Xbox Game Pass on the PS5 and Switch? That may actually be happening.
Speaking during this week’s Wells Fargo TMT Summit, Tim Stuart, Xbox CFO, mentioned that Microsoft wants to expand its gaming subscription services (i.e., Game Pass) to as many platforms as possible, and not only that, it’s open to doing business with what would normally be its biggest competitors, namely, PlayStation and Nintendo.
Here’s what Stuart, an industry veteran, had to say about Microsoft’s goals for Game Pass:
…what you’ll hear from us more and more is a bit of a change of strategy. And again, not announcing anything broadly here, but our mission is to bring our first-party experiences, our subscription services to every screen that can take a — they can play a game. That means smart TVs, that means mobile devices. That means what we would have thought as competitors in the past like PlayStation and Nintendo. We’re going to NVIDIA, GeForce NOW, they’re gaming subscription service. I know you’re [Indiscernible] think on tomorrow, you can talk through about that.
And while it’s unclear when PlayStation and Nintendo gamers might be able to start streaming Starfield or Halo (or if Sony or Nintendo will even let that happen), Stuart seems to think that Game Pass is only going to get more popular thanks to its latest acquisition:
…when we think about taking our businesses to these endpoints, again, it’s that high-margin business to new gamers that really Activision allows us to do in a much — I don’t want to say easier way, but a much more, I’ll say, fast way to get there versus trying to kind of build on your own.
Game Pass currently has over 25 million subscribers, according to Stuart.