Xbox Game Pass only exists because Phil Spencer fought for it
Despite many of his own staff having little faith in Xbox Game Pass, it’s been revealed that Phil Spencer pushed to make it a reality.
As much as Game Pass has now become the Xbox’s killer app that was never guaranteed and new information reveals just how much Xbox boss Phil Spencer had to fight for it.
In a profile on Spencer by the Wall Street Journal, Richard Irving, who once served as product leader for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, until he left Microsoft in 2016, recounts how Spencer pushed back against the criticisms Game Pass faced.
Apparently, Spencer’s own staff argued that the service would never take off, believing that other publishers wouldn’t participate and that it would eat into profits. Regardless, Spencer refused to backed down.
‘He wouldn’t take no for an answer,’ said Irving. ‘He was always trying to find a way to make it work.’
His stubbornness has certainly paid off and the number of subscribers has steadily grown over the last few years. Although it did miss its 2021 targets, with subscribers only increasing by 37% instead of the expected 48%.
Still, Game Pass has proven popular enough to warrant demands for Sony to do the exact same thing. A PlayStation Game Pass has been heavily rumoured recently, following a December report of a service codenamed Spartacus that combines PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now.
Bolstering Game Pass with new games is part of the reason behind Microsoft’s acquisitions of Bethesda and Activision Blizzard, since it can add those studios’ game libraries to the service.
Although the Activision Blizzard acquisition must first be approved by regulators, with theUS Federal Trade Commission set to scrutinise the deal and ensure it doesn’t violate anti-monopoly rules.
The deal being
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