on the Game Pass service for, quote, unquote, free?”
This dynamic, Schreier argued, has frustrated many inside Xbox’s own studios. “There are a lot of people out there in studio leadership within Xbox who absolutely detest Game Pass and think it has destroyed the value of their games… It’s been a detriment to the games industry.” He contrasted this with Netflix, where original content cannot be purchased separately, making subscriptions the only option.
Game Pass has been the cornerstone of Xbox’s strategy for nearly a decade, but the division’s current state , a mere 3% accountability margin, down year-over-year, as highlighted in Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s latest memo , suggests the model has failed. While Phil Spencer, the service’s original champion, may have been unable to pivot away from it, Sharma faces no such constraints. Schreier’s prediction seems likely: major titles like The Elder Scrolls VI will probably lose their day-one status on Game Pass, instead being added to the library only after the bulk of full-price sales have concluded.
(Source: Wccftech)
