Arkane Studios might now be an Xbox-owned studio, but its original founder has expressed concerns about the impacts that Xbox Game Pass is having on the industry.
Raphael Colantonio founded the developer behind imsim heavyweights like Dishonored, Prey, the failed Redfall, and the upcoming Marvel’s Blade decades ago, before the studio was eventually sold to Microsoft as part of its Bethesda acquisition, meaning it’s now another gear in the megacorp’s subscription service strategy.
But Colantonio recently tweeted Game Pass “is an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade, subsidized by MS’s ‘infinite money’, but at some point reality has to hit.” His main concern is that he doesn’t think Game Pass can “co-exist with other models” since the service will “either kill everyone else, or give up,” which would inevitably lead to more Xbox studio closures.
That’s certainly what happened to the movie industry – the general public aren’t concerned about owning the movies that are just available on streaming services anymore – though recent sales successes, including Expedition 33 and Oblivion Remastered, have proven games can sell well and launch into the service. Whether that can last forever is another question.
“It’s a long game that involves throwing a tsunami at the entire ecosystem of the industry,” he added. “Only the gamers like it because the offer is too good to be true, but eventually even gamers will hate it when they realize the effects on the games.”
“Other industries have different ratio cost content / sales. But even then, users enjoy Spotify because of the value proposition, but it is a horrible model for musicians, it only works for Spotify and the huge musicians and the major labels who have a stake in Spotify.”
Despite those concerns, there’s still a ton of games dropping into the service soon. We’ll see how Grounded 2, The Outer Worlds 2, Hollow Knight Silksong, and the next Call of Duty fare later this year.
Keep an eye on the new games of 2025 and beyond for more.
