Former Chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden, is skeptical of Xbox Game Pass, particularly its long-term viability. On the flip side, Layden had positive words for xCloud, Xbox's cloud gaming service that launched in 2019. 2019 was also the year that Layden left SIE Worldwide Studios, after serving as chairman for five years.
While at SIE Worldwide Studios, Layden oversaw many development studios such as Sucker Punch Studios and Naughty Dog Studios at a time when both were releasing titles that would go on to become critically acclaimed, such as Infamous: Second Son and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End respectively. All of this is to say, Layden knows the industry very well, and it appears that his intuition is telling him that Xbox Game Pass is not a completely sound model.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Layden spoke at length about the games industry and how it could be expanded to bring in even more potential customers. To Layden, the future of gaming is primed for more subscription models and cloud streaming, and less console-oriented services, because "People don't buy consoles because they want more steel and plastic in the living room. People buy consoles because they want access to the content." However, Layden still is not sold on Xbox Game Pass, at least in its current state. As the former chairman puts it,
"It's very hard to launch a $120m game on a subscription service charging $9.99 a month. You pencil it out, you're going to have to have 500 million subscribers before you start to recoup your investment. That's why right now you need to take a loss-leading position to try to grow that base. But still, if you have only 250 million consoles out there, you're not going to get to half a billion subscribers."
Based on the above quote, it appears that Layden does not believe tying gaming subscriptions to physical consoles is the future for gaming, just from a cost standpoint alone. But, in terms of the products themselves, Layden actually does think the concept of streaming games is the future of the games industry. Recently, Layden was interviewed by Screen Rant and, while he did not go as in-depth about Xbox there, he shared a lot of the same sentiments.
Layden is not the only person to believe video game streaming to be the future; Netflix announced last week that it is adding games to its service. And of course there is Google Stadia, the cross-platform cloud streaming service. Even PlayStation, where Layden used to work, has its own streaming subscription in PlayStation Now. So, consensus among the industry seems to be that video game streaming is something to work toward.
The problem is figuring out how to get to that future and, according to Layden, using consoles to reach new subscribers is not the best route there. Of course, Layden also realizes that PlayStation and Xbox still value console sales, so it is unlikely that either company will veer away from that anytime soon. Xbox has already been following a policy of getting players into its ecosystem either by console or PC, but if Layden is to be believed, there might be a better strategy out there.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz