The big debate going on at the moment in the gaming industry is whether or not Xbox Game Pass is affecting game sales. Recent reports find that gamers who play on Xbox simply don’t buy games. So much so that Sony’s PS5 has led game sales across the industry on multiple new releases. Both Resident Evil 4 and the recent Dead Island 2 accounted for over 60% of sales on the PlayStation platforms with PC following it. Xbox is but a fraction of that.
In a recent finding, Microsoft itself admitted that its subscription service does indeed cannibalize game sales. The company released a document in the ongoing Xbox X Activision CMA lawsuit that revealed this data. According to the company, Xbox gamers tend to spend little to no money on games.
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The DFC Intelligence has also stated in a report that the Xbox Game Pass business model doesn’t work. According to the DFC, Microsoft shouldn’t use its Game Pass subscriber count as an achievement of how popular the service is.
This is because the current market subscription all offer different things at different prices. The agency says that the amount of money being spent and the sacrifices Microsoft is making to keep Game Pass around isn’t sustainable in the long term.
But some people seem to believe the opposite. ROCKFISH Games CEO Michael Schade spoke about Game Pass during the launch of Everspace 2. Schade shared some data on how well Everspace 2 has done on Xbox saying that higher-priced early-access titles attract more gamers.
He followed up by revealing that even though the game sold little to no copies around its Game Pass launch, it did grow in the months following. Keep in mind that the stats shown below don’t reveal where purchases of the game were made. Many gamers dislike the Microsoft Store on Windows 11 which is the only place to obtain Game Pass titles. As a result, they would prefer to purchase games on Steam just to avoid the marketplace.
He also said Game Pass (PC) was good and didn’t effect sales, in fact they were HIGHER.
This aligns with what Microsoft has said in the past but people want to tell you isn’t true. pic.twitter.com/n6QHEdYRMH
— Dave @ Reboot (@DaveOshry) April 24, 2023
Of course, this is still up for debate. While the claim of “great sales” is there. Schade didn’t go into detail on the factors that might have driven these sales upwards. For every five reports of “Game Pass is bad”, we have one saying it is good.
