Although Xbox regards Game Pass as its core business strategy, its growth has also failed to meet Xbox management's expectations. Last year's 50% price increase resulted in the loss of millions of players, and despite recent price cuts, user numbers are far from recovering.
As a result, the future of Game Pass looks bleak. The latest rumors suggest that Xbox appears to have frozen existing and planned contracts from bringing more third-party games to Game Pass.
According to industry uncle @eXtas1stv, several independent game developers revealed during the Italian B2B game exhibition First Playable that Xbox has completely suspended signing new Game Pass cooperation agreements.
The commercial suspension of this subscription service platform seems to mean that Microsoft is quickly adjusting its strategic direction:
Some game projects that have entered the preliminary negotiation stage and plan to join Game Pass have had their cooperation offers suddenly withdrawn by Microsoft.
Contracts with third-party companies are currently completely suspended, and some games that were originally in early negotiations are now unable to join Game Pass.
The developers noted that new management had ordered the blockade to be implemented along with a "comprehensive restructuring" of its business strategy.
In the past, Game Pass relied on investing millions of dollars to obtain third-party games to achieve a "Day One" service model, but now this strategy is facing a comprehensive review.
As Microsoft's new management begins to rein in spending, many independent studios have lost one of their most important sources of financial security. At the same time, this also means that the era of Xbox relying on high investment to promote the rapid expansion of Game Pass may be over.
