Deals with developers and publishers involving the addition of their games to the Xbox Game Pass catalog range from 50,000 to over 50 million US Dollars.
According to the LinkedIn profile of Iain MacIntyre, Senior Business Development Manager at Microsoft, he negotiated
Last year, Skill Up associate Edmond Tran had the opportunity to interview a series of anonymous game developers, and the overall takeaway regarding Xbox was that Game Pass has resulted in a behavioral shift that has led to very few sales on the platform. The general sentiment among developers is that the existence of Xbox Game Pass has created a vicious cycle. One such developer released an award-winning title on Xbox more than two years ago after initially releasing on other platforms. They mentioned that their game’s sales on Xbox have been the weakest. “It’s a bit like trying to sell a DVD to someone who uses Netflix. Sure, people still do that from time to time but you’re not targeting the right audience”, they said.
The list of games coming to and leaving Microsoft’s premium game subscription service during wave 1 of July, 2025, can be seen here.
