Dear Phil Spencerare the games like God of War Ragnarok who sell subscriptions to Game Pass, at least in the core gamer segment. It’s not just a question of quality, undoubtedly very high, but precisely the fact that everyone talks about it, making it a highly desired title.
If in this 2022 the numbers of the Game Pass were lower than expected it is also because, beyond the ordinary marketing, however excellent, there was a lack of titles such as that of Sony Santa Monica which acted as catalysts for the general discourse of gamers, i.e. which drove people towards service spontaneously.
Games on Game Pass have been there. Even too many, in some moments. It is unlikely that a subscriber can complain about being left dry, given the constant launches, unless he hates video games. Important titles from third-party publishers have also arrived, but in 2022 the positive trail of first parties created at the end of 2021 with Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite dissolved, due to the evident lack of releases of the same level, where for “level” it must be understood as the assessment of the potential impact of the security on the market. The writer can wait for more Pentiments than any other year-end blockbuster, but that’s not important, because you have to aim above all at a mass audience (don’t take away the Pentiments, though eh) with an offer that attracts the eye to your ecosystem .
Here, in this sense, the postponements of Starfield and Redfall have represented no small amount of damage, not only due to the lack of games on the virtual shelves at the end of the year, but because they have significantly reduced the general interest in Xbox, marginalizing the platform. On the other hand, there was a lot of talk about PlayStation: at the beginning of the year for Horizon Forbidden West, to a lesser extent for Gran Turismo 7 and now with God of War Ragnarok. Is it only three games? They are enough and, above all, they exist, which is no small thing. Xbox planning, on the other hand, saw a year-long gap. Yet another, if we may say so, that after the numerous acquisitions we no longer expected to see.
