As each new report emerges about the future of Xbox, my relationship with the platform continues to sour. If you’re wondering why, look no further than the Tango Gameworks fiasco: attempting to murder a studio responsible for one of your biggest critical hits of 2023 was outrageous, tone-deaf, and deserving of half a dozen expletives. It was enough to radicalise me. From that moment on, I began to reassess practically every thought I’d ever had about Xbox.
I had been optimistic about the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard. I was under the impression that anything was better than Bobby Kotick continuing his reign of terror at Activision. The jury’s still out on whether that’s true, but even if it is, the next worst thing was Microsoft being handed the keys to yet another multi-billion-dollar publisher when it couldn’t keep its own house, or the ones it had already acquired, in order.
We’ve seen multiple rounds of layoffs and studio closures, with more sure to follow. And now the corporation has its sights set on consumers. Good luck buying a Series S or Series X at a reasonable price, and don’t forget the attempt to charge $80 for The Outer Worlds 2. Then there’s the Game Pass of it all. Despite Xbox’s best attempts to celebrate it as a good thing, the extortionate price increase of Xbox Game Pass has infuriated subscribers to the point of crashing the cancellation website.
Anyone who has taken advantage of Game Pass since its inception won’t be surprised. The “best deal in gaming” mantra was valid for a long time. If you were interested in just two or three games on the service, you’d be saving plenty by subscribing for a year.
There’s still an undeniable amount of quality to be found on Game Pass. The last 12 months have been fantastic for subscribers, with games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Doom: The Dark Ages, Avowed, South of Midnight, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3+4 Remake, and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Remastered, to name a few. However, Xbox needs to sustain that level of quality. Hell, after the price increase, it needs to go further.
There are some heavy-hitters on the slate, like Fable, Gears of War: E-Day, Forza Horizon 6, and Clockwork Revolution, but are those enough? I have no idea. It’ll vary player-to-player. If you’re an enthusiast who enjoys a wide range of genres, you may still find value in subscribing. If you’re a Fortnite player, you could even save money with the addition of the Fortnite Crew membership.
For the average player, though, it’s a tough sell. Those who only play a few games a year (more people than you might think) will be better off chucking Game Pass, saving their pennies, and buying the games they’re actually interested in. That may be what Xbox is banking on. Money is money, and with Microsoft still pumping reckless amounts of funding into AI, Xbox needs results to prove that gaming is still a worthwhile endeavour. Doesn’t matter if it comes from Game Pass or cold hard sales.
As for me, I’ve taken advantage of the stacking tactic whenever my subscription expired, so I’m locked in until mid-2026. Depending on my situation, the number of upcoming games, and whether Xbox increases the price again, I’ll decide then if I’ll renew.
Bad Judgement Call
In news that most of us saw coming a mile away, Xbox’s decision to add Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 to Game Pass day-and-date reportedly resulted in a $300,000,000 loss. Not the result Phil Spencer and co were hoping for, but entirely predictable. The casual player might not be susceptible to Cloud Gaming or Game Pass’ library, but if there’s a way to get the new Call of Duty for cheap, they’re going to pursue it. You’d assume this led to an influx of long-term subscribers, but the steep price increase to the service would suggest otherwise.
I do think there’s a way Call of Duty on Game Pass could work. If it were an exclusive perk of console Game Pass, it might entice players on PlayStation 4 to upgrade to an Xbox console. Coaxing players across the generational divide is really Xbox’s only chance to convert anyone from PlayStation these days. However, offering it on PC—a platform where Call of Duty has grown rapidly in recent years—is mind-boggling. It’s yet another own goal to add to the ever-expanding list. Pretty soon, it’ll have more entries than Game Pass has games. Xbox should be thankful that PlayStation is still seen as the de facto home of COD; otherwise, that $300m loss could’ve been much worse.
I’d be interested to know if Call of Duty is taking any heat for the loss. Black Ops 6 has petered out as we approach Black Ops 7, but it launched strongly, and word of mouth was high. Expecting blockbuster sales and a surge of new Game Pass adopters was probably too much, even for the giant of giants. A star footballer can play the perfect game, but it doesn’t guarantee a victory.
Call of Duty is also the most vulnerable it’s been in a while. Every new title reveals additional chinks in its armour, and fans have had enough of the franchise’s complacency. The timing couldn’t be worse for Activision: EA’s Battlefield is back and looking for a fight.
I hate the recent obsession with checking the Steam concurrent player count for every new game, but it’s a useful metric for tracking a live-service shooter. According to SteamDB, Battlefield 6 launched to enormous numbers—over 740,000 day one players is not to be sniffed at. The real test for Battlefield 6 will be whether the game can keep them coming back long after launch, but the release has undoubtedly been a massive success.
Whether out of desperation or a change of heart (we already know the answer to that one), Activision has given Treyarch the green light to revert COD’s heavily criticised skill-based matchmaking back to its traditional form, where skill is slightly considered but ping is king. Hallelujah. SBMM is everything wrong with modern Call of Duty. It’s designed around player engagement, not player enjoyment. It’s there to keep everyone on the treadmill: never having too much or too little fun, just enough to ensure they keep playing. While engagement time might be down following the change, I guarantee more players will be enjoying themselves, which is what it should be about.
Looking ahead, Infinity Ward is up next with (presumably) Modern Warfare 4. Sledgehammer and Treyarch fixed most of the damage the studio did to Call of Duty (to the extent that red dots on the mini-map and the removal of tactical sprint were marketing beats), but will it really be bold enough to rip up the rulebook again? And if so, will the types of players it’s trying to attract care? There’s a good chance they’ll all still be playing Battlefield 6.
Regardless of which series comes out on top, I’m thankful for the competition. The closer Battlefield gets to Call of Duty, the better it is for players of both games. If Activision loosened its grip on Black Ops 7 because of pre-release numbers, what might it relinquish if Battlefield were to outsell a Call of Duty game?
Box or No Box
As the fallout from the Game Pass news simmered, rumours spread that Xbox is giving up on hardware. It wouldn’t be that surprising, since many have suspected Xbox has been distancing itself from proprietary hardware for a while. Its “Play Anywhere” philosophy is antithetical to the idea of a home console, after all. Say Xbox does release a new console in a couple of years: why would anyone buy it when the manufacturer is actively championing the fact that you can play its games everywhere else?
If ventures like the Meta Quest partnership and the handheld devices with Republic of Gamers prove successful, Xbox may decide to partner with other manufacturers instead of doing everything in-house.
Unless the next Xbox is a powerhouse, I don’t see it attracting anyone from outside the ecosystem, nor will it do much to retain players who are already looking elsewhere towards Nintendo and Sony. Even if Xbox embraces PC gaming with Steam support on a new console, at that point, is it not just easier to build a PC to your own tastes?
Xbox has denied the claim that hardware is going anywhere, pointing everyone to its AMD announcement video from a few months ago. The issue is that after so many pivots and twisted truths, no one believes a word of it. Xbox finds itself in a hole of its own making. Until a new console becomes available to buy, scepticism will remain. It was only four games going cross-platform… until it wasn’t.
Players have severe trust issues with Xbox and that won’t change any time soon. There’s no quick fix here—Xbox made its bed, now it must sleep in it. I’ve become increasingly selective with what games I purchase on the platform, and I’m sure others are doing the same.
New hardware, no hardware—it matters little. Microsoft and Xbox continue to extinguish the last remaining embers of the Xbox brand. I’ve thought this before, but I wonder if Phil Spencer regrets the acquisition of Activision. Xbox has always existed at the mercy of Microsoft, but it didn’t attract as much attention when it floundered through previous generations. Fast-forward past several mergers, though, and it finds itself too big to avoid scrutiny. Was Spencer really so foolish as to believe a $69 billion merger wouldn’t put Xbox under the microscope for cost-cutting exercises? Or perhaps he was well aware and didn’t care. Whatever the case, the acquisition has forever changed Xbox, and you’ll not find many people saying it’s for the better.
“This is how we play now” isn’t just marketing spin. It’s a warning that Xbox is dropping its pro-consumer mask altogether. You either get in line with the new agenda or go somewhere else. Xbox’s latest directive is to extract as much money as possible from players, wherever they play. It’s a greedy husk of a brand where “Play Anywhere” is a veiled threat. It knows it holds some of the biggest titles in video games for ransom, and it will gleefully take your money, wherever you choose to play.
