Microsoft has today announced a brand new program to try and entice new players to try out its Game Pass service. The new 'Friend Referral Program' — as it's known — allows current Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass players to gift up to five 14-day PC Game Pass trials to friends who aren't using the service.
Strangely, these five trials are currently restricted to just PC Game Pass - there doesn't appear to be any reward option for friends who may want to play on console. However, console players can be on the referring end, as the 14-day trials are a perk for Game Pass Ultimate players to hand out as well as standard PC Game Pass subscribers.
The new program is already live according to an Xbox Wire blog post:
"You can find Friend Referral invitations on the Game Pass Home screen, just click the “Give PC Game Pass” button to share.
Invited friends must be new to Game Pass to redeem the free trial."
Last week, the company revealed that Xbox's content and services revenue was up 3%, which includes Xbox Game Pass of course. Still, the team is clearly trying to grow the service as much as possible, and it'll be hoping some of these two week trials turn into permanent subscriptions.
Will you be using this to get some friends to try out Game Pass? Let us know what you think of this new perk!
[source news.xbox.com]
Comments 10
They should give Microsoft points if the referral subs to gamepass after the trial ends. Guarantee you this would be a major hit then.
I think Microsoft need to concentrate on making triple a games not gamepasss deals
@Sebatrox exactly gamepass Is great but Microsoft need to look after the gamers they have I don't think they seem to understand that
@Gr81 Agreed, typically referral programs have some incentive for the referee. I’m not going to do a brand’s marketing work for them (and in this case, it seems like it’d just make more sense to cut out the referral program and have MS give out the 14-day trials themselves).
Wow thank you MS this what fans really needed.....
PC-only is a weird, weird restriction here.
Then again, what kind of friend gifts 14 days of Redfall to anyone they like?
I feel click-baited after reading it's PC only.
Great. One more thing for people to beg for trials of.
@Sebatrox
This is as close as you going to get from the marketing department to "focus on existing customers", by giving them the tools to convince their friends to hop on board and play games with them.
Keep in mind this is a gigantic operation, and the teams coming up with these programs have nothing to do with making games or even updating the dashboard. This is about marketing departments.
They need to focus on making PC gamepass an actual alternative to steam. The fact that most of their first party games play better on steam then PC gamepass app is inexcusable. That and the window store bugs associated with PC gamepass is just a headache steam users don't have to worry about.
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