Microsoft has made some big footing into the video game industry for its Xbox Game Pass subscription service. Prior to the service, players that wanted to enjoy the latest games from Microsoft along with select third-party titles would have to pay for these games individually. You know as well as I do that getting every game that may be appealing can be quite expensive and as a result, you have to make some decisions on which game to purchase and what can be held off until a price drop.
With Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, all first-party Microsoft games along with a selection of third-party titles would be available to enjoy for one single monthly fee of about $15 a month if you opt for the most premium tier available. It’s quite the drastic difference between having to pay $60 for each brand new AAA video game title that comes out into the marketplace. It’s also a service that Microsoft is really trying to build up as well with their latest xCloud feature which comes packed in with the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate tier.
This service would allow players to stream games rather than downloading them on their Xbox One consoles or their PC. It’s so far only available for Android smartphones, but that may change in the near future as Phil Spencer recently spoke about the upcoming potential platforms we could see Xbox Game Pass with xCloud pop up on next. It’s worth pointing out beforehand that this conversation is only an interview about what we may see in the future with xCloud and the Game Pass subscription service. This is not an official announcement.
According to Phil Spencer, it all boils down to getting as many potential gamers as possible. After Xbox Game Pass hit their Xbox One console platform, it was moved to PC. From there, the next step was smartphones because of the number of smartphone owners there are around the world which also prompted xCloud to be an answer to those that want to enjoy video games on Game Pass but lack the necessary hardware to run them at home.
“I think for us it’s all about priority, and reaching more players. So we went to PC first after Xbox, because there’s just so many players there, globally, that don’t own an Xbox, that we could go reach. We went to mobile next because there are a billion Android phones on the planet. It’s significantly larger than any console player base. We still have iOS to go after, we will come to iOS at some point. We’re still working on some of our technology on PC for larger screens in terms of streaming, and getting to iOS, and I think once we get through that, we look at what the other options are. There’s smart TV’s out there, there are Chromebooks out there, there’s FireTV out there, there’s a lot of discussions we would have, we would prioritize it based on where we would find the newest players, that we could naturally bring content to. I love the Switch, I love PlayStation, honestly, I think they’ve done an amazing job as being a part of this industry. I’m not sure that those are the next big set of users for us, but we could be open to those discussions.”
Phil Spencer
From there, we could potentially see Game Pass pop up on Smart TVs, Chromebooks, to other notable media center hubs like the Roku. Phil Spencer ended on Microsoft being open to conversations with Sony and Nintendo when it comes to their Game Pass subscription service applications being on the competition console platforms, but that particular hardware may not be the most ideal to get new players.