Mike Brown, ex-director on Forza Horizon 5 at Playground Games, has commented on Xbox’s current problems and Game Pass‘ impact on the brand’s overarching strategy in recent years.
Brown, who’s now leading development on open-world racer Clutch at newly founded studio Maverick Games, was asked by MinnMax about the restructuring at Xbox, which led to a massive round of layoffs and divestiture of some of its studios.
Brown turned his attention to Game Pass and said that he believes they (Xbox) “invested a fortune in the concept of Game Pass as a service, which led to loads of teams being acquired, loads of games being funded, loads of people getting jobs, all with a vision of getting regular games landing in this service for players”.
“The reality is not enough people have subscribed to it at the prices that they needed to pay in order to make that business viable. And that’s actually just really sad because we’re now going to see studios getting shut down or spun off. Loads of people are going to lose their jobs. And that is honestly just a result of a well-meaning player-focused concept of Xbox Game Pass not quite landing,” Brown explained.
It was recently claimed that Game Pass numbers were well below desired targets, with last year’s price hike – likely an attempt to make the maths make sense – backtracked on by new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma at the expense of having new Call of Duty games on Game Pass on day one.
Despite blaming a Game Pass push for the recent restructuring, Brown defended the concept behind it: “It’s a good idea. Let’s have a subscription, make it affordable, try and get games to more people. We’ll have a really diverse selection of games on there. We’ll get a load of studios involved. We’ll make some games that probably couldn’t exist otherwise.”
The harsh truth is that not enough people subscribed in the end, at least not enough to maintain Microsoft and Xbox’s lofty expectations and relentless acquisition sprees. Nevertheless, Brown was full of admiration for Xbox’s previous leaders, especially Sarah Bond, who was somewhat unceremoniously disappeared earlier this year when Asha Sharma took over. “I really, really liked Sarah Bond,” Brown said. “Every time she spoke, she was so sharp, intelligent, impressive. It’s one of those people where you could almost just lean back a bit when they speak because you almost feel a little bit comforted by how competent they are.”
At the time of writing, Game Pass remains a core part of Xbox’s strategy, but its importance to the division going forward remains to be seen. It’s a time of confusion and upset at Microsoft, typified by the company’s murky plan for console exclusives and multiplatform releases.
