Microsoft Wants Game Pass On PlayStation, Nintendo, And "Every Screen" Possible

Microsoft wants to bring Xbox Game Pass to PlayStation and Nintendo. Xbox CFO Tim Stuart said during the Wells Fargo TMT Summit this week that the goal is to make first-party games and Game Pass available on "every screen that can play games," and this includes rival consoles.

"It's a bit of a change of strategy. Not announcing anything broadly here, but our mission is to bring our first-party experiences [and] our subscription services to every screen that can play games," Stuart said. "That means smart TVs, that means mobile devices, that means what we would have thought of as competitors in the past like PlayStation and Nintendo."

Stuart said Game Pass is a "high margin" business for Microsoft, along with first-party games and advertising. These are all areas that Microsoft plans to expand into significantly in the time ahead, Stuart said. The executive added that buying Activision Blizzard helps Microsoft get there faster than it might have been able to on its own.

For the advertising part specifically, the Candy Crush mobile game series from King--which is now owned by Microsoft--is deeply embedded with ads and microtransactions.

For Game Pass on rival consoles, it makes sense that Microsoft would want to do this, because it would expand the reach of the subscription service to a much larger audience. Whether or not Sony or Nintendo would allow Game Pass on their console is another question. For its part, Sony previously blocked EA Access (now called EA Play), saying it did not represent a good value for PlayStation users.

Game Pass is a subscription service that includes access to all of Microsoft's first-party games at launch and a growing catalog of other games. Microsoft now owns the Call of Duty series, and titles in that series could begin to appear on Game Pass in 2024.

Microsoft paid $68.7 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard as part of the biggest acquisition in video game history and one of the largest ever in the technology space. As part of the deal, Microsoft gets ownership of every ABK game and studio. Spencer asked controversial CEO Bobby Kotick to stay on through 2023, but whether or not he leaves in 2024 is unknown.