Xbox Game Pass is "extremely poorly managed" and Doom should never have been part of it, says former producer

For the quickest way to join, simply enter your email below and get access. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma herself said in May that lowering the service's price to $23 was simply "a good first step" in improving it, and that Xbox staff would otherwise "have to outwork the problem in front of us in our path to restore durable growth." We know now that Microsoft's plan to "outwork the problem" includes a total of 3,200 layoffs at Xbox and, I guess, opportunistically deciding to publish another Hideo Kojima game. Still, Sharma said as recently as July that "our business today is not healthy," partly because, "To grow, we bet on Game Pass, multi-platform, and a broader portfolio of content." "While those businesses have created meaningful value," Sharma added at the time, "they did not grow at the pace we expected." #217 - Andrew Willis Speaks On ID Software Layoffs, DOOM TDA, Gamepass, Xbox, ID Tech Engine etc.. After The Dark Ages' 2025 launch, IP holder Bethesda was glad to tell fans, "Thank you for making DOOM: The Dark Ages the biggest launch in id's history - 7x faster to 3 million players than DOOM Eternal." But The Game Business reported at the time that a huge chunk of those 3 million players were on Xbox – over two million of them, actually – compared to just half a million fans on PS5.