January’s Xbox Developer_Direct blessed us with Tango Gameworks’ first non-horror video game, Hi-Fi Rush. The rhythmic action game launched on the Xbox Series S and X as well as the PC to much praise. But, while players flocked to Hi-Fi Rush, most of its players technically didn’t have to pay for access.
According to journalist, Jeff Grubb, Hi-Fi Rush “didn’t make the money it needed to make.”
Grubb, along with GamesBeat’s managing editor, Mike Minotti, sat down in the recent Game Mess Decides podcast to talk about why Hi-Fi Rush didn’t sell well. The main reason, Minotti believes, is because of the shadow drop. The pricing ($29.99) and being part of the Game Pass are potential reasons why Microsoft isn’t happy with the cash it brought into the fold, or the lack thereof.
Furthermore, Grubb mentioned that Xbox is “due for a sort of cleaning of the house” and people might start losing jobs as a result.
And herein lies the problem with the Xbox revenue model.
Hi-Fi Rush is a hit with a 10/10 rating on Steam from more than 10,000 reviews. It also proved Microsoft was putting itself on the right path by acquiring ZeniMax Studio for billions of dollars. But, despite the initial and still-ongoing praise for Hi-Fi Rush, the fact of the matter is that it was and still isn’t in a good position to make a ton of money – and that’s a problem.
Perhaps Xbox wasn’t downplaying when it revealed that adding games to the Game Pass cannibalizes potential game sales. If anything, it might have undersold the negative impact of such a move to save face, especially as the information came from the deliberations for the ongoing Activision Blizzard acquisition.
At this point, it’s not clear what Tango Gameworks and Hi-Fi Rush could’ve done better to “satisfy” Microsoft. Should Hi-Fi Rush not have been released on the Game Pass? Should it have been sold at a higher price point?
More importantly, how will Xbox measure the success and failure of Redfall and Starfield? Was Arkane Studios right to feel “scared” that Redfall will be on Game Pass? In both instances, the majority of both games’ audiences will be made up of Game Pass subscribers. Is Microsoft going to base its success on how many subscribers signed up for the Game Pass or renewed their subscriptions at the time of their launch?
These are questions that are exclusive to first-party Xbox titles since they’re the only ones added to a subscription service as soon as they hit the store shelves. We’re pretty sure Microsoft paid the publishers of third-party titles a hefty sum to add their games to the Game Pass at launch. Not to mention, the said games are likely multi-platform, so their bottom line won’t take as much of a hit.
What this latest revelation proves is that any number Microsoft announces for its first-party games will come with a caveat as long as it’s put on the Game Pass at the time of their release.
But, hey, at least Microsoft isn’t Square Enix, right? You’d have to be pretty stingy to feel disappointed with a game that had great reviews at launch and ended up being nominated for several rewards.
