Microsoft and the Xbox One are in an interesting position in terms of their console. For while the Xbox One has done ok in terms of sales, and the Xbox One X has apparently done better than expectations, they’re still way behind Sony’s PS4 and the Nintendo Switch in many aspects. But, one avenue they are doing VERY well in is in regards to their subscription service Xbox Game Pass. Where players can get games digitally day one and have access to a whole library of games all for a low fee every month.
For Xbox Boss Phil Spencer, he has a grand vision for the Xbox Game Pass, mainly, he wants to expand its reach, he noted in a press conference recently:
“When you think about reaching a customer with this content where their only compute device could be an Android phone, you think about, ‘What are all the ways that person pays for content today’?” said Spencer. “So we need to make sure that we’re world-class at free-to-play content, but we also look at subscription as a much lower barrier way for a customer to build a library of content.
But how to expand the reach? Well, according to Spencer, he wants to put the Pass on every single device imaginable:
“So we built Xbox Game Pass — it started on console, it will come to PC, and eventually it will come to every device — we use the flywheel that we have with customers on an Xbox to start the growth in Xbox Game Pass. But as somebody sitting back and taking a longer-term view of where our business is going, you should look at that as a business model that we think scales to billions of people not hundreds of millions of people like retail does.”
Will they be able to do it? Hard to say, but if they do, and it works out well, it would indeed give Microsoft a leg up on the others.
