Thomas Mahler, developer of Ori and the Blind Forest, recently criticised the Game Pass model, arguing that the service could have worked if the catalogue had been strong enough to make players happily pay every month. His harsher point was that Xbox needed to understand what players actually want, rather than pushing out mediocre content like a factory. It is a brutal criticism, but it points to a deeper design problem: content volume does not create player desire by itself...
For the past decade, Xbox has been on a spending spree unlike anything the games industry has ever seen. Billions were spent acquiring studios. Billions more were spent building Game Pass, funding content, supporting hardware, and expanding the Xbox ecosystem across multiple platforms. Now the company appears to be preparing another major reset. Following an internal memo describing Xbox as "overextended", reports suggest studios such as Ninja Theory, Double Fine, and Compulsion Games may be facing closure or independence negotiations as Microsoft attempts to reduce costs and refocus the business...
