No More Robots founder Mike Rose has taken to Twitter to describe how "incredible" the Xbox Game Pass subscription service has been for Descenders, revealing that sales of the game have tripled since it joined the program in 2019.
In a highly praiseworthy thread, Rose enthused that Descenders will remain part of Xbox Game Pass for a long time:
"I cannot stress how incredible Xbox Game Pass has ended up being for Descenders. It's elevated the game to heights we couldn't have imagined. We also just signed a new Game Pass deal for the game, so it's gonna be in Game Pass for a long time to come."
"If I take the month before we went into Game Pass, and compared it to sales of the game last week, we're now selling around 5 times as many units each week as pre-Game Pass, on a weekly basis. Since we went into Game Pass, our total Xbox sales have TRIPLED."
Rose also went on to mention that the company continues to put more free content into the game because so many people are playing it, and that he thinks the long-term subscription model has worked better than Games with Gold or PlayStation Plus would have, due to being able to build a strong fanbase gradually over time.
What do you make of this news? Have you played Descenders with Xbox Game Pass? Let us know below.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 8
That’s awesome to hear! And hopefully this quiets some of the haters of Game Pass.
I don’t understand this. So they are “selling” 5 times as many copies since the game joined GP, even though for GP subscribers the game is technically “free”? Am I missing something here?
@Nightcrawler71 Someone asked him about this on Twitter:
"Hard to say, but my gut says it's people seeing their friends playing it, and then buying it since they don't have game pass"
Also, some might be buying it when their Game Pass subscriptions run out and they want to keep the game permanently...
@GunValkyrie they do. Even tho it's been given away for free if you have a sub, they still make money.
But it as has been mentioned, it might also be possible people are buying it when their subs run out
We’ve heard this from Phil himself and other developers, even so it’s great to hear that it does end up being a good deal for developers as well as consumers.
@GunValkyrie I don’t know anything about how MS handles it, but similar services, I hear, pay an up-front amount and then bonuses based on engagement.
Then there are services like Spotify that exclusively pays based on engagement (at least to small artists, never know what the big stars might be able to work out.)
So, yes, they get paid somehow, regardless if they get an up-front fee, or a flat monthly fee, or not, their final pay will always be larger the more people play their games, over some other games in the service.
A bad game (if MS ever decided to fill the service with junk) won’t magically get paid if they can’t get anyone to play their game.
Well I think this service gives visibility to games which would normally be hidden away in the store and also little excuse to try them. I've played so many games that I doubt I'd have ever played otherwise and bought a few of them, either to support the developers or because it was leaving and I wanted the game.
Seems like a win win
@Nightcrawler71
There's probably a 'sales criteria' definition.
Eg for every person that downloads the game and plays for more than 5 hours, that counts as a sale and the developers get 0.01% of the subs fee.
It's probably alot more sophisticated than that, but you get the idea.
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