Xbox-höjdaren Aaron Greenberg (chef för spelmarknadsföringen) passade under Gamescom förra veckan på att berätta mer om tjänsten Game Pass som lanserades för drygt ett år sedan. Den har kontinuerligt byggts ut med fler spel i tidigare i år avslöjades att alla nya Microsoft-spel till Xbox kommer att finnas tillgängliga till tjänsten från dag ett. Och tydligen är man nöjda med responsen, för Greenberg sade:
"Well it's great, it's great to see partners like Bethesda continue to support the program. I mean strategically it's great for people to play games on Game Pass ahead of new releases coming out, like I love Fallout 4 being in the program. People that don't know Fallout, that maybe might be a Game Pass member are are just looking at 'what are the new games?', to be able to play that in advance of Fallout 76 is great, and we've seen that example happen over and over again.
For us I think it gets back to really listening to our customers and hearing their feedback, and one of the things we saw through research and insights is that customers were talking about the great value they get streaming video subscription services, with music subscription services, and the fact that that didn't exist for them in gaming, and so we think it's a unique opportunity that we were able to bring that, frankly, for one low price you get over 100 games and all of our new releases [...] and then we just keep adding more titles. Master Chief Collection was our big announcement."
Enligt Greenberg har gensvaret på tjänsten varit extra stark här i Europa och han fortsatte med att berätta hur det utvecklats:
"We're looking for all different ways to add more value. What we're seeing is Game Pass response is really strong. Subscriptions are going well, especially here in Europe, we've seen really, really good response [...] we're seeing people spending more time playing, playing more games in Game Pass, and it's been great for us but it's also great for our development partners as well. It builds a bigger audience, the network effect has been great - we've seen that with both Sea of Thieves and State of Decay as an example, where we saw more players come in and play the game, which drove more word-of-mouth, that network effect that we think definitely contributed to the success of those titles."
Tror du tjänster som Game Pass är framtiden för spelförsäljning, eller tror du mer på traditionella varianter?
