Following Microsoft's latest round of layoffs, which saw over 9K lose their jobs, including many at various Xbox-owned gaming studios, former Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio took to X to explain that, in his opinion, Game Pass is one of the main culprits, not to mention potentially damaging to the industry as a whole.
Why is no one talking about the elephant in the room? Cough cough (Game Pass). I think Game Pass is an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade, subsidized by Microsoft’s “infinite money”, but at some point, reality has to hit. I don’t think GP can co-exist with other models; they’ll either kill everyone else or give up.
What might happen once Microsoft has won: the games will start to suck and your sub will go up. Why? Because the current amazing deal you have is subsidized by Microsoft bleeding money into it with the hope they’ll kill the competition, but once they manage to do it, things will get real.
Colantonio is in tune with Rhys Elliott, Head of Market Analysis at Alinea, who also believes that Microsoft bet on the wrong horse by putting so much effort into pushing its Game Pass subscription service. Games simply do not work in the same way as film or music since they take much longer to consume, and there's only so much spare time that users can dedicate to entertainment.
Anyway, Colantonio later added that Game Pass could only co-exist if it's focused on back catalogue games.
I’m fed up with all the BS they fed us at first, like “don’t worry, it doesn’t impact the sales”, only to admit years later that it totally does. “No shit it does! Really?” The only way Game Pass can co-exist without hurting everyone is for the back catalogue.
This is essentially Sony's strategy with PlayStation Plus: never put big games there on day one, only add them at a later date, when they enter the back catalogue phase. However, Microsoft is currently still very much keen to maintain its promise to consumers to bring all of its games to Game Pass when they launch. Even so, despite adding franchises like Call of Duty, Diablo, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and DOOM, the total number of subscribers is believed to be around 35 million, far lower than Microsoft's lofty goals.
As a side note, Raphael Colantonio is the studio founder of WolfEye Studios, which made Weird West. The studio is now developing a retro sci-fi first-person action RPG inspired by Dishonored and published by NEOWIZ. It's not the first time Colantonio slams Microsoft, by the way—that already happened following last year's decision to close Arkane Austin, his former studio.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
