Xbox Game Pass Continues Impressive Growth, But Misses Yearly Target

Certainly looks like first party releases drive subs, third party games coming to the service isn't consistent enough to do so.

MS has a bunch of studios that usually handle dlc, might be worth throwing them at some remasters to plug first release gaps.

Up-till June 30th there were no new first party game launches. It will be interesting to compare this to next year. We already got Psychonauts 2, Flight Sim (XGS Published) and will be getting Forza and Halo. These will have a huge impact.

My guess would be the numbers of people subscribing (86% in 2020 is impressive) but then not continuing the subscription which will affect the expected 2021 growth. To be honest there wasn't much to be too excited about in 2021 on Gamepass really. The medium wasn't a hit and the other big exclusive Flight Simulator isn't really going to keep enough people subscribed.
My guess is also based on my own experience. Subscribed end of 2020 and won't re-subscribe for a while as the price will go up for me (cost me £50 for this year but will be closer to £150 to re-subscribe) and I've gone through most of what I wanted to already. Perhaps in a few years I'll jump back on board once all the first party games have been released. No point paying to wait around for them?

@oconnoclast I think the bigger thing regarding cloud streaming will be about playing Series X games on a XB1S (XB1 in general but I'd guess the vast majority of XB1 owners have either the original XB1 or the XB1S). I also could possibly see FH5 and Halo Infinite run better via streaming the Series X version via xCloud than playing the native XB1 version judging by the Infinite technical previews and no sign of FH5 XB1 footage.

@oconnoclast making a very good suggestion about getting bigger franchises day 1 to xbox.

I genuinely believe this would have a huge impact on the subscriptions. However it shouldn't be a one off because people would subscribe for a month and then leave once they've played the game. Have a major day-1 release every month. Dying Light 2 in February, Stranger of Paradise in March, a XGS game in April. Even if it means the day 1 games stay on gamepass less then the older games. This strategy may have a big impact.

18 million, 37 percent is 6.66 million. That's 24 million subs? Armchair maths I know but still, growth is growth.

@FriendlyOctopus but isn't the 37 percent growth since last June? The 18 million number was shared in January 2021

Game Pass is extremely good value but 2020 was very atypical for everyone, even for Nintendo that sold like 30 millions of the most boring Animal Crossing game ever.

The huge new-gen games that Xbox Game Studios are making haven't been released yet and I think that those will keep people subscribed and attract more subscribers even if there isn't a new AAA game every month. Those games will make Game Pass essential for more people.

@Clankylad Marching on Together

Loving game pass even worth the £22 odd I pay each year for back 4 blood alone ,really think they have it sorted with all the games the have announced already I mean come on fable alone ,just take my money

@Chaudy In that case these numbers might not be accurate, we're in October now, percentage could have gone up, since that interview with Take 2 saying 30 million? I don't know. It doesn't matter haha, game pass is growing regardless 😘

@FriendlyOctopus yeah that's a good point 👍

Let's all not forget 37 percent isn't bad at all 😀 bit doom and gloom in here, and besides, this was from June. A lot can happen in four months. Hell, a lot can happen from now to December. 37 percent is good. Growth is growth right, that's all we want. Let's be worried if it stops growing. Then we can be doom and gloom

@oconnoclast I agree. I think Microsoft put way too many indie games on there too. I don't want Game Pass to become Indie Pass.

@FriendlyOctopus Yep, 37% growth in half a year is still good. Last year, even Xbox One saw a significant growth worldwide and Series X/S has become Xbox's greatest hit in Japan and popular around the world. Xbox has never been better and the new-gen AAA games haven't arrived yet.

@oconnoclast Growth requires both maintaining current subscribers and getting new ones. xCloud helps with maintaining given completely ditching XB1 would cause current subscribers who haven't upgraded to let their subscription lapse.

@JohannVanDerSmut I'm not sure about that. Only on Switch I have seen a boundless ocean of "indie rubbish", probably because the architecture is the same as mobile phones. On Game Pass, the indie selection is quite good.

@oconnoclast with the streaming thing I belive they mainly want to take their piece out of the chinese market where everybody and their dog plays on their phone.

Most of the Game Pass subscribers I know are PC players. A lot of that is because I don't know a lot of Xbox players, PS is strong in the UK but among friends of my teenage and 20's Sons they all seem to focused on PC and a lot of them have gamepass. I think PC is by far the largest market for Gamepass expansion at the moment. Xcloud is a future play that will come of age and Xbox players are already in the fold.

My view is MS just needs to start releasing games. First party drives awareness and until the MS studios releases start to flow growth will be constrained.

I believe this is just down to the lack of new first party titles and over the last few months the selection of third party titles haven't been the best especially as 90% of those have been indies. Or those using the promotions aren't sticking with it once they have to pay full price

Once the first party titles are releasing regularly the the subs will sky rocket again.

Gamepass was one of the big factors of me getting an Xbox over a PlayStation and I'm loving it. It's really given me so much more access to games and allowed me to become a gamer again. Absolutely love the service

My brother and his family are the ones that subscribe when they want to and unsubscribe at the drop of a hat, only to pick it up again 6 months later for a month or two. So at any point in the year, he may be considered a plus or a loss. Luckily, I have convinced my cubicle-farm coworker to get her first Xbox. She will be onboard with Gamepass annually. I added one for Uncle Phil.

@Royalblues GP has been around for over 4 years and unlike Mixer it has an active userbase. It won't be going anywhere.

48% growth was a pretty insane goal for them considering they were exiting a year where everybody that otherwise wouldn't have, bought into these types of services temporarily without intent to continue. It would be difficult, even if gaining new real customers went as planned, to keep that metric up as all the temporary customers would be filtering out.

@BlueOcean Unfortunately the next boring Animal Crossing will sell 40mil because now that they've made it a social phenomenon, that momentum will keep it going forever. And they time these things so that enough time goes buy that the next one hits an all new young generation that "remembers animal crossing from when they were kids" (and they'll say that ironically while being 16-24.... )

@TooBarFoo That's an interesting anecdotal inversion of the idea that consoles are for the young, and PCs are a more adult audience. PC's as teens and 20s focus feels like a trip back to the 90's!

@NEStalgia I agree with the whole comment. Xbox is doing pretty well in 2021 considering how atypical 2020 was and that most Xbox Game Studios are still busy making their first AAA games.

@NEStalgia It is anecdotal, and must be viewed in the light of this being a high income north London environment. But here at least the youth are looking towards PC's and it's the middle aged blokes like me are wanting the laid back sofa experience. It also holds true with my nephews who, while in a well off family themselves, live in what is considered a deprived part of northern England so it has some traction. But it is always risky to view our own experience as a trend.

Most youngsters watch Youtube over broadcast TV and have grown up with the message that PC players > Console players. But the future would still be bright for Consoles, I'm clocking 50 and still gaming. That did not happen a lot 20 years ago. I can also afford the 65" TV, Atmos sound system and the latest console and the big space to put it all in that gets the most out of todays consoles.

@Snake_V5 no I don’t think indie games are the issue @UltimateOtaku91 is right First Party/Exclusive titles drive the service, and differentiate from other services. I believe they made the goal of 48% before Halo was delayed. Anyway, having indie games is a good thing; because they did increase 37% with barely any drivers and mostly indies. That extra 10% needs a Halo, Forza, even Stalker 2.

As always be it console sales or game pass subscriptions it’s all about the new AAA games
Which I’ve said all along.
Until Xbox grow the interest and releases in their big AAA titles like Sony and Nintendo they will not be able to match.

@TooBarFoo It's interesting, because that actually indicates that things haven't actually changed at all, so it's more than anecdote, it's an anecdote that confirms the status quo, that on the surface appeared to have changed.

With the cost of PC gaming parts SOARING ("Back in my day" $150 for a video card was unthinkably absurd. Now they're $500+) so it appeared PC gamers were the older market. But what you say sounds like the past still applies. PCs are interesting and dynamic and take a ton of tinkering and tweaking, and are interesting when you're young and have plenty of free time (and don't work all day solving other people's problems and want to get AWAY from troubleshooting things at home...) Consoles are for after that when you really DGAF but still want to play games. Really no different than cars. Not many 45 year olds sit there tuning a Honda Civic's suspension.....plenty of 19 year olds doing it. When you hit your teens you're into the "I want to customize everything" era. When you hit your 30's you hit your "Can you narrow it down to a few options?" era. After that you just permanently wear your "Does it come in beige?" tshirt.

I think a big part of the limited growth is the limited availability of Xbox Series consoles. If they were readily available I am sure there would be far more new subscribers.

Hope this doesn't have some negative impact on the future of Game Pass, like I've seen some suggest. I recently got back into the Xbox ecosystem and have been appreciating Game Pass so much because there are so many games to play & not enough time that are new to me or that I prefer to play here instead of on my PS5, that I bought heavily (many months into the future) into Game Pass ...

I'd say part of that lack of growth is lack of Series X on shelves, and trickiness finding even a Series S.

@eagletrippin I don't think GP is going anywhere any time soon, they've committed very hard to that being the future of their games division, aligns them well against TencAzonGoogApplBook's potential future moves, gives them leverage into the investor-favorite China market (until they invade Taiwan and the entire China market collapses overnight, at which point no more Xboxes or Playstations will be made, anyway and we go back to playing board games made with paper) plus it aligns with their larger corporate objective of becoming a cloud services-first company, and helps them justify/build out their Azure infrastructure. Even below sales goals, Game Pass subscribers help underwrite their massive Azure buildout which can then be packaged and sold to enterprise customers at 800% profit.

It could spur changes to Game Pass, though if anything, changes that benefit value even more to make it more enticing, but they're certainly not going to throw in the subscription towel and say "Maybe Sony has it right, we should just do $70 launch day blockbuster sales." Their whole organization is pretty top-down all about cloud services, even outside gaming, now. Subscription depends on scale, so they'll deficit spend whatever it takes to make the scale get where they need it before removing value and sticking us with the bill.

@leathco Unless we ask @dezzy70 who sees ripe Series S's falling from trees and piling up by the storm drains..... He should really just get those into a bucket and start selling those on ebay for a profit before they lead to flooding!

Seems to be a lot of people overly worried about these numbers. It's still growth and ahead of what could be potentially be a massive holiday season for them. Provided you can get a Series console!

@NEStalgia
Always plenty of series s on the shop shelf’s in the UK for sale. Just go look on the internet.
Shame really waste of microchips, especially as there is a shortage. 😂😂😂

That’s because it’s all first person shooters and Indy games. If game pass was as good as they make it out to be I wouldn’t have spent nearly 1k buying games this year

The thing is, it's still been a solid year for Xbox and Game Pass. Not criticizing the person who wrote this article, but all of the data and such makes it seem like this was a disappointing year. I don't see how that's possible given that they still have managed to expand to what is now a pretty large subscription base, and the future is immensely bright.

This is being considered a down year I suppose, but it still grew, and it should only continue to do just that with the slate of games coming out over the next 1-3 years. Just imagine if Halo Infinite turns out to be better than some people probably think (as a total package, as we already know the multiplayer is good).

I agree with most comments, it has been a great year for Xbox considering that only a few new-gen games were released. Game Pass growth has been really impressive and the lack of Series X/S stock has to be considered as well.

@eagletrippin Don't you worry. Game Pass is here to stay. Even Microsoft Office has become a subscription (but you can still buy Office apps).

@NEStalgia In regard to the PCs and age discussion, I've always been a console boy. I was fascinated by the SNES my cousin had and I just wanted one. I dreamt of it and I begged for it to my parents. PCs were like Doom and point-and-click adventures, fine, but not a priority and my father always had a modern PC because of work.

they managed to increase the userbase in a year by more than the entire PSNOW userbase that has been around 7 years

We need to remember these targets were set during a pandemic where gaming was having a massive surge. They also had Halo Infinite down as a launch title. That got delayed 12 months and as the pandemic eased, the gaming surge ended.
The only big day one titles they had on the service were Outriders and MLB The Show.
It will be interesting to see the growth from July-Dec when they've pretty much had a big day one release each month.

@Clankylad Yup.

Interesting to see. Hopefully a slew of big ticket titles will drive up subscriptions even more (the San Andreas remaster could be a hit).

Though personally the value for Game Pass is in the smaller indie titles that I'd be reluctant taking a gamble on. Those are what makes me most excited to play. I can try games like Superliminal or Myst without the fear of "wasting my money".

As for if the percentages are "good" or not unless you know the details behind the scenes we can't tell. The 48% target could have been overly ambitious, or it could have been the minimum needed to keep the service profitable...

@Royalblues a list of game franchises that Microsoft abandoned because they missed sales targets despite their quality, would be depressing lol