LogInMicrosoft is reportedly looking into ways to earn streaming time.
Image credit: Miguel Lagoa, Shutterstock
Microsoft has ambitious plans for the Game Pass, it seems. First, Xbox CFO Tim Stuart said it wants to make it available on PlayStation, Nintendo, and "every screen that can play games," although Phil Spencer quickly refuted the statement. However, that's not all the company might be dreaming about.
During the Wells Fargo summit at the end of November, Stuart also said that Game Pass could become free. Well, kind of. He mentioned that in exchange for watching ads, Xbox could give users streaming time, at least in some parts of the world.
"For models like Africa, or India, Southeast Asia, maybe places that aren't console-first, you can say, 'hey, do you want to watch 30 seconds of an ad and then get two hours of game streaming?'" he commented (via TweakTown). "Africa is, you know, 50% of the population is 23 years old or younger with a growing disposable income base, all with cell phones and mobile devices, not a lot of high-end disposable income, generally speaking. So we can go in with our own business models and say – there's millions of gamers we would never have been able to address, and now we can go in with our business models."
Moreover, as Windows Central noticed, security researcher Title_OS recently shared some code from the Xbox OS that "described systems that would provide access to Xbox Game Pass on an "earned time" basis, complete in 15-minute blocks." So it looks like Microsoft is actually moving in this direction.
This could be a great move in Xbox's geographic expansion plans. However, it's hard to imagine how it would work. What are the right proportions here? Stuart talked about 30 seconds of advertisement for two hours of play, but that doesn't sound profitable enough for the company. What's going to happen when your ad-bought time ends when you're in the middle of a boss fight? Will the game pause and ask you to watch more? That's not very convenient.
In any case, for now, it's more of a rumor, although if the code snippets are true, free Game Pass might be available sooner than we think.
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