Ori director says Game Pass needs "smash hits," not studios slopping out mediocre content

[midian182]

A hot potato: Things aren't going well for Xbox right now. With the massive changes, studios closing, and the future of the brand itself being questioned, Game Pass has also found itself under the spotlight. According to the director of the Ori games, the subscription service would be much more successful if studios weren't incentivized to "slop out mediocre content like a factory."

Xbox is going through a turbulent time, to say the least. Last week brought news that the company is closing Ninja Theory and Double Fine, with Compulsion and others set for the chopping block – part of the major layoffs that are being implemented. We've also heard that Microsoft could consider spinning off the brand or a joint venture.

There have also been questions over Game Pass. The service has reportedly seen its subscriber growth slow in recent times, a problem that was exacerbated last year when price hikes drove away millions of people.

In a post on X, 3D Realms founder George Broussard posited that Microsoft overbought studios to add more content to Game Pass. Moon Studios' CEO Thomas Mahler responded with: "The Gamepass strategy could've worked if people would've shown up for it. Problem is: They didn't and the software catalogue was just nowhere near good enough to make people happily pay the subscription every month."

"It's the same as with streaming in the film business: I'll happily pay my HBO sub cause HBO has amazing content that I want to watch. I'd keep that sub just to binge Sopranos, The Wire, GoT, etc.," Mahler continued.

But with games, 'NEW' for some reason is very, very important to players. And if your new content doesn't even remotely match the quality of the old content, you've got a problem."

– thomasmahler (@thomasmahler) June 18, 2026

Mahler believes that there simply aren't enough big hits on Game Pass to make a wide audience want to subscribe.

"You need those games your studios are producing to become smash hits, cultural events that everyone wants to play - but what was the big Xbox game in recent years that was just delightfully good?" he added.

"And that's the crux of the issue: You'd need the Xbox folks to deeply, fundamentally understand gamers and what they want. They'd need to understand what's a good game and what's a mediocre game. And they'd need to have good deals with devs so developers are actively incentivized to produce massive hits, not just slop out mediocre content like a factory."

Mahler concluded by comparing Game Pass to communism, in that without giving developers the incentive to go the extra mile, they won't.

There are some good games on Xbox, of course: Forza Horizon, Doom: The Dark Ages, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and more. It's also worth noting that Microsoft was ranked the fifth-best publisher last year when it comes to aggregated game scores.

However, there is an undeniably large number of mediocre and poor games on Game Pass. Some users can find themselves waiting months before a title they want to play is added, leading to a cycle of subscribing and cancelling. Moreover, Microsoft may have reversed course on the price hikes, but the Premium and PC-only plans are still more expensive than before the 2025 changes, and the Call of Duty franchise no longer arrives as a day-one release.

Mahler has never been afraid to express his opinion. He was vocal about studios such as CD Projekt Red and Hello Games that promise amazing games only for them to disappoint on release – and the fact that gamers forgive them after years of patches and updates improve these titles. Even CDPR worries it lost fans because of Cyberpunk 2077's disastrous launch.

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Ori director says Game Pass needs "smash hits," not studios slopping out mediocre content

 

[OortCloud]

Personally, I'd prefer Game Pass to have good games and AAA that are older, not necessarily new releases. Putting titles like Remnant 1 and 2, Assassins Creed, Star Wars Jedi Survivor/Fallen Order, Lords of the Fallen, Dead Space, Mass Effect Trilogy, Far Cry x etc etc on when they are a year or two old. They also have just about ironed out all the bugs then before they arrive on Game Pass! (I'm looking at you Star Wars Outlaws).

 

[Rapob]

If Game Pass has too many good games, price goes up too much and people won't use it. This is why they lowered the price recently (and removed some games, example future COD games won't come to GP on launch)

Old games, sure but most people have played that shite or can finish them in a month sub or even during a cheap trial period (or simply torrent them)

Multiplayer games, live service, is the only way to keep users hooked and pay monthly

Same reason why Streaming services mostly release series one episode by one, over a 2-3 months period because they know people unsub many times after watching the entire season, same is true for Game Pass and similar

 

[Theinsanegamer]

The inherent problem is that even at $30 a month game pass doesn't make nearly enough to fund the stream of games needed to make the service worthwhile.

 

[Dreadcthulhu]

A big problem with the Xbox studios is that "slop out mediocre content like a factory." is honestly a too generous description of what they were doing. Like a factory implies that they were shoving games out one after another, yet most of those studies seeing cuts were struggling to get out even mediocre games at a decent pace. Compulsion games, for example, was acquired by MS shortly after releasing "We Happy Few" in 2018; after getting 1 DLC out for that game in 2019, and doubling their staff, they managed to release 1 single game in 2025.

 

[The Talking Tech]

I personally believe Gamepass should had never offered Day 1 releases, as we can clearly see that put the Xbox brand in the financial mess that it's today.

Not only the service had unrealistic expectations as it should had never been compared to Netflix, as games take a lot longer to go through and on top of that people took many great games for granted because there was always something new the next following week leaving many titles undiscovered and unfair disregarded.

 

[kira setsu]

What exactly is a "good" game though?

alot of the games I've had the most fun with weren't AAA, story heavy or artsy af games, imho alot of those types of games are boring as hell, technical masterpieces but still boring, but thats my opinion. just like this dudes.

 

[m4a4]

Maybe they should manage their studios better, and not allow them to hire people who aren't interested in making the best games.
Western devs these days only seem to be hiring people that hate gamers, and the slop they produce shows it. And even more baffling is when some of these people seem to fail upwards.

 

[winjer]

"slop out mediocre content like a factory."

This describes all of Microsoft products. Especially in an era of Copilot and Recall.

 

[NumberNine]

Effort makes good games and good games make money. No effort, no money.

Remember the last time a truly exceptional game released? It was Baldur's Gate 3. How can I say this so confidently? Because AAA developers were crying foul, simply because they were not willing match the quality. "Don't get used to it!", they said. "No one can afford this.", they said, and on and on. There have been some good games in the time since, but there's your indicator for exceptional.

 

[axiomatic13]

I like game mods. XBOX .xvc files cannot be modded. It's that simple for me. I'm sure they are technically superior for Microsoft, but that's a key reason I buy games. To mod them.

 

[toooooot]

It is hard to make good games. But it is many times harder when people you work with intentionally sabotage the work for the sake of their religion. "I have things to tell and I will use this game to spread my believes." This defines too many flopped games. It triples game's chances to fail. They are advertising their games to a tiny percent of the people many of whom do not even play games. And after so many failures, one would think they should learn the lesson.