Subscription services in gaming are popular, and while they are very far from the only way to buy and play games, the profile of the business model is growing thanks in part to the backing of multi-trillion-dollar company Microsoft and its Xbox Game Pass service. Pete Hines, the longtime Bethesda marketing and publishing boss who retired after Microsoft bought his company, has now shared his thoughts on subscription services for games–and he has some issues.
In an interview with dbltap, Hines began by saying he doesn’t work at Bethesda anymore and is under no assumption that he what he knew when he was there still holds true today. That said, he believes he is involved enough in gaming still today to understand “what I considered to be some short-sighted decision making several years ago, and it seems to be bearing out the way I said.”
Hines said his main issue with a subscription service like Game Pass or others is that the economics might not always make sense–and that’s a critical point in a world with mass layoffs, studio closures, and game cancellations.
“Subscriptions have become the new four letter word, right? You can’t buy a product anymore. When you talk about a subscription that relies on content, if you don’t figure out how to balance the needs of the service and the people running the service with the people who are providing the content–without which your subscription is worth jack sh*t–then you have a real problem,” he said.
Hines went on to say a company behind a subscription service for games needs to “properly acknowledge, compensate, and recognize what it takes to create that content and not just make a game, but make a product.”
The “tension” inherent in the situation that Hines outlined is “hurting a lot of people,” including game developers, Hines said.
“Because they’re fitting into an ecosystem that is not properly valuing and rewarding what they’re making,” he said.
These comments appear to be aligned with what Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has said about subscription services. While the company might put some older titles on subscription services like Game Pass–and the company has done this with GTA 5–Zelnick said he wouldn’t launch a brand-new game into Game Pass because of the economics. Zelnick has acknowledged that Microsoft putting Call of Duty on Game Pass will no doubt help drive subscribers to the service, but the executive said this may only work “for a period of time.”
While Microsoft launches all of its first-party games into Xbox Game Pass on day one, Sony doesn’t do this with its own PlayStation Plus membership program. PlayStation’s former president Jim Ryan seemed to agree with Zelnick and previously discussed how this doesn’t make economic sense.
For its part, Electronic Arts has a subscription service called EA Play Pro, and for $17/month, members can get access to the company’s newest games at launch. Ubisoft, meanwhile, has a subscription service called Ubisoft+ ($18/month) that allows members to play new releases on day one.
Of course, subscription services are not the only way to access games today, and Microsoft has maintained from the onset of Game Pass that it’s just one option for players–they can always buy a game outright as well. Still, some fear that the economics of Game Pass could lead to troubled times down the road.
There has been significant upheaval at Microsoft in recent times, with the company enacting mass layoffs, cancelling games, and closing at least one studio. For the latest financial year, Xbox Game Pass generated nearly $5 billion annually for the first time.
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