PC Game Pass doesn’t negatively affect game sales, according to EVERSPACE 2 developer ROCKFISH Games.
As most of you will know, there’s been a lot of discussions lately about the effect of Microsoft’s Game Pass on game sales. Although Microsoft initially always claimed that the service didn’t impact game sales, the company recently admitted that its service ‘cannibalized’ game sales.
“Microsoft also submitted that its internal analysis shows a [redacted] percent decline in base game sales twelve months following their addition on Game Pass.”, the CMA’s recent provisional report about the heavily-debated Microsoft Activision-Blizzard deal reads.
Although not official, industry market research firm DFC Intelligence recently said that Microsoft’s Game Pass business model doesn’t seem to work. “The problem with Game Pass is the business model does not appear to work”, the research firm wrote earlier this year. “Comparing subscriber numbers is not necessarily fair because the services have significantly different prices. However, what is clear is how well Nintendo’s subscription service works as an enhancement to the overall business model of selling hardware and software. In contrast, Game Pass appears to be trying to be its own end where Xbox hardware sales are not important.”
Yesterday, however, during the Reboot Develop Blue games industry conference in Dubrovnik, ROCKFISH Games CEO Michael Schade talked about funding and selling EVERSPACE 2. In addition, the CEO shared some early-access stats from the game. From the looks of it, this talk was attended by the CEO of indie developer and publisher New Blood Interactive, who shared some interesting details and (confidential) slides from the presentation on Twitter. One of the slides contained some info about the number of sold EVERSPACE 2 copies from April 1, 2021, through January 31, 2023. Perhaps more interestingly though might be what ROCKFISH Games’ CEO said during the presentation, as posted on Twitter by the above-mentioned CEO of New Blood Interactive. Apparently, during Schade’s talk, he said that PC Game Pass didn’t negatively impact game sales of EVERSPACE 2, on the contrary, sales were higher.
He also said Game Pass (PC) was good and didn’t effect sales, in fact they were HIGHER.
This aligns with what Microsoft has said in the past but people want to tell you isn’t true. pic.twitter.com/n6QHEdYRMH
— Dave @ Reboot (@DaveOshry) April 24, 2023
This is quite interesting for sure, although it should be noted that this applies to EVERSPACE 2, and might not be reflective of game sales in general. Also, EVERSPACE is currently only available on PC, and the stats shared were from the game’s Early-access period. Still, we wanted to share this interesting tidbit as we’re pretty sure that the community might be interested in this kind of info.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think this applies to all games on PC Game Pass or only for certain titles? What about Xbox Game Pass? Hit the comments down below.
