Microsoft is exploring offering free Xbox Game Pass streaming with ads

Microsoft is exploring the possibility of offering access to Xbox Game Pass in exchange for viewing advertisements.

Xbox’s chief financial officer Tim Stuart recently told attendees at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit that the company wants to bring Game Pass “to every screen that can play a game”.

One potential method of expanding the service’s reach that he floated included offering ad-supported game streaming to players in emerging markets.

“The vision I like to talk about is we have xCloud game streaming, so you can subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate and you can stream hundreds of games to really any endpoint that has a browser experience,” Stuart said, as reported by TweakTown.

“For models like Africa, or India, Southeast Asia, maybe places that aren’t console-first, you can say, ‘hey, do you want to watch 30 seconds of an ad and then get two hours of game streaming?’

“Africa is, you know, 50% of the population is 23 years old or younger with a growing disposable income base, all with cell phones and mobile devices, not a lot of high-end disposable income, generally-speaking.

“So, we can go in with our own business models and say — there’s millions of gamers we would never have been able to address, and now we can go in with our business models.”

Windows Central also claims to have viewed evidence that such a business model could be reaching a production stage ahead of its possible introduction next year.

Security researcher Title_OS is reported to have recently shared code snippets from the Xbox OS that referenced offering 15-minute blocks of Game Pass access on an “Earned Time” basis.

It was also claimed last year that Microsoft had been surveying players about the possibility of introducing a cheaper, ad-supported tier of Xbox Game Pass.