Earlier this month, we heard about the impending launch of Xbox Game Pass Standard, alongside price increases for the existing tiers of Microsoft's subscription service. In the wake of that news, analytics group Ampere Analysis did a little bit of calculating - figuring out some interesting Xbox Game Pass statistics ahead of these changes happening over at Microsoft HQ.
According to the firm, "global consumer spending on Game Pass as a whole is expected to reach almost $5.5bn in 2025" - an increase of 15.3% on how Game Pass has performed before these new tiers and prices come into effect.
Here's what Ampere had to say about the upcoming changes to Xbox Game Pass:
"The need to act has also been driven by the confirmation that new Call of Duty releases will be added to Game Pass Ultimate: Because that is such a significant annual premium release, offsetting some of the costs of that move was necessary.
Microsoft is mitigating the impact by improving consumer ARPU through price increases, driving users to the Ultimate tier of Game Pass, and limiting the subscription stacking for Game Pass Console to 13 months. Gamers who want to dip into Game Pass to play the new release will have to do it at the Ultimate (or PC) tier."
Now, it's worth noting that this $5.5bn Game Pass figure is based off Microsoft's current subscriber levels staying roughly the same as the service's prices go up. Also, we're talking gross profit - this figure doesn't take into account the amount of money Xbox pumps into the service with game additions, promotions, server upkeep and all the rest of it.
There's also likely a certain degree of guesswork given that Microsoft doesn't provide regular updates for subscriber numbers, or much detail on things like monthly vs. yearly subs and people using trial offers, etc. Still, it's an interesting figure to mull over, and time will tell whether these impending Game Pass changes will be a net positive for Xbox.