In the wake of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launching day on on Game Pass recently, some wondered if the game’s 1 million sales figure could have been even higher had it not launched into the subscription service. This is not a new debate, as people have been discussing the economical merits of Game Pass for years, but Expedition 33 (and Oblivion Remastered) coming to Game Pass recently reignited the chatter.
Palworld communications and publishing boss John “Bucky” Buckley weighed in on social media, writing that Expedition 33 is just the latest game to be “unwittingly dragged” through online discussions about Game Pass. Buckley said he has more knowledge than most on this topic given Palworld launched day one into Game Pass back in 2024 to great success.
“I’ll just say yes, yes it is very worth having your game on Game Pass,” he said.
In a follow-up post, the developer reminded people that he’s speaking from the perspective of an independent game developer, so his comments should be understand from that context. Buckley said he has no experience in the AAA space and can’t speak to “what sort of deals are cooked up there.”
But Buckley said Palworld developer Pocketpair has brought two games already to Game Pass–Palworld and Craftopia–and the studio is “very happy with both.”
“Subscriptions are certainly not THE future of gaming”
Much of the discussion around Game Pass has centered on whether or not a subscription service like Game Pass could take over and become the dominant form of game consumption in the future. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella said he doesn’t see that happening, at least not soon.
He pointed out that spending on video game subscription services in the US experienced growth in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID and a little more at the end of 2024 thanks to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 coming to Game Pass. But in general, spending on subscription services has been “basically flat” lately.
As such, Piscatella said, “Subscriptions are certainly not THE future of gaming (although they can continue to be part of it).”
Not everyone is as optimistic about Game Pass as Buckley from Pocketpair when it comes to launching games into the service. Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has said this kind of strategy for big new releases has never made sense, and instead represents a “lost opportunity” for a game sale.
Take-Two might consider bringing older titles to Game Pass, like Take-Two recently did by bringing GTA 5 back to Game Pass, but for new releases, it doesn’t make business sense for Take-Two, Zelnick said. Take-Two has one of the most highly anticipated games of all time, GTA 6, coming up soon, and no one should expect it to come to Game Pass at launch or soon thereafter. Experts believe the game could sell 40 million copies and drive $3 billion in revenue in its first year alone, so it’s not hard to understand why Take-Two wouldn’t want to put the game into a subscription service out of the gate, or ever.
Every company operates differently and has different goals in mind, and Take-Two’s business approach doesn’t have to line up with what other companies are doing.
For example, Rebellion just recently launched Atomfall into Game Pass on day one, and it led to Atomfall experiencing the biggest debut for any game in Rebellion’s 32-year history. A key thing to know here, however, is that Microsoft paid Rebellion for this, thus mitigating some of the cannibalization risk. Rebellion’s own CEO said the company might have lost out on game sales by launching into Game Pass, but on balance, it was the right thing for his company in this particular situation.
Even Microsoft itself has admitted games that launch into Game Pass are known to experience decreased game sales.
This discussion and debate is not going to be resolved soon, or ever. Game Pass represents a paradigm shift in the gaming landscape, and was always going to elicit passionate responses from fans and pundits.
