Microsoft wants to bring Xbox Game Pass to PlayStation and Nintendo systems

by Danny Craig ·

Bethesda

Microsoft's chief financial officer, Tim Stuart, stated that the company wants its Game Pass service to be available on "every screen that can play games," including PlayStation and Nintendo consoles.

The details:

Stuart discussed the "mission" at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit (via GameSpot), saying that the ambitious plans include bringing "our first-party experiences [and] our subscription services to every screen that can play games," which would include not only smart TVs and mobile devices but also platforms that were "thought of as competitors in the past like PlayStation and Nintendo."
The CFO also stated that Game Pass, first-party releases, and advertising are all "high margin" businesses and that Microsoft's recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard is expected to help the company achieve its expansion goals sooner than expected. “At the highest levels, you go from what was a lower margin third-party entity that we sold on our store to a high margin first-party business,” the executive explained. “So when you think about the Xbox component of Call of Duty, you go from that low-margin business to a high-margin business. Then what you do is you also expand and say, we’re now driving high margin sales on PlayStation, on Nintendo.”
It's unclear when or if Microsoft will be able to bring the subscription service to its competitors' platforms, especially since Sony not only strongly opposed the Activision acquisition, but has also begun to promote its own PlayStation Plus service, which includes 4K game streaming. It also barred EA from launching its EA Access service (now EA Play) on PS4 in 2014, claiming that it didn't provide much value to its user base.

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