Mantan Direktur Forza Horizon Menelusuri Garis Dari Kegagalan Game Pass yang 'bermaksud baik' hingga PHK Xbox saat ini

As the fallout from the Xbox reset continues, one former developer of the Forza Horizon series has said what we’re seeing with layoffs, studio exits, and game cancelations is the result of the failure of Game Pass to hit the subscriber numbers Microsoft required to justify its enormous spending on content.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has already cut 1,600 staff from Xbox, and plans for another 1,600 to go over the course of the current financial year. Four studios are confirmed to be leaving Microsoft ownership, with another on its way. Sharma has called it the most “significant” restructure in Xbox history, insisting Microsoft’s gaming business “is not healthy.”

Speaking on MinnMax, Mike Brown, who was creative director on the hugely successful Forza Horizon 5 before leaving developer Playground to found his own studio, Maverick Games, which is set to release an open world racer of his own called Clutch, said that Xbox Game Pass had failed to hit enough subscribers to justify Microsoft’s huge spending on content acquisition. This includes the eye-watering $69 billion Microsoft splashed out on Call of Duty developer Activision Blizzard.

“I think it's really sad and I think it's really, really unfortunate,” Brown began. “They've honestly invested a fortune in the concept of Game Pass as a service, which led to loads of teams being acquired, loads of games being funded, loads of people getting jobs, all with a vision of getting regular games landing in this service for players. I think the reality is not enough people have subscribed to it at the prices that they needed to pay in order to make that business viable.

“And, that’s actually just really sad. Because we're now going to see studios getting shut down or spun off, and loads of people are going to lose their jobs, and that is honestly just a result of a well-meaning, player-focused concept of Xbox Game Pass not quite landing.”

Brown went on to defend Microsoft and Game Pass, praising the concept of the subscription service and the games that would otherwise not have been made were it not to have existed.

“It’s just a real shame,” he continued. “And as much as people point fingers and call different people within Xbox the villain of the piece, the concept of Game Pass was good. Like, it's a good idea. Let's have a subscription, make it affordable, try and get games to more people. We'll have a really diverse selection of games on there. We'll get a load of studios involved. We'll make some games that probably couldn't exist otherwise. And if more people had subscribed, that makes enough money and it works, and all of those studios go on and those games get made again and those teams will make other games. Unfortunately, it didn’t.

“I don’t know the number it needed to hit was, but it never reached the number that would make a $70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard make financial sense. It’s really unfortunate. We don’t know what the future is just yet, but it is a reshaping of the business around that, after the first concept didn’t quite land.”

Brown’s comments here actually echo those of Sharma herself. When she announced the layoffs, Sharma admitted that Game Pass had failed to grow as Microsoft had expected.

“Our business today is not healthy,” Sharma said. “We are operating at margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses. We entered Gen 9 with a smaller install base and a higher cost structure. To grow, we bet on Game Pass, multi-platform, and a broader portfolio of content. While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected. As that happened, our core business weakened, and we added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome. And now the industry is facing the most severe hardware crisis in its history. We must reset Xbox.”

The Wall Street Journal said that Microsoft had expected Game Pass subscriptions to hit around 77 million this year, but it currently has only about 30 million. As revealed during the FTC vs Microsoft trial of 2023, Microsoft had hoped for 100 million subscribers by 2030, which seems very unlikely at this stage.

The exact number of subscribers Microsoft had in early 2026 is unclear, but we do know Game Pass had at least 34 million members as of February 2024. By July 2025, Xbox Game Pass revenue had reportedly reached nearly $5 billion for the first time.

One of the first decisions Sharma made after replacing former Xbox boss Phil Spencer was to cut the price of Game Pass and pull Call of Duty out as a day one title. Sharma recently told Bloomberg that Xbox had "been able to reset Game Pass after an eight-month decline." "It’s now returned to growth and expanding retention," she added, "and most importantly, we're starting to get back to being closer to our players and our community."

Still, the future of Game Pass is unclear. Will Microsoft pull its games out of the subscription as day one launches? Will Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls 6 launch day one on Game Pass? Will the next mainline Halo game? Could we see Game Pass become more like Sony’s PlayStation Plus, which does not launch first-party games day one?

Meanwhile, Microsoft is doubling down on its biggest franchises, which for now means more Fallout more quickly.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.