Ed Fries, a former vice president of game publishing at Xbox, said he is concerned that Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service could negatively affect the video game industry.
Why a long-time Xbox executive is worried
Fries, who helped create Microsoft’s gaming division and worked at the company until 2004, shared his concerns while appearing on the Xbox Expansion Pass. He said he would be anxious about the direction the industry might take if he had stayed at the company.
Comparison with the music industry
Fries drew a direct parallel between Game Pass and Spotify, arguing the streaming service drastically changed the music business. “Spotify scared me because there is an analogous thing called Spotify that was created for the music industry,” he said, adding that when Spotify took off it “destroyed the music industry” by roughly halving annual industry revenue and reducing individual music purchases.
He elaborated that consumers stopped buying songs on devices like the iPhone because they can access music through subscription apps. According to Fries, Apple acknowledged this shift by moving away from direct music sales because “nobody buys them anymore.”
Past industry disruptions inform his view
Fries invoked historical examples to explain his apprehension. He said he witnessed the video game industry suffer in the early 1980s and watched the educational software market collapse in the mid-1990s, describing both as cases where established, multibillion-dollar businesses were dismantled within a few years.
Consumer benefits vs. industry risks
Although Fries said he personally enjoys Game Pass—comparing his consumer experience to his enjoyment of Spotify—he warned that consumer benefits do not automatically translate into a healthy ecosystem for creators and publishers. “As a consumer, I love it. I love Spotify as a consumer, I have all the music I want, it’s a great deal for consumers. But it’s not necessarily good for the industry,” he said.
Current scale and open concerns
Fries noted that Game Pass, with 25 million subscribers, remains smaller than Spotify’s 128 million users and that the number of games available on the service is still relatively limited. For that reason he stopped short of saying Game Pass has already caused damage on the scale of Spotify, but he emphasized the service’s trajectory as a cause for concern.
