XBOX is a few weeks away from experiencing its great reboot. There is talk that studios like Double Fine, Compulsion Games and Ninja Theory could close or remain independent, and one of the developers who most closely experienced the golden era of exclusives of XBOX has decided to talk about the XBOX crisis, how Microsoft is managing it and what the company’s subscription service is to blame: XBOX Game Pass.

Ori creator criticizes Game Pass and Microsoft

In a lengthy message posted on X/Twitter, Thomas Mahler, CEO of Moon Studios and creator of the Ori gamescompared Game Pass to HBO so that we understand his argument. “The Game Pass strategy could have worked if people had signed up. The problem is that it didn’t, and the catalog of software was nowhere near up to par so that the players would gladly pay the subscription month by month,” he says.

“It’s the same as with streaming in the world of cinema: I happily pay for my HBO subscription because it has incredible content,” he says, mentioning The Wire and Game of Thrones as examples. He then points out that “if your new content is nowhere near the quality of your old content, you have a problem.” He gives Bethesda as an examplea company that he bought to create Starfield, ‘Skyrim in space’, but in the end it was not a brilliant game and Starfield is not better than Skyrimas he claims.

“You need them games What your studies produce become great successesin cultural events that everyone wants to play. But what was the big Xbox game in recent years that was just extraordinarily good? That game doesn’t exist.” Mahler insists that Xbox needs to deeply understand what makes a game good and “they would need to have good agreements with developers so that they would have a real incentive.” to produce great successesrather spit out mediocre content like a factory.”

The director of No Rest for the Wicked ends his review by comparing Game Pass to communism. “In a way, Game Pass looks a bit like communism. And, as with communism, if you don’t give people a incentive to give that extra effort, they won’t. And then if you don’t get the quality you need, it all falls apart, because players aren’t going to pay unless you basically force them to by creating content so good that they feel like they’re missing out if they don’t check it out.”

Mahler does not stop there. In another message published a few days ago, the CEO of Moon Studios points out another problem that Microsoft has in its video game division: XBOX has spent years failing to recognize, support or protect the creators who could have kept the brand at the top. “If we’re honest, this was inevitable for a long time and I’m not sure this is the end. In the long term, I actually think that readjustment could be good for the games and good for the players,” he says. the XBOX crisis.

“When we were making Ori with Xbox, it was clear that the main focus was still Halo, Gears and Forza, although the emotion of the players for Halo and Gears had already cooled down after Bungie and Epic walked away from those franchises. The newer installments haven’t had the same cultural impact that those sagas once had.” For Mahler, the real damage is measured not so much in money, but in generations of players lost. He believes that games like Ori had the potential to hook a whole new “generation of fans and turn them into lifelong Xbox fans, but Microsoft preferred to bet on nostalgia“.

“Nostalgia can make players pay attention to you, but after that you have to release the games. You have to create things that make players literally fall in love. And to do that Xbox has to bet on the right people. They need to find the Miyamotos, Sakuraisetc., within their own ecosystem: people who actually speak the same language as the players, and then support them, protect them and trust them. Bet on those people, not just the IPs. We’ve already seen what happens when you own all the best IP in the world, but you don’t have the right people in charge to actually serve those titles. They just need to put the right people in charge of mining that gold,” he says (via Gamestop).

“The formula really isn’t that complicated: release better games than your competition.” Mahler concludes his message by recalling how Apple was almost bankrupt in 1997 and how Steve Jobs improved the company’s situation.

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