Microsoft is keen on expanding its Game Pass subscription service by bringing it to more devices. Xbox CFO Tim Stuart revealed during a talk at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit that the company wants to bring first-party Xbox titles and Game Pass to “every screen that can play games,” including competing devices like PlayStation and Nintendo consoles.
“It’s a bit of a change of strategy. Not announcing anything broadly here, but our mission is to bring our first-party experiences [and] our subscription services to every screen that can play games,” said Stuart, (via GameSpot). “That means smart TVs, that means mobile devices, that means what we would have thought of as competitors in the past like PlayStation and Nintendo.”
While Xbox is keen on expanding the audience for its subscription service by bringing it to competing platforms, former PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan has been quite resistant to the idea. Back in September, Ryan referred to Game Pass as being “value destructive” for not only games, but for the industry as a whole. Ryan said that Microsoft was making large acquisitions because its initial approach with Game Pass “did not work at all”.
Microsoft has previously spoken about bringing Game Pass to the Nintendo Switch, and rumours in the past have indicated that the company was in talks with Nintendo to make the expansion of the subscription service happen. The company is yet to actually bring the service to the platform, however, with an insider indicating all the way back in 2019 that we shouldn’t expect to see it happen any time soon.