Lies of P project director Jiwon Choi has referred to Xbox Game Pass as a ‘momentous occasion’ for the game.
As reported by Windows Central, Jiwon’s full quote is that it is a “momentous occasion for Lies of P and the entire team at Round8 Studios.”
He then elaborated:
“Collaborating with Xbox has been an incredibly supportive and rewarding journey for us. Having our game launch on a platform with a massive global subscriber base is a thrilling opportunity… We understand this platform offers a tremendous reach, enabling us to engage with a wide and diverse audience of players from around the world.”
As we know that Lies of P is Round8’s and Neowiz’ first AAA video game to receive an international release, they will of course take any partnership and collaboration that will help elevate and raise visibility for their project.
We did report earlier last month that Round8 has also revealed a collaboration between Lies of P and Team Ninja’s Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. So we shouldn’t be surprised if Round8 and NeoWiz announce other partnerships in the future.
But as for Xbox Game Pass itself, that’s a topic that’s become surprisingly controversial. Jim Ryan shared his opinion that publishers don’t actually like Game Pass. Subesequently, Microsoft themselves admitted that Game Pass does cannibalize sales of games.
But, that situation isn’t necessarily clear cut, and it can certainly be different with each publisher, developer, and game. In particular, smaller games made by independent developers stand to benefit more from Game Pass. They don’t have to sway players to take a risk on their game, only to give it a try. For those smaller game developers, Game Pass can serve to be exposure. While armchair analysts may find this contradictory, being on Game Pass has led to increased sales for those games.
We can also look to Josh Sawyer’s opinion. While by no means a small studio, Obsidian did decide to scale down when they produced Sawyer’s Pentiment. In an interview, Sawyer declared that he would not have gone as far as to pitch Pentiment to his bosses at Obsidian if Game Pass did not exist.
Perhaps bigger games like Lies of P stand to lose more if they were put on Game Pass. In this case, it’s a new IP from a studio introducing itself to the world. So maybe Round8 sees Game Pass to function as a kind of publicity for them and their game as well. We’ll find out if it works out for them soon enough.
Lies of P will be releasing on June 9, 2023, on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One, and Windows via Steam. It will also be Day One on Game Pass.
