PC Game Pass Out Now in 40 New Countries - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 11 April 2023 / 2,143 Views
Microsoft has announced PC Game Pass is now available in 40 new countries.
This follows a preview of PC Game Pass in these countries in February that Microsoft says the "response was incredible." The preview was used for testing the service in these countries.
"To celebrate the launch, new members will receive a special welcome offer for their first three months for a limited time," reads the Xbox Wire post. "Those who were a part of our Insider Program will receive two free months of PC Game Pass membership, with no further action needed, as a thank you for helping us shape the experience and being one of the first PC Game Pass members in your country. This will be available directly in member’s accounts in the coming days."
Here is the list of new countries that will be getting PC Game Pass today:
- Albania
- Algeria
- Bahrain
- Bolivia
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Costa Rica
- Croatia
- Cyprus
- Ecuador
- Egypt
- El Salvador
- Estonia
- Georgia
- Guatemala
- Honduras
- Iceland
- Kuwait
- Latvia
- Libya
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Malta
- Moldova
- Montenegro
- Morocco
- Nicaragua
- North Macedonia
- Oman
- Panama
- Paraguay
- Peru
- Qatar
- Romania
- Serbia
- Slovenia
- Tunisia
- Ukraine
- Uruguay
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.
More Articles
Why PC game pass and not the other game pass offerings?
Well, according to MS, there's over 1.4 billion MAU of Windows 10/11 PCs worldwide. And there's like.....250 million consoles combined on all major platforms give or take? Makes sense that MS wants to go after the larger market first. Especially with the larger first-party titles like Starfield releasing soon. And Bethesda games have always favored PC.
Not that it'll make a dent on Steam's PC market share anyway lol. The Xbox app barely has any games outside of what's on PC Game Pass. So a ton of the biggest games on the market aren't available. Although they did make big strides last year by adding Riot Games library on the storefront.
These are countries where Xbox consoles are not currently officially sold, you can only buy gray market units in those countries. Xbox likely doesn't want to launch Xbox consoles in more countries anytime soon since they are still struggling to meet demand in the countries where Xbox Series is officially sold.
Also, these are generally poorer countries, and piracy is worse, and difficult/impossible to pirate consoles don't sell as well.
But supply and demand continue to level out, it might be something they would want to look at. For Series S at a minimum, as supply is meeting/exceeding demand for that system now, and the economics of Series S may be more attractive in these countries?
Good move, as Xbox is not available in these countries and PC gaming is much bigger than console gaming overall in these countries
