Xbox Dominated Summer Game Fest — but Game Pass Remains Tricky Bet

Loyalists of Microsoft’s console brand Xbox have long expressed frustration at its slow output of first- and second-party exclusives, compared with Sony’s PlayStation. 

That all changed Sunday. 

The Xbox Games Showcase presented dozens of upcoming titles over the course of two hours, delivering far more trailers and gameplay looks for AAA games than Friday’s main Summer Game Fest presentation, which devoted more time to smaller games and indie titles. 

With the vast majority of featured titles set for day-one releases on subscription service Xbox Game Pass, the audience response in the auditorium was rapturous throughout the show. At least one fan leaned over a full row of people just to compliment Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, from my vantage point in the crowd.

However, the doubling down on Game Pass comes amid an unprecedented move to make October’s “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6” an additional day-one title for the service. It’s the subscription’s first major strategy shift to come from Microsoft completing its acquisition of “Call of Duty” parent Activision Blizzard last fall.

“Call of Duty” is by far the leading franchise on consoles. It’s stuck to an annual release goal for nearly two decades and has repeatedly been the No. 1 title in full-game sales since 2009, occasionally coming in No. 2 to Rockstar’s big games and, most notably, Warner Bros.’ “Hogwarts Legacy” last year. 

Making the highly anticipated “Black Ops 6” available for free to Xbox and PC gamers subscribed to Game Pass is a move that could jeopardize launch sales for the multiplatform title, which will still be available on PlayStation 5.

The developers at Activision studio Treyarch don’t see it that way, though. 

“The exciting thing for us is ... more people will be able to try the game,” said Yale Miller, Treyarch’s director of production. “We’ve been thinking a lot about onboarding ... with new players, how do you bring people into that universe?”

Given it’s been four years since 2020’s “Black Ops Cold War,” Miller is right to stress that the return of the “Black Ops” universe and fan-favorite features won’t necessarily mean much to new players, allowing Game Pass to act as a no-cost way for potential new converts to find the right kind of mode they like best in the game. 

While “Call of Duty” replenishes itself annually with new mainline titles, its additional “Warzone” mode is an ongoing live service within the larger portfolio of live games under the Activision Blizzard umbrella. “Diablo 4,” whose popularity has broken records at Blizzard, was made available on Game Pass last October, around the same time it became a Microsoft property.

“Diablo 4” debuted a trailer for its “Vessel of Hatred” expansion during the Xbox showcase, one of many planned for the game’s extensive roadmap, which is currently in its fourth season of content. Blizzard titles are intended to stay active and draw players for as much as a decade between sequels. 

“There's a magic to Blizzard brand games that they look for those types of ... evergreen games that you can play in terms of the game mechanics,” said Rod Fergusson, Blizzard SVP and general manager of the “Diablo” franchise. 

“One of the things that Blizzard has that some other companies may not have is the emphasis on systems that keep you around to play for hundreds and hundreds of hours,” added “Diablo IV” associate game director Brent Gibson, who described this approach to years-long roadmaps as being “handled with just the same amount of care as therapy.” 

Microsoft Gaming’s effort to offer its most popular live services on Game Pass, along with many of its upcoming AAA titles, follows a slowdown in new subscribers, as well as Xbox Series systems being continually outsold by PlayStation 5, often by well over twice as many consoles and nearly five times as much in the first quarter of 2024.

Still, subscriptions typically reduce full-game sales, and the availability of Game Pass on PC means increased console sales aren’t a done deal once the next “Call of Duty” is out. The pressure to lift both subscriptions and hardware and software sales is high, as Microsoft Gaming has cut thousands of jobs and closed multiple studios throughout 2024 as the gaming industry globally has been cutting costs en masse.

“[Layoffs] suck,” said Feargus Urquhart, studio head at Obsidian, which was acquired by Xbox Game Studios in 2018 and presented its upcoming RPG “Avowed” during the showcase Sunday. Urquhart lamented the last year of layoffs, including Microsoft’s decision to shutter Bethesda studios Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks last month. Tango was known for 2022’s “Ghostwire: Tokyo” and surprise 2023 hit “Hi-Fi Rush,” which released over a year ago with no prior promotion and reached many gamers through Game Pass. 

“It's hard on a lot of developers right now ... it's not just Tango and Arkane, it’s all the other studios,” said Urquhart, who added that Obsidian had been through three rounds already with 30 roles cut.

Alongside “Hi-Fi Rush,” two Obsidian games, “Grounded” and “Pentament,” were among four games from the Xbox camp that released on PS5 this year as part of a new strategy to bring Xbox games to more players. The two Obsidian titles also came to Nintendo Switch.

Like Tango, Obsidian is one of the few studios at Microsoft that has managed to release more than one game within the current console cycle and has been working on a sequel to 2019’s “The Outer Worlds,” which wasn’t shown during the showcase, unlike “Avowed.”

Plans to bring more games to its competing platforms were not disclosed by Xbox during its Sunday presentation. Considering the larger player bases on PS5 and Nintendo Switch, bringing additional titles to those platforms will be a necessary strategy to reduce the blow of full-game sales decreasing due to the continued Game Pass push.

Due to similar RPG-style gameplay to “Fallout” and its predecessor’s multiplatform status, “The Outer Worlds 2” is the kind of game that would make sense to release on more consoles than just Xbox. While an update to 2018’s “Fallout 76” live service was shown during the showcase and will take advantage of the rush of new players to the franchise after its TV adaptation became a streaming hit on Amazon Prime Video, “Fallout 5” is very far away on Bethesda Game Studios’ schedule. For those seeking additional RPGs, Obsidian’s offerings could go a long way to satiate those appetites.

It’s clear Xbox is doing its duty to get more games in the hands of its devoted customers, and more investment than ever in Game Pass through “Call of Duty” is an undeniably consumer-friendly approach to take. With so many games on the horizon, this risky strategy shouldn’t be wasted without a way to recoup full-game losses.

Especially because of the slow release year PlayStation is having, now is the perfect time for Xbox to take full advantage of its studio offerings and make sure they can be appreciated on as many platforms as possible.