Xbox Game Pass Likely Surpassed 33 Million Subs Last Year, Claims Analyst

As your favourite beaver, @Kaloudz, I cannot help but agree with you! 😉😂

I think this year will see the true evolution of Xbox's plans. A big game every 3 months, and a real reason to be subscribed to Game Pass. Fun times ahead...

Not surprising seeing as how Microsoft can now count Core subscribers into their Game Pass numbers.

Though the fact that over half are Game Pass Ultimate subscribers is surprising.

Game Pass Ultimate is THE best value in gaming. Being in my early 40s, having a career, and a family, there is absolutely no way possible to play all that comes out anyway. As long as Game Pass Ultimate sticks around, I could care less what the subscriber numbers are. If it earns a profit and Microsoft is happy then it'll continue to do just that.

Other sources have claimed in the past for subs to be pretty stagnant, so 13% would be a very good number. No doubt it’s probably somewhere between the 2 estimates.

It’s simple the more great AAA games you put on game pass in general the more subscribers you will get.
Yes there are other stocking fillers that are nice to have for sure.
But for mass appeal you need top games.
I think INDY may help for sure.

@themightyant Wow, how did I miss that?

"Reading is FUN-damental."

Hooked on Phonics did not work for me. 🤣

As long as Microsoft keep games like Indiana Jones and Avowed exclusive to Xbox then there will definitely be a spike in subscriptions.

I think there will be plenty of gamers out there that have never owned or wanted an Xbox who will pick up a Series S and Game Pass this year.

The bump in price is likely not helping. It isn’t quite a bad value for me yet but I will likely start canceling and resubbing during holiday months when I am more likely to be in front of a tv.

So no significant growth and according to Circana subscriptions have flatlined. This just puts more weight behind the rumours that more Xbox 1st party games are going multiplat, lol.

If we use 30 million subscribers in September and 33 million now, that is a 10% increase in the last 4 months. That's still pretty good. Gamepass is a mature subscription service now, it isn't going to see enormous leaps in numbers like it did when it was first starting out.

Streaming services like Netflix ran into issues by not being profitable before they stopped seeing growth, so they messed up the transition. Xbox claims GP is profitable, so they can hopefully handle a shift from growth to stability better (without a bunch of rapid price increases).

What a year 2024 is going to be for Gamepass, Xbox has to many games.

They are making more money than last year I'm overcome with joy for them honestly and nothing will ever constantly sell more year on year it literally cant and I'm never gonna care how much of a bonus some Microsoft executive will get as Microsoft making more money doesn't improve my life at all so if sub rates go up or down I could care less just once the service keeps going I don't care how popular it is

Keep in mind, they would've grown a bit due to the Starfield release, Christmas console sales, and the merger of XBL with GP. My guess would be more in the neighborhood of 50-60M total subscribers post service merger.

People seem to forget about the XBL merger with the GP service.

Thats low considering its lumping in the former xbox live gold people. Makes it seem pure gamepass numbers have dipped from that 25 number reported 2 years ago

@Rmg0731 I'm thinking they're either ignoring, or forgetting, about the XBL merger and the Christmas bump that they'll experience.

33.3 million game pass subs of which 55% ultimate means 18.315 million subs paying $17 per month, and 14.985 million subs paying $10 per month.

This means a monthly revenue of $461 million, before taxes for the service alone. Not bad.

@Friendly but as we know there are a lot not paying that much. Majority will be paying full price, but many won’t be.

Xbox will be happy with those numbers:
1) tough economic times mean people less likely to subscribe or renew
2) as the saturation gets higher, the harder to grow year over year
3) at some point you hit “peak” gaming

@MrMagic no significant growth 😅😅😅. Xbox's last quarter earnings report. Xbox content and services revenue, which includes Xbox Game Pass, is up by 13%. Gaming revenue is also up 9%

@cragis0001 GamePass prices went up, also they've converted live into GamePass and less and less people are buying physical on Xbox, also a lot of people probably subbed for a month over the holidays. Then there's the head of marketing now a senior executive who had posted on his linkedin that GamePass had already surpassed 30 million about a year ago.

@cragis0001 Remember Phil already made some crazy statements like if GamePass doesn't make 100+ million subscribers by 2027; Microsoft will drop out, like a jilted ex threatening to end themselves if you don't date them.

@Friendly
I haven't done any of the detailed math but you have to take into account what they are paying for too.

MS is running the XB Live network on GamePass, all their original internal studios, ZeniMax studios, Activision-Blizzard studios, and paying for other publishers/studios to put their content on GamePass.

$461 mln per month seems like a lot but they are also paying out a lot too.

@MrMagic
I think the play to get subscribers up is going to be similar to Ubisoft and EA Play. MS will start releasing all their games on all the console platforms allowing them to take their subscription model to more platforms.

This would grow GamePass subscriptions and force Sony to include GamePass on PS (MS could argue with regulators, that Sony is allowing other subscriptions but not MS subscriptions so MS could either remove content from Sony platforms or Sony allow GamePass). With Sony ill prepared to take their games cross-platform this would give MS an advantage to both grow their subscriber base and take market share from Sony. Sony is highly reliant on revenue from both PS Plus and exclusives. If either revenue stream gets diluted at all, Sony will start to get squeezed and they are not big enough to absorb less revue and keep up the same development levels. This would force Sony into multi-platform, which plays into MS' strategy I think.

Arguably, if Sony was to fight this by letting MS take big IPs like Diablo, Call of Duty, etc. away from the platform you would see a slow bleed to XB gaining market share. MS is being smart here and putting Sony into a conundrum of no good options. Let MS have GamePass on PS diluting their subscription revenues and forcing them to go multi-platform to get the subscription revenues back up, or let MS take the content exclusive shifting fans of MS studio multi-platform games to XB.

@NeoRatt true. I indeed calculated revenue, not profit.

It’s a service on top of all the other services they have to keep up and running: online play, social options, cloud save, even the online shop. Servers are therefore already there. It’s nothing more than an extra option to play games and pay for them. And the subscription has various options. So it’s very difficult to determine if game pass in particular is profitable or not because how do you divide all the costs over all the services Microsoft is offering?

What should be profitable is the gaming section for Microsoft as a whole, and it most likely is (when looking at their investment for ABK).

Nintendo’s revenue over 2023 was $ 12 billion. Microsoft most likely reaches 25% of that with game pass subscriptions alone, not even sales, other services or hardware.

@Friendly Another way to look at it is that Game Pass equals 33 million digital games at €15 (or equivalent) sold every single month; a bit less because some are PC and Core, but Ultimate is the best-selling choice. The most successful gaming subscription worldwide, in other words, with consistent and high annual income. If you think about it, very few games sell consistently month after month, year after year, other than GTA V 🤣.

@NeoRatt The moment GamePass is announced to be on PlayStation is the moment everyone declares Xbox hardware officially dead and I'm sure it was revealed in the ABK case with the CMA that Xbox wouldn't allow PlayStation plus on their platform so I doubt they'll be able to play that card.

It’s a good result. And anything that comes via IGN I take with more than a pinch of salt!!!

@Banjo- indeed. This is microsoft long term. Getting people and keeping people paying.

Usually people will drop off of a console at a specific period in life. Study, baby, marriage, whatever. At least a few of them will stay engaged this way.

@GamingFan4Lyf why do ya think that? I’d guess that the majority sub to Ultimate. Same with PS+, i’m guessing but i’d say most sub to PS+ extra which is pretty much Playstation’s Game Pass. PS+ Premium is decent, i had one month PS+ extra left so i upgraded to PS+ Premium for a couple of quid. There are quit a few PS1 an PS2 classics on there but imo not yet enought to warrant a full year sub.

Only about 24 million more subs needed to catch PS+!!!

@OldGamer999 this is one reason PS+ has millions more subs. There are def more AAA games on PS+ than Game Pass.

@GamingSince84 these are the most recent figures. Everything you mention is included here. I think last time i checked about early November Game Pass had 20-25 million subs.

@MrMagic aye prices across the board went up. I'm sure there was a report from a marketing company that said that Games Pass is roughly 33 million & that's without the now Games Pass Core numbers. As for Xbox gamers buying less games. It can be debated after the Insomniac leak if that is now a myth considering its not Xbox but PlayStation that's struggling with users not buying games.

@MrMagic now that Microsoft own ABK. There talking about opening a mobile game store so I'm sure there 2027 threat has changed.

Games are getting more expensive to make with each generation. The bulk of Sony's titles sold 4-5 million. Above average being 10-15 million & top teir being GOW 2018, boring & Horizon: Zero Dawn my favourite Sony title at 20-25 million.

Where did you get those percentages for Prince of Persia as I looked & couldn't find any. Plus if there not officially from Ubisoft then it means nothing. As if there retails sales it accounts for 10-20% of all sales. Also Microsoft & Nintendo don't disclose there store sales either.

Most games that skip Xbox tend to be Asian. Xbox has little marketshare in those markets.