Xbox Game Pass's Success Is Thanks To One Simple Reason That Amazon Still Doesn't Understand

screenrant.com:

Executives have consistently shown themselves to be wildly out of touch when it comes to understanding consumers in the video game market, and a misguided analysis of Amazon Luna’s failure to compete with Xbox Game Pass, along with the Twitch gaming store’s failure to topple Steam, provides a perfect illustration of this. At the time Luna launched, Game Pass was an outstanding value, with hundreds of quality games at a low price. Steam’s available games are in the tens of thousands, and the idea that fans would prefer to buy from a store attached to Twitch is fundamentally demeaning and condescending.

There are valid reasons to select Good Old Games as one’s digital storefront of choice, since GOG’s DRM-free policies preserve games, and nothing beats Steam in the sheer number of options available. Amazon purchased Twitch, then assumed fans who used Twitch would buy games there over alternative storefronts, which is a baffling leap in logic. Even in the company's post-mortem analysis, while executives may recognize a failure, they rarely realize why a service, or a storefront, fails. Steam provided more options, and Game Pass provided more value. These are simple truths that consumers recognize, but executives remain blind to, seeking alternative explanations.

When Amazon Luna launched for Prime members, it offered its Luna+ subscription service for $6 USD per month. Even at that price point, Luna+ offered an inferior value proposition to Game Pass or PlayStation Now, the predecessor to PlayStation Plus Premium. In a post on LinkedIn, Ethan Evans, the former VP of Prime Gaming for Amazon, discussed the company’s inability to compete with Steam, and the failure of Amazon Luna. While it is fine to admit mistakes, the supposed “” he learned that he shares with other executives are all the wrong ones. Evans fails to recognize that value matters.

An essay like the one Evans provided on LinkedIn is purely aimed at other executives. It perpetuates the myth that companies