Whether this incident becomes an outlier or a trend, we’ll have to wait and find out.
From what we can tell, it doesn’t seem to have paid off for the developer. Still, Outriders was the first major third-party title with day-one availability on Xbox Game Pass. We don’t know how many people bought Outriders outright we don’t know how many people played it on Game Pass we don’t know how many Game Pass players would have bought it, had the game not been available on Microsoft’s subscription service. Of course, assuming that Outriders hasn’t reached profitability yet, pinning the whole thing on Xbox Game Pass may be premature. Whatever deal Square Enix and Microsoft came to regarding Outriders on Game Pass, it may not have generated the kind of profits that People Can Fly expected. But Wojciechowski did allude to it, and the briefing mentioned it explicitly. To be crystal clear, neither People Can Fly nor Wojciechowski explicitly blamed Xbox Game Pass for Outriders’ hazy sales figures. Later on, the briefing states that “on the day of its premiere, the game was offered ‘for free’ to subscribers of the Xbox Game Pass service.”
“Perhaps it was caused by some elements of Square Enix’s sales policy, the details of which we do not know, such as partnerships concluded by the publisher with distribution platforms or entities offering Outriders as an addition to their products,” Wojciechowski said.
The interesting bit for Xbox Game Pass fans comes next:
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