Since the arrival of Xbox Game Pass, many analysts have considered the sale of traditional games to be dead. However, from Microsoft they endeavor to comment that the service really helps people buy more games, spend more on games and discover new offers thanks to having them at your fingertips in such an inexpensive and quick way.
That services like Game Pass aren’t for everyone is also a fact. And that’s good, it is logical and normal that everyone chooses their way of consuming video games. This is just an additional option.
Game Pass is not disruptive, just one more option
This argument was reinforced by Chris Charla himself, who was chat with the folks at GamesIndustry on how you see the underwriting that your division, [email protected], helped empower Xbox. For the cat, people continue to consume games naturallyas always, in fact, he specifies that in Xbox “many games” are still purchased.
In addition, the manager assured that he does not consider the subscription as something disruptive, he compares it to the time when the free to play model landed on the consoles. Everyone thought that the free to play model was going to swallow up the traditi onal model, which didn’t happen.
When free-to-play came to consoles, there were a lot of people who thought it was going to completely change everything, every game would become free-to-play and no one would be able to buy a game anymore. is not what happened. Were these concerns valid, rational, normal and healthy? Absolutely. It is our job in the gaming industry to take these concerns seriously, reflect on them, and work together to make the industry work.
I wouldn’t describe that as disruptive because I don’t think that’s how Uber came in and got rid of all the taxis in that industry,” Charla tells us. People still buy a lot of games and they still buy a lot of games on Xbox.
It is additive. People still buy a lot of games and they still buy a lot of games on Xbox. They buy games through Game Pass at a discount, which they get as members. So I don’t think Game Pass has been a disruptive business model, it’s been additive in a very positive way. And we, as an industry, need to look more at these additive business models. Kind of like digital distribution, it may have been somewhat detrimental to the retail space, but ultimately it was additive because not all games needed to be a certain size to justify being on disk.
Really and in perspective, subscription models on consoles are still something relatively new, few people know about them and of course they can improve and evolve over time.