Studiet bag Ori-serien, Moon Studios, ledes af Thomas Mahler, en mand der ikke er bange for at udtale sig om branchen, og som selv har været omtåget af skandaler tidligere. Han har dog et interessant take på "Game Pass"-problematikken, altså om hvorvidt en abonnementsfinansieret model kunne have fungeret.
I en længere besked på X siger Mahler nemlig, at Game Pass kunne have været en større succes, men problemet er bare, at der ikke blev produceret gode nok spil fra Xbox' egne studier til at befolke kataloget:
"The Game Pass strategy could've worked if people would've shown up for it. Problem is they didn't, and the software catalog was just nowhere near good enough to make people happily pay the subscription every month. It's the same as with streaming in the film business: I'll happily pay my HBO sub because HBO has amazing content that I want to watch. I'd keep that sub just to binge Sopranos, The Wire, GoT, etc. But with games, 'NEW' for some reason is very, very important to players. And if your new content doesn't even remotely match the quality of the old content, you've got a problem.
You need those games your studios are producing to become smash hits, cultural events that everyone wants to play - but what was the big Xbox game in recent years that was just delightfully good? That game doesn't exist. Almost every single first party studio in recent years has been floundering. You'd want Bethesda to create a 'Skyrim in Space' that ought to be better than Skyrim was cause that was an old game: But we got Starfield instead.
And that's the crux of the issue: you'd need the Xbox folks to deeply, fundamentally understand gamers and what they want. They'd need to understand what's a good game and what's a mediocre game. And they'd need to have good deals with devs so developers are actively incentivized to produce massive hits, not just slop out mediocre content like a factory.
Game Pass, in some ways, is a little like Communism. And just like with communism, if you don't give people a strong incentive to roll up their sleeves and go the extra mile, they won't. And if you then don't get the quality you need, it all comes crashing down cause players will not pay up unless you basically force them to by making content that's so good that they feel like they miss out if they don't check it out."
Ja, det er et lidt længere citat her, men det er et interessant argument, et han ikke er alene om at bringe til bordet. Spørgsmålet er så bare om hvorvidt det ikke altid er det argument de fleste bruger, og som ikke nødvendigvis er hele løsningen.