Game Pass\u2019s last known subscriber figure was 34 million, published back in February 2024. However, growth is understood to have slowed in recent years, and Xbox recently confirmed<\/a> that a price rise introduced last year shed \u201cmillions of subscribers\u201d in a few months.<\/p>\n Moon Studios<\/a> CEO, Thomas Mahler<\/a>, who directed both Ori games, wrote on X<\/a> that he believed Game Pass hasn\u2019t been more successful because Xbox did not produce enough hits.<\/p>\n Mahler was responding to a post from 3D Realms founder George Broussard<\/a>, in which he questioned whether Microsoft<\/a> \u201coverbought\u201d studios in an attempt to feed its Game Pass ambitions.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Gamepass strategy could\u2019ve worked if people would\u2019ve shown up for it,\u201d Mahler wrote. \u201cProblem is: They didn\u2019t and the software catalogue was just nowhere near good enough to make people happily pay the subscription every month.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the same as with streaming in the film business: I\u2019ll happily pay my HBO sub cause HBO has amazing content that I want to watch. I\u2019d keep that sub just to binge Sopranos, The Wire, GoT, etc.<\/p>\n \u201cBut with games, \u2018NEW\u2019 for some reason is very, very important to players. And if your new content doesn\u2019t even remotely match the quality of the old content, you\u2019ve got a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n The Moon Studios CEO added that he believed Microsoft needed its studios to deliver more hits that a broad audience would want to play. \u201cBut what was the big Xbox game in recent years that was just delightfully good? That game doesn\u2019t exist,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cAlmost every single first-party studio in recent years has been floundering. You\u2019d want Bethesda<\/a> to create a \u2018Skyrim in Space\u2019 that ought to be better than Skyrim was cause that was an old game: But we got Starfield<\/a> instead.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s the crux of the issue: You\u2019d need the Xbox folks to deeply, fundamentally understand gamers and what they want. They\u2019d need to understand what\u2019s a good game and what\u2019s a mediocre game. And they\u2019d need to have good deals with devs so developers are actively incentivized to produce massive hits, not just slop out mediocre content like a factory.\u201d<\/p>\n Mahler said that Game Pass had become \u201ca little like Communism\u201d because it had not given developers \u201ca strong incentive to roll up their sleeves and go the extra mile\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd if you then don\u2019t get the quality you need, it all comes crashing down cause players will not pay up unless you basically force them to by making content that\u2019s so good that they feel like they miss out if they don\u2019t check it out.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Metacritic\u2019s annual publisher rankings, Microsoft was the fifth-best publisher in 2025<\/a>, in terms of aggregated review scores. In 2024, Bethesda ranked 8th. In 2023 and 2022, Microsoft didn\u2019t make the top ten. However, in 2021 it grabbed a rare top place<\/a>, thanks to Forza Horizon 5<\/a>, Psychonauts 2<\/a>, and Microsoft Flight Simulator<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The director of Xbox\u2019s critically acclaimed Ori games has criticized Microsoft\u2019s Game Pass strategy, claiming that the subscription…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-650838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gb","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n