Take-Two CEO: Xbox Game Pass Reaches 30 Million Subscribers - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 October 2021 / 4,676 Views
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick during TheWrap's TheGrill 2021 roundtable chat might have let slip Xbox Game Pass has around 30 million subscribers. Head of Xbox Phil Spencer was also at the discussion.
"We think about it as bringing more games to more people, but not as a replacement for retail," said Spencer talking about Xbox Game Pass. "In fact, we had our biggest year in retail ever last year while our subscriptions were growing."
Zelnick added, "I think last time we checked, we got about 30 million subs, Phil, right? Something like that?"
Spencer responded, "The last public number we announced was 18 [million]." Zelnick than corrected himself by saying, "It's more than 18 [million]. The point is it is a big number."
It would make sense for Strauss Zelnick as the CEO of Take-Two to know the number of Xbox Game Pass subscribers. Take-Two and Microsoft have made deals to make Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2 available on the subscription service.
It should be noted the 30 million figure has not been confirmed yet.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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That can't be true, people here tell me that GP will inevitably fail and is killing the industry!
congrats to xbox then
Then why headline the title of the article that way if you’re going to suggest differently on the very last possible sentence of the article. Reword the article so that the context is true then have you title match your article in preface. If you keep you articles true your reader audience will grow with trust.
how much per month/year x 30million? = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
GP ultimate $15 x 30 mil = $450 mil per month
GP PC or console = $10 x 30 mil = $300 mil per month
If we assume an equal split between the tiers, that's $15 x 10m + $10 x 20m = $350m per month or $4.2 billion annually, minus the number of subscribers who are on the $1 trial. Of course, that's the turnover. The question is, what's the net profit? The operating cost, to run this business, must be huge.
I got the same down votes for similar maths.
Big if true. Like really big. Still why wouldnt microsoft make it public if it was even 25? Sounds odd.
Still I hope its true, I love the service.
That would be really impressive if true as it means Game Pass would've grown by 12 million subscribers in 9 months since the last official subscription number reveal by Microsoft. It took 3 and a half years to reach 18 million in the first place. If he had said 20 million, I'd give him the benefit of a doubt, but not 30 million lol, that's jut too large of a difference. A number like that a CEO of a company doesn't just pull out of thin air, as much as we love to see how stupid they can be in gaming decisions, we know that numbers is all they care about, especially for a huge third-party company who Microsoft is making Game Pass deals with. This is going to make the news headlines till it forces Microsoft to officially reveal the actual number. I'm sure the Bethesda deal with all their games coming to GP definitely helped this acceleration.
You know Phil couldn't have been happy about that reveal lol
I have no idea. If it's true, that's such a huge amount of growth in such a short period of time you'd think Microsoft would want to flaunt if just for marketing reasons to further accelerate subscriptions. I can't think of any upcoming event where they could announce it since E3 is passed and the anniversary of Game Pass's launch was back in June as well. Or maybe they're waiting for a larger number like 50 million.
Some XB fans seem to think that MS has decided numbers don't matter anymore and for good reason apparently. So whether it's 18 or 30, it don't matter, because, "the point is it is a big number."
I really hope they don't try this with future console specs because, 'it could be 20TF or maybe 32TF, we're not sure, the point is, it's a big number, so just buy it,' likely ain't going to go over too well.
Soon enough it'll be, 'ya, well, our big number is bigger than your big number, whatever that number is exactly, so ha!'.
They could wait till subscribers reach 100% increase (36 million subs). Or wait till they surpass the 30 million subs milestone. Or keep the amount for the next quarterly report. Either way, Microsoft will disclose XGP numbers once they are satisfied with them and looking at them now, it's going to be soon.
So after announcing 18 million back in Jan, you think it's more realistic the numbers would be at 20 million now than 30 million? Lol
Shareholders don't need new numbers announced every 3 months. It also sounds better going from 18 million to 35 million in a year.
That's impressive. It's even higher than I would have guessed.
People will claim its not profitable because a lot of the people sign up for the $1 deals.. $1 x 30 million x 12 months..
Considering the rubbish game price hikes and the extra fees for upgrades and features, GP has come at a perfect time.
I don't think it's profitable right now and if it is just barely. That doesn't really matter though this is a growth stage. Lots of massive companies took a long time to start turning a profit.
I wish i understood how those believe its not profitable.. how is earning $30m a month not profitable? That's if all 30m Subscribers are paying $1 a month. People acting as if they are paying more money to put the games on GP than it actually cost to make them?
I count the acquisition of Bethesda as part of that cost. They purchased that studio to help with exclusives for GP. Running the servers for game streaming is not cheap at all. Believe me I work in the industry that is very expensive. Also 30m a month is assuming everyone is paying $10. In all the forums I go to I really don't know anyone paying the regular price right now. Several people I know have GP for 3+ years for much much less than $10 a month. Tom Warren stated in may 2021 that it wasn't profitable yet. High level people in the industry understand the way this works even more so than I do.
Why would you include Bestheda into GamePass's profits? Also MS own their own network. , there is no middle man MS have to pay to run GP. Also while many arent paying $10 a month, there is also many paying $10 a month. Even if 30m people pay $1 a month, thats $360m a year, not including those paying $10. Buiesnesses like to hide their subscription profits. They will always try to downplay them to make room for price movement in the future.
We will just have to agree to disagree. High level people in the industry don't agree. Tom Warren flat out stated they aren't making a profit. You don't hide profits from investors that's the opposite of what you want to do.
I am not sure who Tom Warren is, however i don't doubt the Share Holders/Investors get the actual results, however i don't think the regular public will know the real results. Also i don't believe MS will spend $8b on a Publisher like Bethesda if GP wasn't making MS a small fortune in the first place. It would be quite a big investment and risk to spend that kind of money to help support a bleeding service. But lets agree to disagree.
Investor calls are open the public. We hear all of that information. The regular public does know the information it's how Tom Warren knows they aren't profitable yet. MS will spend that money because it's becoming obvious to everyone that gaming is turning into a giant industry. It's very simple this is nothing but a growth phase for MS. Netflix didn't start making right away either it took time but they still spend the money and now they are the #1 streaming service in the world. That's what MS's plan is right now and so far it's going great. They are without a doubt #1 with no one really being even close to them. As they spread to more devices they will continue to grow. Even reaching playstation users who might not have an xbox or PC but have a smart TV with the app. The only real question is will enough people sign up. With TV streaming it's easy everyone watches TV. Gaming is different and I'm not sure if everyone will be willing to invest in a monthly cost for gaming. MS is about to show us if it does work though.
Not everyone is paying that. Some are paying for Xbox Game Pass for console or Xbox Game Pass for PC, not all are paying for Game Pass Ultimate. Still others renew at no cost using Microsoft Rewards (like me). :)
But that said, we can safely say the number is beyond the 18 million subscribers announced 9 month ago, so you make a great point that it's billions a year in revenue and likely growing.
I didn’t read your post but was it positive in any way towards MS? If so, that explains it
Yeah, I started by buying 3 years of Gold and then converting to 3 years of Game Pass. After a couple of years I topped back up to 3 years by buying EA Play codes back when the conversion rate was extremely generous (about $7 Canadian dollar per month). And now I'm just using Microsoft Rewards to keep topping back up to 3 years when I feel like it. :)
Yeah similar for me, 2 years of gold converted to GPU for £75, then I got a couple of 1 month codes for things like spotify, but no only that everytime you put a code in you could turn on auto-renew and get an extra month and then turn it off again and repeat. Now I use MS rewards to keep me topped up.
30 million a week!
