Indie publisher founder sets the record straight on how beneficial Xbox Game Pass is to developers

gamepur.com:

With the recent community discourse surrounding Xbox’s game sale numbers due to Game Pass subscriptions, Mike Rose, Founder of indie publisher No More Robots, has proclaimed that the service secures success for every title under their umbrella and that they will push to have all of their games supported on Game Pass going forward.

While it appears that developers and publishers are signed under an NDA to discuss specifics of how the service works financially and performatively for them, Rose seems to be very in favor of how being included in the Game Pass library is an instant benefit on the business side.

From a visibility point of view, we imagine a ton more people download and try indie games in the service than if they were not there. For example, Descenders is a No More Robots-backed title that has been in Game Pass for a while now. Only very specific people would see a biking game like this in the Xbox Store and purchase it. With it being available for download at no extra cost to Game Pass subscribers, so many more people are more likely to give it a try. Larger games from studios like EA, Ubisoft, and Warner Bros. will also likely get this boost in visibility, we imagine the financial impact of being in Game Pass is quite different for them.

Related: Thanks to Xbox Game Pass, players are gaming more but buying less, notes Microsoft

While we know that many people subscribe to Game Pass and that it makes Microsoft a lot of money, the situation for developers and publishers has never been explicitly known. There have been soft remarks about Xbox covering the development cost of certain titles, but we imagine the contract to be in the service is different depending on the title’s situation. It makes sense for Xbox