Ed Fries, the former Microsoft vice president of game publishing who launched the original Xbox, recently appeared on a podcast where he discussed some concerns he has regarding Xbox Game Pass. Fries said that he’s “scared” that the service could lead to a future in which folks stop buying games, opting instead to just pay for a single monthly subscription fee to access everything. In his view, this is a similar scenario to what happened with Spotify and the move toward music streaming, an outcome he believes hasn’t been great for musicians or record labels. And he fears a similar future is coming to the games industry.
