Asha Sharma, the new CEO for Xbox, is looking to make Microsoft’s Game Pass even more accessible to a wider range of players, as reported by The Information which has spoken to several individuals who have directly talked to Sharma in the recent Game Developers Conference that took place in San Francisco earlier this month.
Reportedly, she aims to “make future consoles and products like Game Pass more enticing to a broader range of customers” which possibly includes the company’s plans of “revamping pricing models to offer lower-priced tiers.”
The new CEO may also consider partnering with other companies such as Netflix, as Netflix CEO Greg Peters said that he’s spoken to Sharma several times and that they have “kicked around ideas” for subscription bundle partnerships.
It seems Microsoft is looking to broaden it’s subscription-based services a lot more going ahead and while it may result in even more attractive and diverse pricing for it’s current lineup of tiers in the Xbox Game Pass, it’s also kind of odd since several developers and industry veterans have previously spoken out against the overall impact of these services on the industry at large. While the subscription services are undoubtedly profitable for companies like Microsoft and Netflix, they also result in the developers losing out on profit which is not what should be in the industry, in any shape or form.
Also according to Xbox vice president Jason Ronald, the new CEO of Xbox is “willing to question everything,” including what makes Xbox so successful in the industry, among other aspects.
“If you’ve been in the industry or in a certain role for a really long time, sometimes you build blinders where it’s like, ‘Oh, well, the industry just works that way.’ She doesn’t come in with those biases,” Ronald stated.
In any way, it’d be interesting to see where the next-gen Xbox is headed with Project Helix and Microsoft’s new direction towards subscriptions.
