Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden has revealed his thoughts about game subscription services like Game Pass. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz about the overall profitability and feasibility of Game Pass, Layden spoke about how he questions whether or not the service is healthy for the developer.
“There’s a lot of debates going on,” said Layden while talking about games being available for “free” at launch through Game Pass. “Is Game Pass profitable? Is Game Pass not profitable? What does that mean? That’s really not the right question to ask anyway.”
“You can do all kinds of financial jiggery-pokery for any sort of corporate service to make it look profitable if you wanted to. You take enough costs out and say that’s off the balance sheet and, oh look, it’s profitable now. The real issue for me on things like Game Pass is, is it healthy for the developer?”
Rather, Layden believes that Game Pass might be directly reducing the value of games, because these kinds of services might not be “inspiring” for developers, since they don’t tend to involve other aspects of business like profit sharing.
“They’re not creating value, putting it in the marketplace, hoping it explodes, and profit sharing, and overages, and all that nice stuff,” explained Layden. “It’s just, ‘You pay me X dollars an hour, I built you a game, here, go put it on your servers’.”
“I don’t think it’s really inspiring for game developers.”
Interestingly, Layden is specifically talking about services like Microsoft’s PC and Xbox Game Pass, where the company tends to release many of its first-party games on day one. He also brought up the fact that games might often feel like they’re losing their value if they come to a subscription service on day one. Layden points to Grand Theft Auto 6 as a game that would not go on a subscription service at launch, since the title is bound to generate tremendous amounts of revenue through sales of copies.
“No lesser light than Strauss Zelnik himself has said GTA is never going on a subscription service day one,” said Layden. However, he does note that indie games might benefit more from coming to Game Pass on day one to capture a large audience right out of the gate. However, he believes that it’s “bad for the business” in the long term. “You can’t unring the bell, right?”
Generally speaking, Layden is not a fan of subscription services like Game Pass, and points to the music industry for examples of why it might turn out bad. While people rarely buying music anymore means that musicians make less and less money from their creations, they at least have other sources of revenue, like concert tickets. “The problem with gaming is all we have is launch,” he said. “That’s it. No one wants to pay money to come into the studio and watch people code,” drawing comparisons to concerts.
“I’m not a big supporter of the ‘Netflix of gaming’ idea,” he said. “I think it is a danger.”
