For Xbox, it's been a long road to redemption since the launch of the Xbox One. With tons of positive efforts made to win back fans, Xbox has slowly but surely shifted into a very different gaming company. Every change made to the Xbox One's marketing and ecosystem was to emphasize Xbox ushering in a "games first" mantra. Since then, aspects like backwards compatibility from first and third-party games, Game Pass, Xbox Play Anywhere, along with several big ticket studio acquisitions have been a reflection of this new mantra.
Every move that Xbox has made in the last five years to regain consumer trust has paid off in droves. Xbox Game Pass subscribers are at an all time high moving into the next generation. PC ports of Xbox games are progressively becoming better and more accessible with the Play Anywhere initiative. Not to mention The Initiative studio, alongside other new first-party studios like Bethesda, that Xbox has acquired to its revamped portfolio of games. All of these have set up Xbox for a progressive and successful future from the next generation onward.
The Value of Game Pass
Of course, this conversation has to begin with Game Pass, which is largely Xbox's biggest new focus in gaming. With thousands of new and existing games, either backwards compatible titles from Xbox 360 or completely new, are all available on Game Pass for a monthly subscription. Xbox Game Pass is an incredible offering for the $9.99 a month price tag, providing access to almost 400 games across the PC and Xbox game libraries. Whether it's a niche indie game that deserves more recognition, or a triple-A game that saw great praise just a short time ago, Game Pass is the perfect offering of variety and value for the average player.
Paired with an Xbox Series X/S, the Game Pass service is made even stronger for next-generation. For one thing, all first-party Xbox games will be playable on Game Pass immediately and forever. That means games like the The Elder Scrolls 6, Starfield, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, Halo Infinite, all of these titles will be available on the subscription as soon as the game is released elsewhere. That's a huge boon for players, especially during the Holidays when all of these games are generally released. Theoretically, even at the lowest possible next-gen price of $50 per game, that's a $200+ value for only $9.99/month. This is why Game Pass is such a big deal for Xbox.
Expanding Xbox's First-Party Offering
Most of those previous games mentioned wouldn't have been possible on Game Pass without Xbox's recent string of studio acquisitions. Much like how Sony's exclusives drove players to PS5, Xbox has made a renewed focus on acquiring big-ticket game studios to bolster its exclusive offering. While Xbox had acquired Rare back in 2002, the fruits of that acquisition never really amounted to anything other than Rare Replay. At first, things started small with Mojang and the creators of Minecraft, but then things ramped up in 2018.
Xbox has since acquired inXile Entertainment (Wasteland), Compulsion Games (We Happy Few), Ninja Theory (Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice), Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas), Playground Games (Forza Horizon), and Undead Labs (State of Decay). There's also the acquiring of Double Fine, the developers of Psychonauts, in 2019. And now most recently with the $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda/Zenimax, Xbox's portfolio of first-party games now encompasses the likes of Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. These acquisitions not only make the Game Pass library stronger, but makes an even stronger case for getting a Xbox instead of PlayStation this holiday.
That's without even mention of the first-party Xbox studios like Halo's 343 Industries and The Initiative, who's next-gen game still remains a mystery. Even all new EA titles will come to Game Pass day-and-date. Overall, Xbox is making a much stronger case for itself as a game console moving into the next-generation. Whereas before the focus was on multimedia versatility, the games-first approach is verifiable in Microsoft's recent efforts to double-down on the Xbox brand. Adding versatile options for console gaming next-generation, with either the premier Xbox Series X or affordable-yet-capable Xbox Series S, the next Xbox is covering all its bases.
Xbox Series X/S launches on November 10, 2020.