Games industry analyst Mat Piscatella of Circana has argued that Xbox Game Pass never hit Microsoft's ambitious subscriber goals because most players simply don't play enough games to make a subscription worthwhile, and that a proposed shift towards indie titles won't fix the underlying problem. Piscatella said the "mass market" doesn't care to play lots of games, with the average consumer buying only one or two titles a year and sticking to a handful of "forever games" rather than sampling a broad library, meaning Game Pass has mainly attracted enthusiast players rather than the tens or hundreds of millions of mainstream subscribers Microsoft was chasing.

Responding to a suggestion that Game Pass lean more heavily on shorter indie games to boost perceived value, Piscatella warned this would likely shrink the audience further and accelerate a "death spiral" rather than reverse it. He said Microsoft had done what should have worked by aligning Xbox with the company's wider subscription strategy, but was still undercut by rival "black hole behemoths" soaking up consumers' time and money elsewhere in entertainment. The comments follow a 50% Game Pass price rise that reportedly cost the service millions of subscribers within months, a decision new Xbox leadership has since partly reversed with price cuts, which Piscatella called "a good first step" but not a fix for the deeper structural issue.