Game Pass Reportedly Has Around 30 Million Subscribers - News
by William D'Angelo , posted 2 days ago / 3,595 Views
Xbox Game Pass currently has around 30 million subscribers, according to a person familiar with the matter that spoke with The Wall Street Journal.
The document that was shown during the Activision Blizzard trial revealed the original goal was to reach 77 million subscribers this year.
Xbox Game Pass had reached 34 million subscribers as of February 2024. This was before Call of Duty launched on the service day one. However, reports claimed the number of subscribers fell by millions when Xbox raised the price of the Ultimate tier to $30 per month.
New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma in April of this lowered the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to $23 per month and PC Game Pass to $14 per month. However, Call of Duty titles would no longer join Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch.
Reports are the number of subscribers have stabilized and started to grow again with the cheaper price.
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 follow the author on Bluesky.
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30m x $10 amonth is insane income.
Terrible, once upon a time they wanted 200 million subscribers.
So number of users has shrunk over the last two years, not good at all. With the amount of content they put on it, day one games, EA+ubisoft+Fortnite and it being available on PC too they still have far less subs than PS+.
I sold my Series X when they put it to $30 a month. They also drastically increased the reward point cost at that point.
I am lucky and had my Ultimate sub maxed out at 3 years thanks to MS Rewards. So am good for a bit over 2 more years. I'll probably lower my sub to PC Game Pass when it runs out. As long as that tier still exists and has day 1 games.
Thats still an insane amount of money coming back in. Do the maths.
PS+ is cheaper and on a more popular platform. I also suspect their numbers have been stagnant or declining given Sony doesn't announce their numbers anymore. It really doesn't matter how much Game Pass offers, it has to be the right price for consumers.
I would imagine Game Pass will become more popular if everything goes digital because who wants to drop eighty dollars on one single game that they don't even own, when they could spend the same amount of money and get access to a slew of games for many months on end? You don't own either. Might as well go with Game Pass.
If they have appealing day 1 games sure, but for anything that can be bought on a sale "owning" it is still preferable to most consumers.
But you don't own those games. You're licensing them. So the only thing that makes sense outside of Game Pass-like subs in an all-digital future would be if the game you really want to play isn't on there. But man... talk about expensive. Maybe it's cause I'm older now and no longer a kid, but I'd rather have a bunch of good games to play for like six months over one great game.
But in the end, it all sucks compared to physical, imo.
Game Pass isn't actually that cheap though unless you're often buying new releases, so again I repeat my previous statement. And not owning the games is realistically only relevant in 1 out of 10000 cases, let's be honest. Still not as reliable as physical ofc, but much more permanent than Game Pass.
I was going to post this... Criticising non-ownership contracts is one thing, but the reality is PC is 100% digital yet Game Pass has not been successful there despite having the best pricing structure.
But if there is one constant, it is existing Game Pass subscribers constantly believing that some mass conversion to joining Game Pass is just around the corner.
Wait we already know that.
If that's like an average of $15 a month, then it generates $450 million a month. It would have been doing better if it stayed like $20 without bringing in CoD. Also, I'm glad MS is getting rid of many B-tier studios. Notable 3rd party games is better and likely cheaper to acquire. Even if they aren't exclusive.
