Xbox Is Happy Game Pass Isn’t Profitable

For a while now, I’ve been a strong and vocal advocate for the Xbox Game Pass system, the Netflix of games. When I last used it, before issues within Microsoft’s system, it was about 120+ games on the Xbox One. Some of them were backwards compatible games from the Xbox 360 and Xbox. As someone who has loathed the idea of owning an Xbox until being given an Xbox One, hands down it was the best way to experience the backlog of titles I had no experience with. Those that enjoyed State of Decay would go on about it, so I jumped into the sequel and enjoyed it greatly. Halo? Not so much.

Now it seems there is more being revealed about what it is costing Microsoft and how much it is doing for players. In a recent web-cam based interview with What’s Good Games (don’t worry, I’d never heard of it either), Xbox’s Marketing general manager, Aaron Greenberg, revealed how profitable the subscription service is, or rather isn’t. Being asked by Andrea Rene about the value of Game Pass Ultimate vs Microsoft’s clear losses, Greenberg said: “We always kind of laugh […] If you do optimize for profit, and you do say […] How do we get as much profit out of each customer, or do you pivot that […] and say, how do we add as much value to our fans?”

Today @andrearene and @BlondeNerd spoke to @Xbox's @aarongreenberg about Xbox Game Pass Ultimate profitability, "You can either say, how do we get as much profit out of each customer, or do you pivot that…how do we add as much value to our fans?" (see full interview tomorrow!) pic.twitter.com/QUl5yNamhq

— What's Good Games (@WhatsGood_Games) July 23, 2020

Greenberg also went on to say something I’ve already said before. Paraphrasing, of course, “over-deliver and provide immense value, word of mouth will follow.” It is a style of marketing that is often (EA and 2K) under-utilized in favor of draining every bit of money from the so-called “Whales.” As Rene points out, you can pick up Game Pass Ultimate for $15 a month, add that up for a year and you’re looking at the entry cost of three triple-A games. Sure, you aren’t going to play everything on the service, and you might not use every single bit of it all the time, but that’s value greater than anything in the game’s industry.

I’ve gone out of my way to buy games I’ve played on the service because I think that highly of the games. Games will leave the service eventually, which is the reason I bought some, but in some cases, I didn’t have to. If you want to call me “an Xbox shill!” Go right ahead. Just keep in mind, I don’t enjoy a lot of the major first-party releases, I don’t like the standard controller, and I think the practice of selling my access to online multiplayer is wrong. I might like their service, but I’ll disagree with their other practices. Nevertheless, if you would like to watch the full What’s Good Games podcast episode, you can check that out below. If you would like to skip right ahead to Greenberg’s appearance in the three-hour-long podcast, you can click here.