Xbox Game Pass is often called “Netflix gaming”. As it turned out, Microsoft does not quite agree with this comparison. The vice president of the gaming ecosystem of the company, Sarah Bond, explained what the key difference is.
Bond shared her thoughts in an interview with Forbes. In her opinion, it’s all about the duration of monetization. The Game Pass has a much longer one.
“When you buy a Netflix subscription, you’re already at the end of a kind of monetization cycle. You got everything you need, and you don’t have to pay anymore,” Bond said. “In games, it’s the opposite. You can buy items inside the game itself, DLC, other parts of the franchise or games of other genres.”
Bond also shared some statistics on the Game Pass.
It turned out that on average, Game Pass subscribers spend 20% more money on games compared to other gamers. In addition, they play 20% longer, launch 30% more titles and try new genres 40% more often.
According to Bond, over time, Game Pass subscribers will no longer stand out much among other gamers. This may happen if Game Pass, and with it other subscription services, increase their presence in the market. However, Bond insists that the market has a lot to grow, especially against the background of the fact that Xbox is trying to combine its cloud solutions with Game Pass.
Recall that at the moment the number of Game Pass users is 18 million people. The subscription itself also continues to grow. For example, a week and a half ago, 20 Bethesda games appeared in it as a result of a recently closed deal to buy the studio by Microsoft.