Phil Spencer, Executive Vice President of Gaming at Microsoft has reassured people that Microsoft is not suddenly going to jack up the price of Game Pass, Phil Spencer had claimed that he has seen people saying this is likely to happen. That kind of bait and switch tactic can work really well once you have a little bit of brand loyalty, and people would be asking themselves if they will save money by sticking with Game Pass instead of buying individual games.
Speaking in a recently part-published interview at Stevivor, which took place at XO19 Phil Spencer said:
“I know some people — I’ve seen it — some people say, ‘Oh, they’re just kind of burning money left and right in order to gain customers so they can trick you into raising the price later.’
“There’s no model like that, for us. We feel good in the business that we’re running now. We’re definitely investing in it, but not investing in a way that’s unsustainable.”
The full interview is yet to be released, but it sounds like most of the interview will revolve around how exactly Microsoft is making money from Game Pass, specifically looking at first-party titles, the likes of Gears of War, Halo Infinite, etc.
Models similar to Game Pass have been around a while, Eurogamer spoke to a few developers awhile back. And Paradox’s ex-CEO Fred Wester, who preferred a different subscription model:
“OnLive, for example – they said you can have your game on our service and we’re going to attract a lot of customers, and we’re going to deliver you money based on how many hours people play the game. Now at Paradox, we loved that business model, because people play our games for three or four thousand hours. While the Game Pass model to us is still a decent model, we think we’re not getting paid enough, because people play our games more than they play very single-player driven narratives.”
At XO19, Phil Spencer squashed any excitement for virtual reality coming to Xbox Series X anytime soon. Tekken 7, Sword Art Online and Frostpunk are all getting added to Game Pass this month.
Via NeoGAF
