The Callisto Protocol dev says the Game Pass model is a "difficult" one financially

It doesn't sound like The Callisto Protocol will launch on Xbox Game Pass

It's not the right space…

For those that had hoped to see upcoming space horror The Callisto Protocol make its way onto Xbox Games Pass at release, this seems unlikely.

Chatting to TrueAchievements, Striking Distance Studios' chief technology officer Mark James said the Game Pass model was a "difficult" one in financial terms for independent studios with single-player games - something The Callisto Protocol is.

"I think those services are built towards some of the open-world style and repetitive multiplayer games. I think games [like that] survive well on that service," James said when discussing the possibility of seeing a title like The Callisto Protocol joining Game Pass.

"Microsoft has their own single-player games within the service, and I still think you're going to see the platform holder studios provide single-player games in them; I'm just saying [that] as a financial model, it's a difficult one to make work as an independent studio," he continued.

This is not to say that The Callisto Protocol will never make its way onto a subscription service like Game Pass, however.

"I think you're going to see single-player games, but it will probably come from the hardware companies..." James concluded. "As an independent, third-party, it's really hard to make a linear third-person game work within those services. I'm not saying never; it's hard financially to make that work."

Speaking to Generacion Xbox, director Glen Schofield stated his studio had talked about bringing its space horror to Game Pass, and that it had a good relationship with Phil Spencer and Xbox.

However, here Schofield stressed the importance of giving the game "time in the market" before any deals were made.

The Callisto Protocol is set to release on 2nd December across consoles and PC, with the team promising that it will be a much gorier game than Dead Space.

https://www.eurogamer.net/it-doesnt-sound-like-the-callisto-protocol-will-launch-on-xbox-game-pass

The games released on Game Pass, especially this year, are so underwhelming that some here in the SW are calling it ”Indie Game Pass". I think many people are also starting to realize the folly of paying $15/month to rent MS first party games that should be bought for $20 on sale.

In the midst of all this, the chief developer of The Callisto Protocol has stated that it is financially difficult to release a single player game like theirs on Game Pass. His statement may suggest that we may have to further lower our expectations for third-party game releases on Game Pass. What do you think of it, SW?

Lol 😂 no. With the onslaught of great AAA games released on Game Pass, including day one, he is on crack. GP keeps getting more of them too. Team Ninja bringing us Wo Long Final Dynasty day one on Game Pass is yet another awesome example. 👍

24/7/365. Xbox Won!! :P

In other words, Sony paid us not to release on GamePass.

So they held out for a higher offer and didn't get it. Tough break but not really anyone's fault - it just wasn't the right fit I guess.

Teeny bit sad to see them resume bargaining through Eurogamer. Maybe they got home, settled into their armchairs and realised they really weren't the next Minecraft. I know that kind of feeling so my heart goes out to them.

@st_monica: Wow. What a sad attempt at spreading FUD about Game Pass.

It's an awesome service, get over it.

Well, indeed Wo Long sounds like a good deal, and MS must have paid an exceptional amount of cash to bring Team Ninja back to Xbox after they successfully released the Nioh series on PS4/PS5/PC for a total of over 5.5 million units sold.

That said, there seems no indication that third-party games of that caliber are continually released on Game Pass on day one, and Wo Long seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

And yet A Plague Tale Requiem is able to do it and so will Perfect Dark and Fable.

I'm not paying €70 for a singleplayer one-and-done game, no way.

There was a developer of a game who had their game on Game Pass or PS+ subscription and they regretted their decision because of how much sales they made off of the game, meaning they thought that they would have made a ton of more money had they not have put it on a subscription. I forget who the dev was. I think it may have been the guys behind Stray. But anyways, I can see why they would be hesitant to put it there, especially if they think they can make more money off of it without it being on a subscription model for Sony or Microsoft. I'll also admit that I don't know what the deal entailed for them, as I wasn't there during the meetings they must have had trying to convince one another.

Now I'm already apprehensive buying a game for $70, so the game has to have high replay value and actually be good to justify the purchase. Alien Isolation is single player and to me has high replay value, but even if I don't go back to it immediately, it's always nice to have it to go back whenever I'm up for it. If it's just as good or better than Dead Space, this should have great replay value.

Praise the devs that have good things to say about the Game Pass model, while ignoring/insulting the devs that are critical of the financial implications of the service. - The Lemming way

The Outriders dev praised GP before claiming they had yet to make any money from it… Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. These types of quotes/articles are gonna increase in frequency. 3rd parties aren’t out there running a charity, and don’t have the financial backing to take losses to grow a service.

Just means that they weren't happy with whatever they were offered to out it in GP.

lol :P

Another day another cow thread about gamepass or halo infinite 🤣

No wonder it's

Last placestation

This thread has been approved for being concerned. 😂

I know, right?! Why be concerned when these bangers are on the horizon?

Only the best for Game Pass! TCHBO!

Kudos to the dev for holding out and not allowing themselves to be undercut for a cheap price to put the game on GP. MS is in the mode of "exposure is its own reward" when compensating these devs and that's bullshit. Most of the new third party games on GP are likely the result of devs and pubs being risk-averse and MS taking advantage of that by offering them scrapings

As big and awaited Callisto Protocol is. They don't need a day 1 sub service to support them financially. This is one of the games YOU JUST KNOW will be successful on all platforms without any subscription at launch. Sad to see most Xbox fanboys don't see it like that and independent developer wants to prove they can make a good game by not relying on someone else paying them to be on the service.

That said, I never thought Callisto Protocol would come to GP anyway and already made plans to buy the game on Steam and so with that, I know Glen Schofield's work, I love Dead Space and I'm hype for Callisto Protocol this December!

Saw Immortals: Fenyx Rising, hit GP this past weekend and tried a little via cloud. Was so good I DL'ed the whole game and got so hooked I must of played it for 12 hours on Saturday and another 10 hours on Sunday and another 8 hours on Monday. ;o

Freaking great game so far and though I never played it, seems like a BotW clone. Really good stuff!!

Thank you MS/Xbox GP, for the wise gamerz.... Jazz!!! :D

A dead space clone by a small developer? Probably not going to break records anyway. They might be right about game pass. They're not the only ones saying this, and gp is filled with boring indie games.

I've already got my monies worth and it seems like I could play the game as is for another hundred hours and still not complete the game so DLC will not be something I need.

Really TBH, like many games these days for me, I'll likely lose interest and move on to something new offered by GP, that's the beauty of the service. :P

@R4gn4r0k: Why wouldn't you pay $70 for a single player game? I'm not knocking you, because I often feel the same way, but I'm curious why. I mean, paying that for a concert, a sporting event, or a single night out drinking is beyond common, but for some reason, a game with 10s to 100s of hours of entertainment, isn't worth that? It doesn't make sense to me, even though I often feel the same way.

@girlusocrazy:

Yeah, mostly I was just surprised because I really don't recall hearing much about that game and was just really pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it but yep, I can tell I'm past the honeymoon phase and can't see as you said, meandering around too much longer.

Too many games that just have way to much fluff that leads to boredom when they should really be more focused on a more straight forward enjoyable rewarding adventure.

Nope.

Callisto Protocol is $60. Not sure why he's saying $70 but it is $80 for the deluxe edition.

$70 is a lot to ask for these days but SP only shouldn't be neglected as I've been playing SP games long before MP was a thing. Gamers see paying SP & MP is worth the price vs SP only when most gamers don't like replaying the same game but I do. I guess it's one of those things what's value to you but I will say this. TLOU Remake isn't worth $70 IMO cause it's not a new game, Callisto Protocol is, and I do want to support developers that put efforts into making new games.

Yeah, but did he say why it is hard financially?

Tired of these developers blowing smoke up our asses. They're as full of shit as most people. I want to support small and/or independent developers but if they keep just spouting nonsense it makes it kind of hard.

Why is it hard financially? How could it change to be better? What is it about "repetitive multiplayer games" that makes them better suited for the Game Pass model than a "linear single-player game"? Also, umm....who and where!!?

People only are interested in this game due to. it being like dead space. other wise no one would care about this game.

Man who would have thought one time payment deals weren't viable in the long term for small studios compared to a steady stream of revenue from actual sales?

I mean it isn't like companies such as Netflix and what have you haven't been in the business of losing money to grow subscribers for years and years now. Surely there's no way a similar streaming service for video games isn't the best deal in the world for the little guys who don't get to collect the monthly subscription fees and have whole other multi-billion dollar divisions to support htem.

Fucking wild shit.

Because I pay 50 euro for games and that's already more than a nights out, a movie night or a sports night.

Why would I start paying more for my games? Has the value gone up?

In fact I'd say the value has gone down with content being cut out for deluxe editions, day one editions, microtransactions and even multiple season passes.

50 euro is reserved for those games I'm extremely excited about.

Well nothing is guaranteed and I certainly don’t expect most third party games to hit Game Pass on day one and that’s totally fine. 🤷‍♂️

There’s plenty of good stuff on GP currently and plenty of good stuff that continues to be put on. Started playing Immortals: Fenyx Rising and enjoying that quite a bit. Really looking forward to Persona 5 Royal next month and the other Persona games later on. GP has been of great value to me so I’m definitely happy to be a subscriber.

Speculation on my part, but I imagine there's a lot more work that goes into a single-player game that doesn't go into something like a multiplayer game. Cutscenes, writing, voice acting, level design, motion capture work, and more.

There's also likely less profit potential in singleplayer games, so I think they need to charge more initially to recoup their costs. Something like APEX Legends can be released in a "bare bones" state and can evolve and have value-added content put in over time; a single-player game is more or less static, and any DLC is going to have to likewise be single-player with higher production costs than simply adding in a new character model with new abilities (as is done in APEX, to use an example).

Based on the hype of this game, it looks like they'll do just fine without gamepass. I tend to agree that live service games might do better on gamepass than traditional single player games.

Well the lems here will prove that this developer is wrong

Oh, yeah, it was the creator of Oddworld who said that, not Stray. He agreed to a deal to release his game on PS Plus on day one because he needed the funds to finish it. However, when Oddworld was released on PS Plus, it was downloaded more than he expected, and he began to have very odd regrets that he should have sold it at full price from the beginning.

But to be frank, God only knows if his niche, obscure game would have been downloaded as much if it had been $60 instead of free for PS Plus members lol. In other words, he's likely delusional in equating the number of free downloads to PS Plus members with the number that might have sold.

That said, I bascially agree with your point that releasing a game on day one to a subscription service is not necessarily a win-win for the developer.

GP is a service you put your game on about six months after launch, when the sales have slowed down. Having it on there on day one is a scam.

name one time ever has this happened?

wow system wars logic.

@SecretPolice: I started playing Fenix on gamepass too, good game I was surprised. Probably the best thing Ubisoft has put out in awhile. I don't think it sold well.

It supports play anywhere too, so I can continue my progress between the SX and my PC. So Kudos to them for that as well. I switch between both platforms enough I seek out games with cross progression.

prove? no they say its wrong with no proof. because there minds can't imagine making 70 bucks on each sale is more profitable than gamepass fees from Microsoft.

I can kind of see both sides. If I was a small dev, then sure GP could expose my game to more people. But if I had a high profile game, there's no way I would want it on GP. I guess I need more knowledge on how it works. I know there are some movies that release only on Netflix, how well are those actors paid? The jury is still out imo.

@gifford38: resident evil 8

so res 8 was on gamepass day one?

Lems are in extreme denial.

@st_monica: nothing wrong with devs trying to get what they're worth. Ive been interested in this game for a while, and if its good, i'll buy it. Nobody is forcing devs to put their games on gamepass.

@gifford38: would of been but sony paid to keep it off

its rumors I did not see on ign or gamespot just on twitter

if they did thats business I guess.

im sure capcom didn't want to consider res 2 remake or res 3 remake or 7 was not on gamepass day one either.