Microsoft once again shows interest in bringing Game Pass to Nintendo platforms
Will Nintendo pass or play?
Microsoft has made it very clear that they believe the path forward for them in the game industry is through Game Pass. With multiple streaming services raking in big bucks in recent years, you can understand why Microsoft sees that as the way to greater success.
Over the years, Microsoft has opened up on their plans for Game Pass, including the efforts to bring it to just about everything that uses a screen. This has led Microsoft to mentioning that they’d love to see Game Pass on Switch in the past, and in a recent comment from Xbox’s CFO, that desire is clearly still there.
Xbox CFO Tim Stuart spoke at length about Game Pass at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit, which is where he once again shared interest in getting Game Pass on whatever Nintendo hardware is available.
“It’s a bit of a change of strategy. 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,” Stuart said. “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.”
That kind of move would obviously be huge for Microsoft, and there’s no doubt Nintendo would get some cut of that cash as well. The question is, just how much would Nintendo’s own titles be hurt by Game Pass? Would consumers skip over paying full price for Nintendo’s latest games to instead subscribe to Game Pass? Would Game Pass being on Nintendo hardware also impact third party sales for developers who aren’t part of the Game Pass ecosystem? These are the tough questions Nintendo is no doubt mulling over now, and whatever decision they make could make major waves for their future.
Comments (1)