The old adage goes that you have to spend money to make money, and that’s generally an assumed cost that Sony and Microsoft have to eat in order to get games on to their respective PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass subscription services, but we’ve never really known just what that cost is – that is, until an SEC filing from Snail Games, publisher of ARK: Survival Evolved, outlined the millions paid out for licenses.
According to the filing, Sony shelled out $3.5 million in November 2021 to add ARK to its March 2022 PlayStation Plus games list. The filing also noted that Microsoft had paid $2.5 million to extend the license deal that kept it on Game Pass, as well as another $2.3 million Microsoft paid to also bring the upcoming ARK 2 to Game Pass.
Of course, the “making money” part of the adage does appear to apply here: Microsoft reportedly got $2.9 billion in revenue from Game Pass subscriptions last year on console alone. Now we know just how much money is flying around to make those digital game boxes appear on game pass shelves.
