In light of new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma discussing how expensive Game Pass has gotten in an internal memo, it looks like it might be part of larger conversations happening at Microsoft about the future of Xbox. According to Windows Central’s Jez Corden in a recent episode of the Xbox 2 podcast with Rand al Thor 19, executives at the company are discussing whether Xbox should become an ecosystem-centric company, or if it should be a general game publisher.
“You know I said they were thinking about adjusting Game Pass, there’s a very very very big discussion about the exclusivity stuff going on right now internally,” he said. “I think they do recognize the value, you know, it’s just what type of company you want to be at the end of the day. Do you want to be an ecosystem company first or do you want to be a publisher company first?”
Corden brought up comparisons with Microsoft’s Surface device line-up, which originally launched to much hype and fanfare before eventually becoming, as Corden described it, “a shadow of its former self.”
“You can’t do both well, either the hardware operation will shrink to basically what Surface is now, a shadow of its former self, not its deathbed,” he said. “Do you really want that for your Xbox brand, which is the only consumer-facing ecosystem that has any form of clout with consumers? And Satya said in the leaked conversation with the staff that Xbox also has value on the corporate side, because when I meet with a lot of executives, they don’t want to talk about cloud, they want to talk about Xbox. They want to talk about Halo. They want to talk about Xbox games. It’s where you reach your consumers when they’re not working. I think increasingly they recognise this.”
“But the discussions are ongoing because at the end of the day, they leave money on the table, and it’s hard to fight against the spreadsheet.”
The internal memo where Sharma discussed Game Pass being too expensive was discovered earlier this week, where she also spoke about the importance of the subscription service to the larger Xbox brand.
“Game Pass is central to gaming value on Xbox. It’s also clear that the current model isn’t the final one. Short term, Game Pass has become too expensive for players, so we need a better value equation. Long term, we will evolve Game Pass into a more flexible system, which will take time to test and learn around,” says the memo.
Currently, no plans seem to have been put into place to address Game Pass pricing. However, Sharma has noted that she plans to “go deeper” with employees to discuss the future.
The memo was discovered just a couple of weeks after rumors started flying around of a new subscription tier coming to Game Pass. Caught by dataminers, the plan seemingly revolves around only featuring first-party games published by Xbox, with some of the titles including Hellblade, Ori and the Blind Forest, State of Decay 2, and Gears 5, among many others.