Længe har det været som skrevet i stjernerne, at også spil, ligesom film og musik, skal bevæge sig fra et fysisk medie til et digitalt eller streamet et af slagsen. Udviklingen sker langsomt, og for nylig har Microsoft valgt for alvor at presse på med afsløringen af Xbox Game Pass, en abonnementsbaseret tjeneste hvor du kan spille et hav af forskellige Xbox One-titler.
Derfor spørger mange nu sig selv, om hvorvidt Microsoft kan nyde godt af en Netflix-lignende succes med deres banebrydende tjeneste, men det mener Michael Pachter simpelthen ikke er muligt. Han mener tværtimod at udgivere vil være for forsigtige med at udgive deres titler på Xbox Game Pass, fordi de hellere vil sælge dem til $60 digitalt eller fysisk.
I den nyeste udgave af Pachter Factor siger han følgende:
"Game Pass is $10 a month. We don't know a whole lot about it because it just got announced, but I looked at the titles that are listed as available and I see nothing that came out more recently than a year ago.I saw Halo there, but Halo was a fall 2015 launch, and that was the most recent game I saw and then I saw a bunch of old games. So I think and I may be wrong, that the game publishers are reluctant to put anything out there on Game Pass that they believe they can still sell to you. I didn't see Grand Theft Auto on there, which came out 2013, next-gen 2014 and Take-Two sold 15 million units of that game in 2016. Not at high prices, probably $30-40, but if they can sell it to you for $30-40, why are they going to give it to you for $10 a month and only get a small percentage of that? The point is, if the publisher thinks you're a big enough chump to buy a three-year-old game at $30-40 bucks, they won't give it to you for $2/3 and let you play to your heart's content.
Vi beklager det længere svar, men hvad mener du om Pachters udtalelse? Kommer et program som Xbox Game Pass til at have problemer med udgivere der hellere vil have flere penge igennem den traditionelle model?