Xbox boss Phil Spencer has revealed that the company’s goals with its Game Pass subscription offerings isn’t to “funnel” players away from owning their games. Speaking in a recent interview with XboxEra, Spencer spoke about showing respect to players’ ever-growing game libraries.
“I think we’ve shown respect for people’s libraries over the generations with back-compat and Play Anywhere, and I want to continue to do that,” said Spencer, who goes on to point out that every game available through Game Pass can also be bought for keeps.
“You can buy every game that’s in Game Pass, we’re not trying to funnel everybody into one business model,” he said. “Play the games the way you want to play them.”
“We obviously have to run a good business, so we’ll have our pricing and everything that we do, but I want to make as many options as possible for the games that we have.”
Spencer’s statement about subscription services and owning games are in contrast to a statement Ubisoft’s director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay made back in January 2024. Back then, Tremblay said in an interview that gamers would have to start “feeling comfortable with not owning your game.” He was referring to the factors preventing the growth of Ubisoft’s own subscription service, Ubisoft+.
In the same XboxEra interview, Spencer also spoke about how Microsoft was able to grow its gaming business in new markets like Asia without having to focus on console sales. Instead, Spencer credited the PC market, along with services like Game Pass and Cloud Gaming with growth in the markets.
“It’s why us embracing Windows and embracing Cloud has allowed us to grow,” said Spencer. “One of our fastest growing regions for us right now is Asia and it’s not because we’re selling more consoles in Asia, but through cloud and PC, we’re finding more users year over year than in any other place. The fastest kind of platform is Cloud. That’s the thing that’s growing the fastest year over year and those are players like you were talking about, like that radio host. We were never going to catch that person with our console. So let’s find them in a way that works, and it’s better for Indiana Jones. It’s better for Xbox.”
Spencer also spoke about how releasing Xbox games on other platforms like PlayStation has benefitted the company. By not focusing on the 30 percent Xbox has to pay to PlayStation for every sale of a title like Sea of Thieves, the company is instead focusing on the 70 percent it is making off these sales, which then go on to fund more games at Xbox’s studios.
“It’s maybe not what I was going to say on stand at the time,” said Spencer. “But yeah, I would love to make all of the money for all of the games that we ship right, like obviously we make more on our own platform. It’s one of the reasons that investing in our own platform is important. But there are people, whether it’s their libraries on a PlayStation or Nintendo, whether it’s they like the controller better, they just like the games that are there.”
