No More Robots targeting Xbox Game Pass "for the foreseeable future"

No More Robots has at least six games coming to Xbox Game Pass over the next 12 months — we only know one of these at the moment, but we reached out to No More Robots to find out more about the Xbox Game Pass experience.

No More Robots has no shortage of great games up its sleeve — the ones we're particularly interested in are those which will come to Xbox Game Pass in the future. According to company director Mike Rose, No More Robots has more than six games coming to Xbox Game Pass over the next 12 months. We only know one of these so far, but being the nosy people we are, we reached out to learn more.

No More Robots has several Xbox Game Pass additions planned

Rose recently tweeted about a chat the No More Robots team had with Phil Spencer, and followed this up with the intriguing fact that the team has "more than half a dozen games coming to Game Pass in the next 12 months." Shortly afterwards, Soccer Story was announced and confirmed as a day-one Xbox Game Pass addition. We don't yet know what those other Xbox Game Pass additions might be, but Rose did tell us a little more about the Xbox Game Pass experience. "It means that A) All of these games will get a ton more players than they would have without Game Pass, and B) All of these games will be profitable day one. So really not a lot to complain about," Rose says, explaining how he's "very excited" for Soccer Story and those other mysterious games to join Xbox Game Pass.

It's always interesting to hear how the arrangements to bring games to Xbox Game Pass come about, so we asked for more info on how this was achieved. "It's called 'Mike Rose badgers people until they give in,'" he jokes. "Eventually everyone at Xbox just got so sick of reading my bloody emails that they were like 'Christ, just give him some Game Pass deals, hopefully that will shut him up.' (This is a joke, but also, maybe half true?) Really the answer is that I approached Xbox many, many years ago about Game Pass, before it had even launched, with a bunch of worries I had about it," Rose continues. "They wanted to show me that my worries were unfounded, so we worked together to get Descenders on the platform. Since then, as you'd expect, I've been a fan, and putting our other games on the service has just made massive sense for us." Xbox Game Pass sounds like an attractive prospect indeed, as Rose says No More Robots would be more inclined to bring future games to the service "for the foreseeable future," adding, "I don't really know many situations in which I wouldn't want to put a game on Game Pass. Bit difficult to say no to tons of players grabbing your game!"

We recently wrote about how the devs behind The Last Case of Benedict Fox viewed Xbox Game Pass as "a huge deal for a small studio", and similarly, Rose sees a major benefit for indie publishers like No More Robots in that Xbox Game Pass "derisks the entire project. If a Game Pass deal is essentially paying the entire dev costs, then you can go into launch day knowing that the game is profitable from the very second you hit the launch button," he continues. "That's a pretty massive deal!

"The current state of things are that video game sales are down overall across the entire industry, so having a method like Game Pass that can derisk whole projects for a bunch of devs and publishers is pretty spectacular," Rose explains. "On the flipside, I can't say how good or bad it is for the AA and AAA studios, who are spending millions of dollars, and seeing sales dropping right now. It's a bit of a scary time!"

So, Xbox Game Pass has a lot to offer; what about other subscription services? "PS Plus has been amazing for us as well — we put Descenders on there earlier this year, and it's done incredibly well on that platform. I'd love to put more of our games on PS Plus, so really hoping PlayStation open that Plus door a bit wider soon," Rose says. "We're definitely keeping our options open for other subscription services. Mobile is interesting right now, with Apple Arcade, Netflix, Google's subscription service, etc."

And lastly — what happened in that chat with Phil Spencer? "I wouldn't want to say too much about what was chatted about with Phil — as you'd expect a lot of it was confidential," Rose begins. "But in general, I'd say that it was genuinely fascinating to hear someone at the top of a company talking in such a personable way. Honestly, most of the time when you talk to CEOs and the like, even at smaller studios, it's all a bit icky, and 'tow the company line.' I think Phil, and Xbox overall, have done so well in recent years, because they've purposely put themselves out there as a more personal company, that will actually talk to developers face-to-face and not fob them off. I think that way of talking has leaked into the way they sell Xbox to players as well. It's incredibly refreshing, and I hope it stays that way for a while."

We're definitely going to be keeping an eye out for more info on those future Xbox Game Pass additions. In the meantime, if you're looking for more recent No More Robots announcements, Let's Build a Zoo roars onto Xbox this September while rural-life RPG Spirittea comes to Xbox later this year. Spirittea looks like a charming mix of life sim and management elements — you can find out more in our Spirittea interview. If it's more Xbox Game Pass news you're after, check out our big list of everything coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2022 and 2023!

What are your thoughts on Xbox Game Pass? Excited to see more No More Robots games added to the service? Let us know in the comments!

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Written by Heidi Nicholas

Heidi tends to lean towards indie games, RPGs, and open-world games on Xbox, and when not playing Disney Dreamlight Valley, happily installs every new wholesome game that appears on Xbox Game Pass, before diving back into favorites like The Witcher 3. She's looking forward to Age of Mythology Retold, Everwild, Fable, and Avowed on the Xbox horizon. Heidi graduated with an MA in English Literature before joining the TrueAchievements team.