Xbox Game Pass does reduce traditional game sales admits Microsoft-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

The lesson here is never believe a word a company exec says (pic: Microsoft)

Despite previous claims to the contrary, Microsoft has admitted that having a game on Game Pass does tend to ‘cannibalise’ sales.

It may not always seem that way, but companies don’t like getting involved in legal tussles if they can possibly avoid it. Not just because it’s expensive and they might lose but because it could end up revealing more about their business practices than they’d prefer.

It works both ways, with Microsoft recently trying to get Sony to share their future release schedules with everyone, but now Microsoft has been forced to tell the truth about how Game Pass affects individual game sales.

The recent CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) report on the proposed acquisition has revealed another awkward fact: that by putting a game on Game Pass its sales as an individual title take a noticeable hit for at least 12 months.

You may not think that surprising, indeed it seems entirely logical, but previously Xbox boss Phil Spencer has insisted that that isn’t the case.

Back in 2018, Spencer said that a game being on Game Pass (he was using Forza Horizon 4 as his example) led to ‘more sales of the game’, as he claimed that, ‘Gamers find things to play based on what everybody else is playing.’

It now seems that may have been a verbal inexactitude, especially as the CMA report, via GamesIndustry.biz, also mentions Activision complaining that putting games onto subscription services, ‘severely cannibalises B2P [buy to play] sales, particularly in the case of newer releases.’

In other words, no matter what Microsoft has previously pretended, putting your game on Game Pass, or an equivalent service, results in less traditional sales.

That’s not necessarily a problem for a third party publisher, if they’re being appropriately compensated by Microsoft or whoever, but it is exactly the reason why Sony has said it doesn’t intend to put its exclusives on a subscription service from day one.

It’s unclear whether Microsoft’s economy with the truth will affect deliberations from other monopoly investigations around the world, but it’s certainly not going to help their case, as the question of whether they’re allowed to acquire Activision Blizzard rumbles on.

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