There are many who feel that there isn’t enough innovation within the gaming space these days, and there is plenty of proof to back up that statement. Just look at certain gaming franchises and how things are getting repetitive with them, and you’ll see that exact point. With Microsoft, they honestly did try to do something unique and create by making a service that was “Netflix for gamers.” That was the birth of the Xbox Game Pass, and to the company’s credit, it has earned gamers praise. Despite this, more reports are surfacing about how the service will change soon.
Last week, there were questions about whether Xbox Game Pass would get the upcoming Call of Duty title set to arrive later this year. The Wall Street Journal claims that it will, but that’s not the end of the story. On Resetera, a respected leaker named Shinobi602 stated that changes are likely to come before the title above drops on the game pass. This is unconfirmed at present; however, Shinobi has a good track record of reporting intel. Plus, it’d be odd to say something like this in a forum conversation if he didn’t have something to back it up.
Regardless, we don’t know exactly what the changes will be. The easiest thing to guess is that the prices of the various game pass tiers will increase. Some will be upset with this for obvious reasons; however, when you consider the number of games on the service and the price one pays to get access, it’s still a pittance.
The key issue here is that Microsoft wanted this to be the thing that would “roll in the cash” for them, but that’s not the case. Former employees have called out the issues with the service via how Microsoft/Xbox expected it to “continually boost” certain titles, thus bringing in more people. That’s not what’s happening, though. It had a surge because many Xbox gamers were curious, but that rocket has long since stopped. Many suspect that the recent layoffs were due in part to the stagnation of the Xbox Game Pass subscription.
It doesn’t help that the Xbox Series X/S are under 30 million in sales combined, and there are 34 million total subscribers, meaning that people are using it with past Xbox systems or PC instead of getting a new console.
If things don’t turn around, even more changes could be made to the service.
