So much for the “console wars.” Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have been rival titans of the video game industry for decades, but now a Microsoft executive said that the company wants to bring its Xbox Game Pass subscription service to their platforms.
Xbox Chief Financial Officer Tim Stuart made the comments at this week’s Wells Fargo TMT Summit, as first reported by GameSpot, noting that it marks a pivot from the usual competitive vibe seen between the gaming powerhouses.
"It's a bit of a change of strategy,” said Stuart. “Not announcing anything broadly here, but our mission is to bring our first-party experiences [and] our subscription services to every screen that can play games. That means smart TVs, that means mobile devices, that means what we would have thought of as competitors in the past like PlayStation and Nintendo."
Xbox Game Pass has been a big success for Microsoft, racking up over 25 million paying subscribers according to the company, but possibly as many as 30 million according to the LinkedIn profile of an Xbox executive.
The service, which is currently available on Xbox consoles, Windows PC, touch devices, and smart TVs, lets subscribers download (or stream) and play more than 100 games for a monthly fee. All of Microsoft’s big first-party releases, such as Halo and Starfield, are available to Xbox Game Pass subscribers on day one.
Whether Sony or Nintendo would let Microsoft bring its Xbox service to their platforms remains to be seen. On one hand, such moves could further diminish Microsoft’s stature in the console market, where the latest Xbox Series X and Series S consoles have collectively lagged well behind the competing Sony PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch.
On the other hand, those gaming giants may see Microsoft’s move as a gambit to pull more players into its Xbox ecosystem, potentially causing gamers to spend less money on native PlayStation and Nintendo platform games.
Stuart also said that he hopes to bring Xbox “first-party experiences”—in other words, games from Microsoft-owned studios (which now includes Activision and Bethesda)—to such platforms. That could be an easier sell for Microsoft’s rivals than allowing an all-you-can-play service to potentially monopolize the time and money of its players.
It’s too soon to tell whether Microsoft’s ambitions will become reality, but the fact that a prominent Xbox executive is signaling such aims marks a significant turning point in the gaming world.
Decrypt’s GG reached out to Xbox for further comment but did not immediately hear back.
Edited by Guillermo Jimenez