Subscription Services, Xbox Game Pass Included, Are “Nothing But Positive” For Us, Football Manager Head Says

Football Manager boss Miles Jacobson has said that subscription services, Xbox Game Pass included, have been a positive experience for the Sega-owned studio.

Jacobson said as much during a recent interview with Eurogamer, thereby directly countering what PlayStation boss Jim Ryan said some days ago during his testimony as part of the hearings in the FTC vs Microsoft trial. “I talked to all the publishers, and they unanimously do not like Game Pass because it is value destructive”, Ryan said in his pre-recorded video deposition.

The PlayStation head added, “The Game Pass business model appears to have some challenges, and Microsoft appears to be losing a lot of money on it.”

Speaking to Eurogamer, Jacobson has now refuted Ryan’s view by saying that, as far as Football Manager is concerned, the service has been nothing but positive for the studio. As always noted by the Football Manager boss, however, the success of a game on a subscription service differs from game to game.

“Every studio is going to have different opinions on this,” Jacobson told Eurogamer, “and different studios will have different data, because different games work well in different situations. For us, it’s nothing but positive on all three platforms.”

He added, “We run quite a tight ship, and I like our studio to be profitable – Sega took a big gamble on us all those years ago, and their shareholders – however weird it might sound – should be rewarded for that. So we don’t tend to do deals that are bad for any parts of the business.”

Interestingly enough, even Microsoft has recently admitted that Xbox Game Pass cannibalizes game sales. Recently, game industry research firm DFC Intelligence published an article that suggests that, although it’s making a lot of revenue, Microsoft’s Game Pass doesn’t work as it wouldn’t be a sustainable long-term business model.

“When one does the math, Game Pass is making probably three times the revenue Nintendo Switch Online currently generates and probably getting close to matching PlayStation+ revenue because it is priced higher”, DFC Intelligence wrote back in February of this year. “However, Microsoft is giving away a lot to generate that revenue and it does not appear to be a sustainable long-term business model.”

What are your thoughts on this matter? Does it depend on the type of game? Do you agree with Jim Ryan on this? Hit the comments down below, but play nice.