Do publishers really hate it? (pic: Microsoft)
PlayStation boss Jim Ryan has been taking to the stand in court, where he says an Xbox exclusive Starfield isn’t anti-competitive.
Since Microsoft refuses to share sales information, including subscriber numbers, it’s impossible for outsiders to know exactly how well Game Pass is really doing or whether it’s anywhere close to being profitable – although we do know that it has missed internal goals for two years in a row.
However, despite talk earlier in the year turning increasingly against Game Pass, it was front and centre at the Xbox Games Showcase – as a major selling point for the Xbox ecosystem. And yet according to PlayStation boss Jim Ryan most third party publishers are strongly against it.
The court case brought up comments Ryan made in 2022, where he said that, ‘I talked to all publishers, they unanimously do not like Game Pass because it’s value destructive.’ He then defended these comments in court by insisting that it’s a ‘very commonly held view by publishers.’
It’s certainly not a point of view that any publisher has ever voiced in public but then they’re never likely to, because they wouldn’t want to risk upsetting Microsoft.
Ryan didn’t expound on why they disliked it, but the implication was that they took the same view as Sony: that putting games day one on a subscription service greatly limits their traditional sales potential – something Microsoft has recently admitted.
The PlayStation boss was then asked whether he thought Activision would ever have put Call Of Duty on Game Pass if it was not bought by Microsoft, to which Ryan gave the obvious answer of no.
So far there’s no indication that lawyers will try and grill publishers on what they think of Game Pass, so for now it just seems as if they’re going to take Ryan’s word for it… or not.
In the same exchange, Ryan said that while he didn’t like first party exclusives such as Redfall and Starfield, presumably because they started off as multiformat, he didn’t view them as anti-competitive.
The idea that Sony first party exclusive are their best counter to Game Pass was also brought up, with Ryan implying that it’s in Microsoft’s best interests to make Call Of Duty an Xbox exclusive.
However, he refused to comment on whether that’s the decision he’d make if he was in charge at Microsoft, claiming he didn’t have ‘enough knowledge to answer that question.’
What would Jim Ryan do if he had Phil Spencer’s job? (pic: Microsoft)
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PlayStation boss Jim Ryan has been taking to the stand in court, where he says an Xbox exclusive Starfield isn’t anti-competitive.