Hi-Fi Rush – maybe shadow drops aren’t such a great idea (pic: Microsoft)



It’s claimed that Hi-Fi Rush did not perform as well as Microsoft hoped, as questions continue to be asked about the viability of Game Pass.



The idea of ‘shadow drops’ always seemed odd, as releasing a game – often one people have never heard of before – out of the blue and with no marketing or reviews seems more like sending it out to die than a clever way of drawing attention to it.



Their rarity alone suggests they don’t usually work, but insiders Jeff Grubb and Mike Tolkoto have claimed that Hi-Fi Rush definitely didn’t pan out as Microsoft had hoped, despite what seemed to be a positive buzz from the belated critical response.



Hi-Fi Rush, by Ghostwire: Tokyo developer Tango Gameworks, was released without warning on January 25 and according to Grubb, ‘It didn’t make the money it needed to make.’



The obvious problem with Game Pass, from a publisher and developer perspective, is that it means far less people are ever going to buy the game, even though a minority of Xbox owners have a Game Pass subscription.



The games still have to make some amount of money though, or demonstrate that they encouraged an increase in subscriptions, but according to Grubb, speaking in his latest YouTube video, that didn’t happen. As he puts it, Game Pass ‘incentives people not to buy games.’



He posits that this is more of a problem than it might have been since Microsoft was relying on Halo Infinite to be a bigger hit than it was, and to ‘fill in the gaps and be this massive microtransaction machine.’



Clearly that didn’t happen, and Grubb further suggests that acquiring Activision Blizzard and getting control of Call Of Duty was specifically to make up for that failing.







Tolkoto then asks the question: ‘You think management is happy with the state of Xbox right now?’



Grubb replies bluntly: ‘I can tell you they are not, they just are not.’



Although some of their comments appear to be merely speculation this, and the question of Hi-Fi Rush’s underperformance, are implied to be a result of insider knowledge.



How true they are only Microsoft knows but there have been numerous suggestions in the last few years that Game Pass has not performed as expected , a problem that is unlikely to be improved by expected price rises .









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