In cases like this,the financial arrangement made between a game publisher and Microsoft for inclusion in Game Pass (details of which Microsoft does not disclose) could make more business sense than just putting the game on the store and waiting for people to buy it. But there are other potential benefits too.
New,big-name games that go into Game Pass see their active playerbase grow by a factor of two,Percy says,and older games see an average six times increase (but sometimes as high as 32 times). A bigger playerbase means a bigger audience for potential monetisation. For example in the past month Square Enix has addedTomb Raider Definitive Edition andShadow of the Tomb Raiderto Game Pass,meaning the entire rebooted trilogy is now available to members. This will potentially make new fans of the franchise and increase sales of paid add-on content,which is still being rolled out.
Percy also says that publishers could use Game Pass as"marketing that's fun for consumers",by including their back catalogue games ahead of a new release. For example Bethesda recently madeDoom andRage available in Game Pass,ahead of the release ofDoom Eternal andRage 2 in 2019.
"On average we see a 25 per cent increase in franchise pre-orders and a 10 per cent increase in franchise sales coming from games that go into Game Pass,"Percy says."And that’s coming from Game Pass members discovering they really love franchises and following along with them".
Dan Greenawalt is creative director at Turn 10,the Microsoft-owned studio behind theForza racing series. He believes that,in an era of video games as live services,active playerbase is much more important for the business than an initial retail purchase.
"Last time we announced numbers for Forza,we were upwards of 8 million players in a given month",Greenawalt says."That kind of tonnage of players gives you a tremendous amount of leverage to create new experiences. If you have the community … business will follow".
Last year'sForza Horizon 4 was added to Game Pass immediately on launch,as all first party Microsoft games are,and while Greenawalt can't say for sure how much of the games success can be attributed to the service,he says it's clear that for certain kinds of games the subscription catalogue model can be a big benefit.
"Getting a larger community means more people are watching streams,which means more people create streams … which means more people want to play the game. It’s self-fuelling",Greenawalt says.
"If your game succeeds based on social interaction … with community feeding engagement with the game,then what you’ve got is a whole new funnel of players coming in through Game Pass,and that’s really interesting and really positive".
A much bigger pool
The idea that certain kinds of games will do better as part of a subscription service than being sold on their own is echoed by Derek Bradley,CEO of New Zealand's A44. The studio's first game,Ashen,is a tough,open-world and battle-focused roleplaying game. It has passive multiplayer,meaning other people drop into your game without you needing to invite them or wait in a lobby.
"There are certain games that really make a lot of sense for early access,and certain games that make a lot of sense for free-to-play,but I would say more than anythingAshen really makes a lot of sense for a Game Pass release",Bradley says.
"We want that healthy playerbase so that the pool of players that are getting collated in the background and matched into your game is as rich as possible".
Bradley says the decision to make a deal with Microsoft to launchAshenday and date on Game Pass,rather than relying on gamers finding and paying full price for the game,was the easiest decision in the game's development.
"The friction for[players] getting into Game Pass is so low",he says,pointing out that players with a limited budget might have only been able to play one or two games a month previously.
"We’re a new developer making a fairly ambitious thing,and we really need that community for the game to thrive,and Game Pass really made that happen. We’ve had a very very smooth transition into a Game Pass kind of model".
Bradley thinks that in the long term the subscription model,like early access and downloadable content before it,will lead to new kinds of games that just weren’t financially viable before. Specifically,the idea that a game needs to last players a certain number of hours to justify its cost will disappear.
But there are potential issues in a future where subscription gaming catalogues are common. Microsoft may say Game Pass is strictly"additive"to its traditional store,but in the past Netflix's streaming catalogue was also additive to its DVD rental business. What happens if players decide they'd rather stick to only playing the games included in their subscriptions?
"It’s going to be a double-edged sword,especially for smaller indies that haven’t necessarily proved themselves",Bradley says,speculating that many new developers would have a hard time convincing a platform holder like Microsoft to pick them up,but that subscription services would make gamers less inclined to pay for a game directly.
"It’s going to be some tricky waters for the smallest indies,and it’s going to be very interesting to see how the different platforms tackle the same problems".