Guardians Of The Galaxy cost Xbox $5-10 million to get on Game Pass claims analyst

metro.co.uk:

An analyst has given a rare glimpse into how much Microsoft might be spending on bringing games to Xbox Game Pass.

If the rumours are to believed, Sony is preparing to announce its equivalent of the Xbox Game Pass any day now; although it’s assumed that, being a smaller company than Microsoft, they won’t be able to match all the features, especially having first party games available from day one.

How much it costs Microsoft to run Game Pass is, like the details of how many consoles it sells or how many subscribers it has, kept secret, but one analyst has suggested that signing up a big budget game like Guardians Of The Galaxy costs around $5-10 million.

The figure isn’t official but MST Financial senior analyst David Gibson has been covering Square Enix for 15 years and claims the estimate is accurate.

Even assuming the figure is correct, the peculiar nature of Guardians Of The Galaxy makes it difficult to draw conclusions about how much is being paid for other games.

Although it was a big budget title based on a popular licence, Square Enix itself admitted that initial sales were disappointing, despite positive reviews. Sales have apparently improved over time, but in large part simply because it’s been widely discounted at retail.

That means that Microsoft presumably only had to pay a fraction of what they normally would’ve spent for a high-profile title, especially as the game came to the service five months after its initial release.

At the very least though it does indicate the sort of money Sony would have to spend to get prominent third party games on its Game Pass equivalent, if it didn’t want to add its own first party titles.

A separate report this month also revealed that Microsoft has paid indie developers – which