Game Pass is turning into a pretty big part of Microsoft’s strategy going forward. Yesterday’s E3 conference had a big focus on the program, as it will now bleed over into the PC space. The thing, of course, lives and dies on the games, and what does Microsoft have planned in that area? They hope to bring a consistent flow of games to the system, from their own studios.
Speaking with IGN, head of Xbox Game Studios, Matt Booty, talked about the service. He said that when looking at the development cycle and the amount of time game development takes, he thinks that releasing a game every three months to the service is an ideal time frame.
“So, then if you’ve got a game a quarter and you’re taking two to three years. You can kind of back into the math and say, well wow, you probably need somewhere between 10 and 12 studios. But… making games is not yet a perfect science, right? There’s no creative endeavor that is. So there’s going to be things that take longer. There’s going to be some things that we start and say, hey, great idea, but it just isn’t, you know, the Jello doesn’t want to set. Right. Um, and so I think we need some, some buffer in there, right? So the first, that’s kind of my basic answers. We’d love to be feeding a high quality game into game pass about every three months.”
It’s an ambitious plan, but considering the amount of internal studios that Microsoft now owns, with Double Fine being the newest one. Of course, the game has an influx of third party games, so there is obviously some leeway here. Either way, the service is definitely shaping up to be one of Microsoft’s key pillars in the ever changing future.