Feargus Urquhart, the CEO of Obsidian Entertainment, said in an interview with NME that theXbox Game Pass changed his perspective on what it’s like for a game to have success. Instead of just looking at revenue, Microsoft’s subscription service has introduced the measurement of hours spent playing games.
As a result, the studio has begun to design its games to have something for everyone, while not changing the formula with which it has achieved its greatest successes. According to Urquhart, Obsidian’s next games would not have been possible without the acquisition of Microsoft. Let’s imagine that the excellent Pentiment, although already released, also falls within the concept.
Urquhart: “We haven’t changed the way we play our games with Game Pass.” Simply, instead of counting the millions of dollars in revenue, the millions of hours played are counted. If it seems paradoxical to you, the explanation is actually very simple. Where it is the subscription that produces revenues, the amount of hours played by the subscribers indicates their interest in a certain title on the service. It’s a bit like what happens with subscription services for movies and TV series, where the success of the various shows is calculated in viewing hours.
Hence also the need to vary the offer, to satisfy the greatest number of subscribers possible.
Urquhart: “Personally, when I go to Netflix, if there aren’t enough Scandinavian mysteries I’m disappointed with the service. But I don’t just want Scandinavian mysteries.”
Obsidian is currently working on several games, including Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2, which will be Xbox exclusives. If the second was guaranteed by the success of the first episode, Avowed would never have been born without the money from Microsoft.
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