Forza Horizon 5 creative director Mike Brown has stated that Xbox Game Pass, while a conceptually sound idea, ultimately failed to attract enough subscribers to become a viable business. This shortfall, he believes, is a contributing factor to the current difficulties faced by Xbox, including studio closures and layoffs.
Brown explained in an interview that Microsoft had aimed for 77 million Game Pass subscribers but has only reached approximately 30 million. "That’s actually just really sad because we’re now going to see studios getting shut down or spun off," he told MinnMax, as reported by Kotaku. "Loads of people are going to lose their jobs. And that is honestly just a result of a well-meaning player-focused concept of Xbox Game Pass not quite landing. And I think that’s just, it’s just a real shame."
Microsoft invested heavily in Game Pass through acquisitions and funding, with the goal of maintaining a steady stream of new games to retain subscribers and attract new ones. However, this strategy did not yield the desired results. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has also acknowledged that Game Pass represented a bet that did not pay off, following Microsoft's expenditure of over $80 billion on studio acquisitions to bolster the service's content library.
Concerns about the viability of Game Pass were reportedly present within Xbox leadership. Some executives are said to have expressed opposition to the service's vision, with certain individuals believing it devalues games and has negatively impacted the industry. One former Xbox studio lead described launching games into Game Pass as creating an assumption that titles couldn't succeed independently, likening it to "a race to zero."
In response to these challenges, Microsoft has begun enacting changes to the Game Pass strategy. The company has reduced the price of the service and announced that new Call of Duty titles will not be available on Game Pass at launch. These adjustments suggest a potential shift away from the original model, possibly incorporating "windowing" strategies where new major releases are withheld from the service for a period to encourage full-price sales before becoming available to subscribers. For example, new Call of Duty games are now slated to arrive on Game Pass in the holiday season following their release, meaning players wanting to play a new installment at launch must purchase it separately.