The Xbox Game Pass gives studios more reason to reboot older titles, as Xbox head Phil Spencer noted that it gives them “more data”.
In an interview, Spencer notes that Xbox Game Pass offers an incentive to both studios and players to play more legacy titles. By doing so, it allows the company to pick up the pulse of players who want reboots. Studios also get the chance to resurrect old properties.
Game Pass offers unique experience
In his interview at the Kinda Funny Gamescast, Spencer is more than happy that their player base are enjoying retro titles. Legacy titles such as Banjo Kazooie, and other Double Fine titles get good playtime on the Game Pass.
With 20 million subscribers and a Netflix-like service, players can pick and choose games to play. There’s also no pressure to pay for these old titles, giving players more autonomy to enjoy legacy games that they’re likely unwilling to buy.
Spencer notes that the interest for such older titles helps them greenlight reboots and sequels for these games.
“Seeing more people playing something like Prey, or Dishonored or going back to Fable and [that] you can talk about those games, for us as we sit back as a creative organisation and watch what people are interested in, it gives us more data to think about things that we might pick up and take forward with new ideas and new teams that might want to go do that.
“So yeah, Game Pass has definitely been a great source… It was amazing when Bethesda came in and we were able to put so many of the ‘old new’ games into Game Pass and going back with the legacy that we have with some of the IP… even thinking about Rare Replay was a really interesting thing for us to go do and letting people go and experience some of the old Rare IP.”
Spencer enjoys letting players pick up titles
The Xbox Game Pass is one of the most solid services out there. Beyond the Xbox consoles, Microsoft is building a good bulk of its audience through the Game Pass. Spencer himself notes how everything makes sense.
This week on Gamescast, we were joined by @XboxP3!
We talked about the shelf behind him, collaborating with other companies, and more!
YouTube: https://t.co/mShCeWBrbi
Podcast: https://t.co/EQ6gJs8Hyh pic.twitter.com/RHkwlKVymU
— Kinda Funny (@KindaFunnyVids) July 14, 2021
“We’ll stay on that, because Game Pass gives us a business model where that makes sense. It doesn’t have to be a [game as a service] version of a game, it can just be ‘this game sits there’ and people enjoy it on the service.”
Spencer himself helped push franchise reboots that lived within the Xbox Game Pass. These include Flight Simulator, Perfect Dark, Fable, and even Battletoads.
Featured image courtesy of Xbox/Youtube Screenshot