Thoughts on the Future of Xbox, GamePass and the Future of Microsoft's Console

I wrote recently about Halo's future and the changing of the guard with Activision now taking control. The turnover and chaos was not limited to Halo. Xbox as a whole seems to be having a bad time right now. As someone who has had every Xbox generation, it makes me sad.

I got the Xbox back in 2003, pretty much because of Halo. Halo was I would argue one of the best launch titles for any console. The game was fantastic, and it showed the power of networking even before Xbox Live was a thing. You could hook 4 Xbox consoles up to a network, plug 4 controllers into each Xbox, and play 16 player Halo multiplayer across the 4 consoles and TVs with split screens. It was awesome. Once Xbox Live got off the ground, you were able to play with your friends regardless of where they were.

The Xbox 360 was a good follow-up. It did have some technical difficulties with the dreaded "Red Ring of Death", but from a games and performance perspective, I thought it was a good second generation console. I had many hours logged on my 360 playing Halo 3, Rainbow Six Vegas 1 & 2, Star Wars Battlefront II, and many other games. It was also backwards compatible (so long as you had the hard drive) with many (though not all) original Xbox games.

The Xbox One was where my interest in Xbox started to wane. I got one to play Halo 5, but from a technical perspective, it felt inferior to the PlayStation 4. Again though, the nice thing was that it was backwards compatible with the Xbox 360 and original Xbox.

The Xbox Series X came out during the pandemic and I was lucky to get one on launch.

Note

Microsoft really sucks at naming things.

It's been a good addition to the family, and with the introduction of GamePass, made things even nicer since I could play a large library for a modest $20/month. It felt like a great deal, especially since so often I could play some of the big titles on launch. Then they started raising the prices. I and others determined that the now $30/month was no longer worth it. For me personally, it wasn't. $20 was probably pushing it given the amount of time I spend gaming nowadays ($20-30 20 years ago right after I graduated college would've been a steal for me). I cancelled my subscription and moved on.

From what I've read, GamePass was sort of what's been the root of some of the recent shakeups.

The powers that be at Microsoft are looking for better profit margins within the games it produces. This has produced some interesting problems. Having recently purchased game studios like Bethesda (makers of Elder Scrolls games and Fallout), and then the massive Activision/Blizzard purchase, they're the publishers to a lot of games that they now want to make good money on. They're also "giving" them out for free as part of their GamePass subscription offerings. Many people aren't going to pay for the game when they can just download and play it as part of their monthly subscription. Why would they?

Instead, Microsoft is laying off employees, shuttering game studios, cancelling games, and seems to be decimating the brand. There had even been rumors that Microsoft was shopping Xbox to outside buyers. Xbox's CEO shut that rumor down, but I still wouldn't be surprised if the rumor persists.

Xbox, seems to be a shell of its former self. It's a shame really as I loved my Xbox and Xbox 360. Despite the shakeup, I still like my Xbox Series X. But given its direction, I'm suspecting I'll be playing more of my PlayStation in the foreseeable future.

Thoughts on GamePass

Important

"Owning" games isn't always a thing nowadays as so often it's "you are licensed to play this game", but for the sake of the argument, we're going to pretend own and license are one in the same.

There's the similar argument when it comes to music and streaming. GamePass follows the music streaming model. Pay a certain amount of money a month and you can play any game in the GamePass library. You don't pay for the games, you just pay Microsoft for access to the game. Microsoft then splits that with the publishers based on the games the users play. If you think that game publishers are losing out on this deal, you're probably right.

I'm not sure the specifics, but I had heard that Microsoft had been using its position to try to pressure game devs and publishers to put their games on GamePass from the beginning. That's obviously not a good thing, but it adds to the whole issue with profit margins, both for Microsoft, and more importantly, the game developers and publishers. Games at all price points were and still are now being included in GamePass. That means that the $30-60 or however much was being charged for the game, isn't being paid. Sure Microsoft has to share some of the GamePass profits with the publishers, but just like streaming, it's likely far less than they'd get from sales 10+ years ago. Microsoft even estimated it lost around $300m on Call of Duty alone because of GamePass. And that's only Call of Duty.

Microsoft has since re-lowered the price of GamePass, but removed Call of Duty from being included. What I don't understand is why Microsoft and others don't push for GamePass to be more for older games. Sort of how the movie theaters work almost. Focus more on including games that have been out for a couple of years rather than recent releases.

Last year I played Expedition 33 almost immediately after it came out on GamePass. Sandfall Interactive, the studio behind it I would imagine lost sales over it. I beat the game without paying Sandfall anything for it. Microsoft obviously payed them something for my ability to play it, but I doubt the payment for my playing it would've equalled the cost of me buying it.

Note

I have since purchased it on PlayStation to do a play through it again. The game is fantastic and would highly recommend it.

Other than Microsoft pushing for it to be out on GamePass, why put it out there. Make people buy it. It was getting so much good press and countless awards. People would have, and did buy it.

If you're going to make GamePass a thing (I'd still say buy the games you love to support the devs), focus on the games that have already been out. Let the games rack up the sales, and when people are less likely to buy the game, then put it up on GamePass. Going back to the movie theater comparison, there are movies that I'd be willing to pay to go see in the theater, akin to buying the game on launch. They're games and movies I really want to play and believe the cost is more than worth it. There are also movies that come out that make me think more meh. They're movies that I might be willing to watch on Netflix where all I'm out is a night of my life, but don't feel that they'd be worth the $20-30 to see them in theaters. It's likely the same for games. There are games out there that might look decent, but to me, not worth the $60-70 launch cost. I might be willing to pay for them on sale, or play on GamePass (if I had a subscription) later down the line. I can't imagine I'm the only one who feels this way.

There is some hope for the future of Xbox.

Disc-to-Digital

Microsoft has recently announced one feature that I think is interesting. Microsoft put a unique serial number on each disc sold starting with the Xbox One. What this is now allowing for is for users to be able to get a digital copy of games by putting the disc into your computer. It looks like some original Xbox and Xbox 360 games will be available soon. It also leads to Project Helix.

Project Helix

Project Helix is the codename for Microsoft's next version of the Xbox. Some of the prevailing rumors, though none confirmed, suggest that it will be a blend of console and PC. Built to play both Xbox games, and PC games. They hope for it to be able to play all Xbox games as well. Full backwards compatibility would be amazing. Any launch seems aways off, but even Microsoft has acknowledged its existence and its CEO has called it a family of devices.

Still A Great Deal of Uncertainty

There's still a lot of uncertainty over the future of Xbox. Helix sounds like it would be awesome, but given the recent history of gaming under Microsoft, I think I'd want to see some real stability and the drive to create new games before I put much faith in it.