Sony Claims Xbox Game Pass Has 29 Million Subscribers - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 23 November 2022 / 6,575 Views
Sony Interactive Entertainment in a newly published response to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of the UK over Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard claims Xbox Game Pass has over 29 million subscribers.
"Game Pass leads PlayStation Plus significantly," reads the response from Sony Interactive Entertainment. "Microsoft already has a substantial lead in multi-game subscription services.
"Game Pass has 29 million subscribers to Xbox Game Pass Console and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and is expected to grow substantially in the future. The multi-game subscription tiers of PlayStation Plus considerably lag with fewer than [redacted] the number of subscribers."
If Sony's statement is true that means Xbox Game Pass has grown by around four million subscribers since the last official figure from Microsoft. Microsoft when it announced its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard on January 18, 2022 revealed Xbox Pass had surpassed 25 million subscribers.
It is also possible the 29 million figure does not include PC Game Pass subscribers as Sony specifically mentioned Game Pass for consoles and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
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 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Will somebody ask Sony how many Xbox Series consoles have been sold?
Perhaps something will turn up during the Actibliz investigation of the EU. Sony will surely mention it then, unless the gap is too big.
LOL!!!!!!!
MS used a very strange metric on the CMA discussion, that PS have 2x the sales of Xbox (they mixed PSV, PS4 and PS5 numbers for Sony and X1 and Series sales but in the mix there was shipped and sold and was restricted to end of 2021). So yes perhaps Sony will need to give the right number kkk
This is the number that 2K estimated so Sony is using it. Chances are the actual number is probably close to this.
Sony have a lot to say about Microsoft today apparently...
It's the typical vgchartz "take on paragraph of something somebody said and split it into at least 10 different news articles" approach.
No idea how Sony would have got this number unless either Xbox told them while trying to sell Sony on allowing Gamepass on Playstation, or unless a 3rd party that Xbox tried to sign a Gamepass deal with was given the number by Xbox and then turned around and gave the number to Sony,
Either way, if this number is true, it means that Gamepass has gained another 4m subs since January this year, with no AAA Xbox exclusives in 2022, and only a handful of bigger 3rd party day one Gamepass deals. Impressive subscription growth for sure, and shows that the numbers should explode once AAA Xbox exclusives resume in 2023 with Starfield, Forza, Redfall, and more.
Some bigger players like Ubi, EA and others might get ballpark numbers from MS when renewing contracts of specific titles. My guess is those might leaks to Sony sometimes.
I think it's easy for Sony to get those numbers. Corporate espionage is everywhere, Microsoft probably pays people on Sony's payroll for insides just like Sony does the opposite.
They are likely guessing based on the last official number and projection of rythm of growth.
If MS gave them this number while trying to sell them on putting GP on PlayStation, I imagine that wasn't recently. Because I don't expect they're trying to pitch GP on PlayStation while they're trying to get the Activision aquisition to pass, as that would make it sound as if they are leveraging those games (which also goes against the language they've used regarding COD being available on other systems without the need for GamePass). This sounds like a recent figure though.
Sony is talking Xbox big. Over are the times when Sony declared themself leaders in the industry, now all they talk about how great MS and Xbox is.
Yep and there is 151 million PS4/PS5 sold according to Microsoft (as of Dec 31st 2021). Now it's 1-1
So almost a year later and PS4/PS5 sits at around 143 million so either it's the biggest under tracking in Video games history or we can go with my theory that Sony has been involved in the biggest console stockpile in history .
So we have those 151 million figures because MS becoming aware of the stockpile labelled those consoles as sold to consumers, why they would make such an obvious mistake can be seen in statements that read something like this "Even if we at MS bought out every 3rd party publisher in the world, be they past present or future Xbox would still be a minnow compared to Sony's PlayStation Division" , so obviously with a mindset like that they would see those consoles as being sold through .
So all this helped seed the thought that buying everything in sight was the only way to not end up being swamped in the wake of Sony's bow .
This leaves us with the only logical conclusion that can come from this and that is Sony is to blame since no stockpile equals no MS acquisitions.
How is game pass leading ps plus significantly? I thought there were at least 45 millions ps plus subscribers not too long ago? I know most are only essential tiers subs but I'd think there are at least 10m who upgraded to extra/premium tiers? I wouldn't say game pass leads ps plus significantly
Essay Pro