Game Pass Could’ve Worked, Moon Studios Boss Says, But Xbox Never Delivered the Big Hits It Needed

The ongoing issues at Xbox, with several studios at risk of being shut down (chiefly Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, and Double Fine Productions) and more layoffs sadly rumored to be on the way, have inevitably become a topic of discussion among industry members, even publicly.

Replying to Duke Nukem creator George Broussard, who had wondered "where did Game Pass come from?", Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler (Ori, No Rest for the Wicked) tweeted his theory that Game Pass is "a little like Communism" in that it does not give developers the incentive to "go the extra mile". Ultimately, he mused, subscription services live and die by their content quality, and Xbox could never quite deliver on that front, citing the reception of Bethesda's Starfield compared to Skyrim.

The Game Pass strategy could've worked if people would've shown up for it. Problem is they didn't, and the software catalog was just nowhere near good enough to make people happily pay the subscription every month. It's the same as with streaming in the film business: I'll happily pay my HBO sub because HBO has amazing content that I want to watch. I'd keep that sub just to binge Sopranos, The Wire, GoT, etc. But with games, 'NEW' for some reason is very, very important to players. And if your new content doesn't even remotely match the quality of the old content, you've got a problem.

You need those games your studios are producing to become smash hits, cultural events that everyone wants to play - but what was the big Xbox game in recent years that was just delightfully good? That game doesn't exist. Almost every single first party studio in recent years has been floundering. You'd want Bethesda to create a 'Skyrim in Space' that ought to be better than Skyrim was cause that was an old game: But we got Starfield instead.

And that's the crux of the issue: you'd need the Xbox folks to deeply, fundamentally understand gamers and what they want. They'd need to understand what's a good game and what's a mediocre game. And they'd need to have good deals with devs so developers are actively incentivized to produce massive hits, not just slop out mediocre content like a factory.

Game Pass, in some ways, is a little like Communism. And just like with communism, if you don't give people a strong incentive to roll up their sleeves and go the extra mile, they won't. And if you then don't get the quality you need, it all comes crashing down cause players will not pay up unless you basically force them to by making content that's so good that they feel like they miss out if they don't check it out.

To be honest, the quality of the content was likely not the main issue. Xbox did add several great games to Game Pass, both first-party (like Forza Horizon, DOOM: The Dark Ages, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle) and third-party titles, not to mention they even attempted to add the behemoth that is Call of Duty. The bigger issue is that Game Pass faces a structural problem either way: hits risk cannibalizing premium sales, while weaker titles may not be strong enough to meaningfully drive subscriptions.

Regarding Starfield itself, it was not created as a Game Pass title in the first place. Yes, it did not reach the level of quality Bethesda and fans alike hoped for, but that has honestly little to do with Xbox's subscription service and more to do with the studio's own issues in creating a new IP in an entirely different setting, which creator Todd Howard partly acknowledged a few months ago.

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