Bond went on to reveal that the idea of a video game subscription service was initially met with strong resistance from publishers, who believed that Game Pass would devalue games.
Speaking to British GQ, Microsoft’s head of gaming ecosystems Sarah Bond explained that Xbox Game Pass may have originally looked rather different.
Before the likes of Netflix and Spotify successfully adopted a model of streaming media content to users via a subscription-based service, Xbox Game Pass was set to begin life as a video game rental platform.
The studio’s decision to launch as a streaming-based subscription service came in part due to the successes seen by other companies using the model – turning a rental service codenamed Arches into the game subscription service we know as Game Pass.