Microsoft has been releasing a series of fireside chat videos during GDC that detail its various ventures, namely Xbox and its all-you-can-play Game Pass subscription service. In the latest video, Xbox boss Phil Spencer wants to make it clear that Game Pass isn’t the company’s only strategy.
The new video, focused on “empowering game creators,” features head of Xbox creator experience Sarah Bond and head of Xbox / frequent face of the company Phil Spencer. While Game Pass is certainly a smashing success for Xbox — more than 25 million subscribers are on board — Spencer stresses that this doesn’t leave other traditional models out in the cold. “There’s not one business model that we think is going to win,” he stated. “We look at retail [as] an important part of our [profit and loss]. We want free-to-play games to flourish on our platform. It’s really about diversity of business models.”
This message can be reassuring for Xbox gamers, as they certainly don’t have to sign up for Game Pass to be a part of that ecosystem. That said, these GDC videos are usually geared more toward developers and publishers, so the bigger message here is that Xbox won’t exclude companies on the basis of using or not using Game Pass to launch their projects. It’s akin to another fireside chat from the video series, which broke down some statistics about Game Pass itself. By and large, Game Pass members play more games, try more genres, and spend more money, which is an incentive for developers to release their games on the service.
