According to Phil Spencer, Xbox Game Pass is here to stay; Spencer, head of the Xbox brand, recently appeared on the New York Times podcast "Sway," hosted by Kara Swisher. There he discussed the Metaverse, the Xbox's potential role there, and what video games can teach us about how people interact online.

The interview was too long and varied to summarize briefly, but Spencer covered several topics of particular interest to Xbox fans. He detailed Microsoft's plans for Xbox Game Pass to Swisher, but also reminded him that the subscription service will not immediately replace traditional game downloads, or even physical discs.

"We want you to be able to play Xbox on any device you might already have, phone, tablet, smart TV," Spencer said. 'You should be able to play it on your Mac, and Xbox Cloud is our product that allows you to stream Xbox games to any device.'

Notably, aside from Smart TVs, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate can stream to any of these devices. Also, Game Pass Smart TV functionality is currently under development.

Swisher is not the first to compare Xbox Game Pass to the "Netflix of video games." Spencer both agreed and disagreed with this assessment.

"Your cloud gaming model is Netflix for video games, right? Swisher asked.

"From a streaming perspective, yes," Spencer replied. 'I would say the difference between us is in our business model, where you can buy all the games available on subscription. The retail market is very strong and growing. So let's make sure we offer our customers a choice between subscription and transaction."

In other words, Xbox Game Pass is like Netflix, offering users a variety of games that can be streamed or downloaded for a fixed monthly fee. The difference, however, is that users can purchase those games directly through Xbox; if they want to purchase a movie they saw on Netflix, they must purchase it through an entirely different service.

At the same time, Spencer told Swisher that "transactions are bigger than subscriptions" and that Xbox Game Pass is still experiencing faster growth because it is still a new technology. Xbox Game Pass will not be the dominant form of Xbox gaming for It will not be the dominant form of Xbox gaming for some time.

The interview is otherwise interesting, ranging from Xbox Series X supply chain issues to community moderation. But for now, it seems that both Xbox Game Pass fans and naysayers can rest easy. The service isn't going anywhere (and neither are the best games on Xbox Game Pass), but those who don't want to use it are in the majority so far.