Just Cause Dev Explains Why It's Bringing New Game Contraband To Xbox Game Pass

Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios is bringing its next game, Contraband, to Xbox Game Pass on day one, and now the studio has elaborated more on that decision.

CEO Pim Holfve told GI.biz that it "made a lot of sense" to work with Xbox on the game "because of the grandness of [the project]." He added, "It's not a concept we would pitch to every publisher."

Not much is known about Contraband, but we do know it's a multiplayer title of some sort. Part of the appeal of working with Xbox, and bringing the game to Game Pass, is that doing so gives Contraband a potentially massive audience on day one.

"Our main key objective is growing our userbase... even if it's not ours directly--in this case, it's going to be Xbox's," Holfve said. "But we know that if we grow the userbase, we know that the money and revenue will come. The main motivator for us as a company is not cash, it's entertainment--we're entertaining vast numbers of people."

Avalanche already put Just Cause 3 and 4 on Game Pass, in addition to The Hunter: Call of the Wild. In the case of the hunting game, Holfve observed that Xbox Game Pass was "fantastic" for the title--which is self-published by Avalanche--and that it helped the game reach "so many more players."

Contraband doesn't have a release date yet, and Holfve wasn't ready to share any insight on how long fans will have to wait to play it. He did say, however, that the announcement trailer at Xbox's E3 showcase had "a lot of clues," so fans may want to dig in and poke around.

Contraband is set in the 1970s in the fictional country of Bayan. The announcement trailer used Steely Dan's "Do It Again," which debuted in the early '70s.

In related news, Microsoft just recently announced some of the games coming to Xbox Game Pass in July and those that are leaving this month.