Xbox and PlayStation service games look different — Game Pass is why

Now that the dust has settled on Xbox and PlayStation’s big summer showcases, it’s a good time to compare them and look for evidence of where each company is going — or thinks it’s going.

As has become increasingly common in recent years, the two presentations were very different. Most observers feel that Xbox performed better in terms of the number and range of titles shown and the prospect of the future release. But that’s limited to take – the most plausible conclusion is simply that the post-pandemic production woes hit the Sony studio family about a year later than Microsoft and Ubisoft, leaving a gap between this year’s studios Spider-Man 2 and distant vistas like Bungie’s Marathon. Like its competitor this summer, Sony is likely to bounce back in a year.

It’s more interesting to take a look at the content of the featured games and what they can tell us about the priorities of the two platform owners.

There’s no doubting what Sony is up to. The PlayStation owner has been vocal about his desire to get into the live service gaming business in a big way and how that was the motivation for acquiring determination Manufacturer Bungie. Lo and behold, in terms of new reveals from first-party PlayStation studios, the showcase gave us the following:

Image: Bungie

However, little is known about these games Marathon was explicitly designed as a long-term “living” game, and it doesn’t seem too far-fetched fair game$ And unity in the same bucket. There is also a notable sonic and genre similarity between these projects. Sony seems keen to capitalize on Bungie’s legacy, leaning heavily on genres and styles that have been shown to draw a service game audience on PlayStation – particularly sci-fi shooters. (Even more specifically: sci-fi shooters that remind you of it determination

That’s not to say Sony is turning its back on its offering of polished, cinematic single-player action games: Spider-Man 2The impressive demo refutes lying and this is the company that owns Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla and Santa Monica Studio. Nevertheless, there is a clear trend.

In contrast, these were the new first-party games unveiled at the Xbox Showcase:

• South of midnightan occult storytelling game set in the American South
• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024an expansion of the acclaimed sim with more gameplay elements (plus a Dune expansion for the original)
• An expansion to the Monkey Island-style pirate duty game Sea of ​​Thieves
• Clockwork Revolutiona time travel steampunk roleplaying game

Microsoft also offered updates fable, Explained, Hellblade 2And starfield – all single player games, mostly extensive RPGs, but very different in style.

Image: Asobo Studio/Xbox Game Studios

This shouldn’t be taken to mean that Microsoft doesn’t want to make multiplayer shooters — although it will likely take some time to lick its wounds over its horribly mismanaged failure to turn Halo into a hit service game Hello infinitynot to mention the botched launch of Arkane’s redfall. But if Sony’s own initiative falls broadly into two groups — games that look like Naughty Dog made them and games that look like Bungie made them — Microsoft’s are clearly a lot harder to categorize . A few console generations ago, Sony’s first-party studios were the creative risk-takers with a diverse output, while Microsoft single-mindedly pursued the Halo audience. Now the tide seems to have turned.

What happened? It’s unlikely it’s just a matter of taste; These are businesses and they go where the money is. Is the money for the two really to be found in such different places?

The short answer is yes. PlayStation is a product business and the largest revenue generator for parent company Sony. It takes every one of its games to make money. In the current economy and the risk-averse atmosphere in the entertainment industry in general, that means making safe bets – whether it’s mass market, high production value action games that can command a $70 sticker price on the order, or service games , aimed directly at targeting (and monetizing accordingly) PlayStation’s core audience.

Xbox is now a service company — more specifically, a Game Pass company. A gaming subscription that extends beyond the console ecosystem and reaches gamers on PCs and phones has been at the heart of Xbox strategy for years. But paradoxically, since the division’s main product is a service, Microsoft makes it easier to release smaller, standalone games as products — and even approach its own service games differently.

Image: Rare/Xbox Game Studios

What the Game Pass business model requires is a reasonably high volume of new games; enough variety in content to attract new users, especially users who don’t already own consoles; and most importantly, a high level of commitment to the games as a whole, which means happy customers. But since each game is not (just) viewed as a separate revenue-generating unit, but rather is judged primarily on satisfied players, Xbox can be more relaxed about the design of each game and doesn’t have to limit those games to the minimum’ marketing or business models alike.

Sea of ​​Thieves And flight simulator are much less aggressively monetized than other games in their respective fields, and they can be upgraded in novel ways as needed, whether via an in-game crossover event or an expansion-sequel hybrid that, without the comfortable umbrella, is a much riskier one Bet would be from Game Pass, which wraps it all up. Forza Horizon 5 has seasons to keep players busy, but doesn’t require introducing a Battle Pass to mobilize those season players for money; The hours played are enough for Microsoft. A huge emerging but island-shaped sandbox starfield that can keep players entertained for hundreds of hours with a single download is the opposite of a service game on paper – but within the Game Pass system it somehow becomes one.

In an interview with Polygon this week, Xbox boss Phil Spencer made all of this very clear. “The fact that I have a heavy content subscription means I don’t have to think about every game monetizing every engagement,” Spencer said. “Because the success of Xbox Game Pass allows us to invest more in driving engagement than driving revenue. The dollars will come from people who love the games they play. So it gives us the opportunity to not be so incremental with each piece of content in terms of how we bill.” He cited the company’s many years of experience as a guiding influence Minecraft

Image: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios

The key, Spencer says, is flexibility: “As a creator, you can say, ‘What am I trying to do?’ And is there a business model on this platform that allows me to do that?’ And we want the answer to be almost always yes.” The logic applies to narrative adventures just as well as it does South of midnight. “If a game’s design doesn’t call for a business model within the game, we can just say, ‘Build your game.’ The Game Pass platform has a business model that these great narrative single player games will fit into.”

This all sounds very nice, both for gamers and developers. The question is whether it is sustainable. At one point, Spencer dismissed comparisons to video-streaming platforms like Netflix’s difficulty in making sense of their lavish content spend, saying gamers care less about the sheer volume of new games and more about the platforms “making a great Curate portfolio for them”. But Spencer later said that he and Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty set a goal of four AAA releases a year, which they did Booty’s claim That the development cycle for such games is up to six years at a time is an intimidating timeline. You can see why Microsoft acquired so many studios.

Nothing to worry about right now, Spencer says; Because Xbox accounts for just 10% of Microsoft’s revenue, it — unlike PlayStation — can focus more on growth than profitability. And Spencer sees an opportunity in the “hundreds of millions” of PC owners who make up Game Pass’s potential audience beyond consoles. The extent to which this untapped audience actually exists will determine whether Microsoft’s more relaxed approach to the game development business is the future or just a nice incident.