When I think about Xbox, it’s not to look back on the days of playing Halo Reach local co-op on the 360, eyes glued to the screen, awestruck by the campaign. It’s not that first time playing Gears of War, that first Roadie Run or chainsaw kill where blood drenched the screen. It’s not even from experiencing the utter beauty and brutality on the OG Xbox.
Nowadays, instead, it’s the phrase, “If something is too good to be true, it probably is.” Few things from the company fit that profile quite like Game Pass.
It’s funny looking back to its announcement almost a decade ago. A library of games available for how much monthly? Even if the industry was years off from paying $70 for new triple-A titles, $60 was still a significant price point, and being able to access such an extensive selection felt amazing. Of course, while Microsoft would entice everyone with the potential of adding backwards-compatible OG Xbox titles to the service, the next major step was announced: its first-party exclusives would become available on day one for subscribers. State of Decay 2, Forza Horizon 4, future Halo and Gears of War titles – it was simply unbelievable.
For those concerned about Xbox’s lack of exclusives at the time, Microsoft announced multiple acquisitions that same year, including Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Compulsion Games, Playground Games and more. Game Pass Ultimate arrived in 2019 alongside PC Game Pass. Former Xbox head Phil Spencer called the service “completely sustainable.” Some of the hottest moments for the company were when it shadow-dropped big-name titles on Game Pass like Hi-Fi Rush and The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered to pretty positive responses. Slowly but surely, it grew into one of, if not the best, subscriptions in gaming, spurring other companies to create their own in response (if not improve on existing models like PlayStation Plus).
Fast forward to now and suffice it to say that the overall atmosphere surrounding Game Pass is a lot different. Underwhelming Call of Duty titles, which has become a major anchor of Xbox’s software revenue, will no longer see new titles launching on day one for the service. Three of the previously mentioned studios (and Double Fine) acquired to bolster the catalogue – which they did, make no mistake – were sold off or became independent once more (not including Tango Gameworks being shut down before it was sold to Krafton). Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier recently reported that many people in Xbox’s studio leadership “absolutely detest” Game Pass as a whole, believing it to have “destroyed the value of their games.”
Spencer forecast 77 million subscribers by the end of July 2026 – reports claim that the current total is closer to around 30 million (which is down from the officially reported 34 million from 2024). Fun fact: At the time, he thought that if Microsoft couldn’t reach that figure, then it would be better served leaving the games business entirely.
Is it any coincidence that there have been reports about Xbox being spun off entirely or even turned into a joint venture before the layoffs were announced? I digress, but the timing is certainly interesting, especially since current CEO Asha Sharma admitted that Game Pass hasn’t grown at “the pace we expected.”
The only saving grace in all that is that it received a price drop after a controversial increase last year. Unfortunately, that hike resulted in millions of lost subscribers, according to Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball, and by the sound of recent reports, the company seems nowhere near reaching its 2024 peak.
For now, love it, hate it or ignore it, Xbox is in rebuild mode, cutting down on multiple layers of management and focusing on its biggest franchises. The problem is, it can’t just scuttle Game Pass at this point, even if it’s still shelling out money for third-party titles and devaluing its own exclusives, like the upcoming Gears of War: E-Day.
At the very least, it could have launched on PS5 and received some additional revenue from that, which might have helped shore up any potential sales lost through Game Pass. Now, it doesn’t get to have its cake and eat it too, and if recent console sales in the US are any indication, those price hikes in August for the Series X/S won’t help.
It’s funny, in a way. Game Pass is supposedly disliked internally and a major drain on resources while not growing, but alongside Candy Crush and Minecraft, it’s one of the few things propping up Xbox. It’s almost become an albatross for the company – existing in perpetuity with no concrete plans on how to combat subscriber numbers that have stagnated for years. Nothing in Sharma’s grand reset. No comments about it from all the executives talking about exclusives and whatnot.
At some point, before breaking all this down, I thought, “Well, Xbox doesn’t really have to kill Game Pass to survive.” And yet, I’m not so sure now. It could take several other steps – like cutting down on more day-one titles from first-party studios. We’ve already seen something when the new Game Pass Premium was revealed with Xbox-published titles arriving within a year of launch.
Otherwise, it’s hard to see a path forward for the service, especially since its existence runs counter to Xbox needing a “reliable pipeline of exclusive games” to bring the platform back to “consistent growth.” If Fallout 3 Remaster was shadow-dropped at next year’s Fallout Day in Washington, D.C., live in front of what may be an audience for that added bit of hype, are you going to buy it for, say, $50? Or will you play it on Game Pass, either because it’s a better deal or you’re already subscribed?
Will you pay full price for Fable or play it on Game Pass first to see if it’s for you? This isn’t to say that certain titles can’t coexist with the service – Forza Horizon 6 is a great example. But it’s also one of the few anomalies alongside Oblivion Remastered. Xbox’s multiplatform strategy may be a mess, but the fact that it’s still coming to PS5, especially after the blockbuster success of Forza Horizon 5, proves that it still wants a piece of that pie.
Promoting Xbox Series X/S growth is tough, and that’s before getting into price hikes and console shortages. Removing day-one first-party titles may also have a knock-on effect for PC. The majority sticks to Steam when it comes to purchasing titles, after all. One would assume that there’s some kind of crossover coming with Project Helix to allow for playing your Steam games on the platform, balancing it out with Game Pass. But again, if it sounds too good to be true, so on and so forth.
Aside from introducing that rumored free Cloud Gaming tier supported by advertising, Game Pass is a paradox for Xbox. It can’t be trifled with too much, lest it runs the risk of losing more subscribers, but it can’t be left alone at the risk of no growth. So while it won’t be sunset anytime soon, you have to wonder if those discussions are at least being explored, if not entertained. Regardless, even if Xbox opts to slay the albatross and move on, it won’t stop weighing on the company any time soon.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
