Game Pass, the admission of failure: when the director of Forza Horizon 5 talks about "faceplant"

Interviewed by Rock Paper Shotgun, the director of Forza Horizon 5 judges that "the Game Pass concept was good," but concedes that its economic failure contributes to the waves of layoffs sweeping through Microsoft Gaming.

What was said

In an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, Mike Brown, the historic creative director of Forza Horizon 5 (who left Playground Games in 2023 and is now at the studio Clutch), reflects on the Game Pass with a phrase that has gone around the industry: « The concept was good » - but he immediately follows up with its commercial « faceplant », which he explicitly links to the massive layoffs that have hit Microsoft-owned studios in recent years.

What's at stake

The reasoning is in three parts:

1. The idea was appealing - a Netflix for video games, AAA catalog on day one, monthly subscription, to capture an audience that full pricing was driving away.
2. The economics don't follow - a player who pays €15 to play a title developed over five years for three months does not fund the sequel. Internal studios deliver games valued at zero in the customer's mind.
3. The correction is paid elsewhere - to compensate, the teams that build these catalog games are the first to be hit when financial targets are not met.

Our take

The testimony carries even more weight as it comes from a former Playground Games employee, a studio that is precisely one of the star suppliers of the Game Pass - Forza Horizon 5 is one of the most downloaded games in the history of the service, and Mike Brown was one of its creative architects until his departure in 2023. When those who have carried the showcase speak out, the analysis is no longer polemical: it's an insider's observation.

For us, this confirms what the indie market has been saying since 2023: a model that devalues the perceived value of an 80-hour game to that of a TV episode, without compensating with a massive enough scale, breaks the mechanics. Sony never fully entered for this reason. Nintendo still doesn't.

Key points

• Mike Brown, former creative director of Forza Horizon 5 (Playground Games until 2023, now at Clutch), publicly acknowledges the « faceplant » of the Game Pass model.
• The link is explicitly made with the waves of layoffs in the Xbox sector.
• Strong signal: the criticism comes from an architect of one of the showcase games of the service, not from a competitor.

Note: 7/10 for the honesty of the testimony. Key takeaway in a one-liner: the infinite subscription did not make games free, it made teams replaceable. For whom: players who follow the economics of video games, indie developers, any observer of the SaaS model applied to entertainment.