How Microsoft will likely make gamepass more sustainable in the future
As a lot of you may know, Xbox exclusives do not sell a major amount of copies on Xbox hardware due to them being day 1 on gamepass. With game development becoming increasingly more expensive, this will make gamepass hard to sustain in the long run. This is why we will likely continue to see games coming to other platforms, which I believe is a good thing. Valve has always managed to keep a healthy ecosystem, by allowing their games to be played by everyone.
This likely won't be the only strategy to continue to maintain the expensive cost of gamepass. If Xbox continues to push their service to other platforms like PC, and devices using XCloud. This will further lower the profits made from game sales. How does Microsoft continue to generate enough revenue from gamepass? In the future, we will likely see gamepass exclusives being long term games with DLC and or micro-transactions. We are already seeing this with Starfield, and was also the plan for Halo infinite until the campaign DLC was cancelled.
It is my belief that Microsoft plans to make their exclusive games have up to 10 years additional content, supplied via premium DLC, and possibly micro-transactions. This I also speculate to be the future of gaming. With games taking up to 5 - 6 years to develop. It makes sense for companies to profit off small expansions for their current games. This way they get additional sales from their backlog, whilst also making £35 ($40) for 2 - 3 years worth of work.
What do you all think? Would you prefer to have the same games long term, with additional paid content on top of gamepass. Or would you prefer to just have new games with no expansions? What are your thoughts with paid micro-transactions, like Creation Club in BGS games?