What you need to know
- Xbox Game Pass is Microsoft’s gaming subscription service that provides access to hundreds of games for a relatively low monthly fee.
- Microsoft is trying to acquire Activision-Blizzard in a massive acquisition valued at more than $70 billion.
- Regulatory scrutiny of the deal resulted in the announcement of certain data points, which gave us a glimpse into the revenue associated with Xbox Game Pass.
- As of January 2021, Xbox Game Pass has generated revenue of $2.9 billion for the fiscal period.
Sometimes Xbox Game Pass seems too good to be true. Against traditional gaming revenue models, with Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft is offering thousands and thousands of dollars worth of content for $10 a month. It will probably be cheaper if you think ahead Friends and family on Xbox Game Pass accounts as well.
In any case, Xbox Game Pass do not go anywhere. I’ve seen analysts and critics gather around the idea that a service must burn a fist of cash in order to deliver the value it offers, and that may still be true. But as you noticed TweaktownNow, we have a glimpse at roughly how much revenue Xbox Game Pass is generating.
Microsoft is currently trying to get massive scale Xbox Activision Blizzard Integration Through regulatory bodies around the world. In order to make its legal arguments, some data points that Microsoft doesn’t usually share with its contributors publicly are making their way into the public domain, as a result of these discussions. It turns out that Xbox Game Pass does a fair amount of douche.
According to the Brazilian regulator CADE, Xbox Game Pass revenue from subscriptions was $2.9 billion in the fiscal period ending in January 2021. Tweaktown indicated that it represented 18% of Microsoft’s revenue from games for that fiscal year, which would have put Xbox Game Pass subscribers at about 18 -19 million subscribers. The last official number we got for Xbox Game Pass subscribers came last January, where Redmond Revealed that it has reached 25 million users.
However, it should be noted that this number only includes users on console versions of Xbox Game Pass, omitting PC Game Pass numbers. It’s also hard to know the exact details of this revenue number. Does it include in-game purchases in the discount period after the game has passed? Does it include microtransaction sales and in-game content sales for titles on Xbox Game Pass? Or is it just the subscriber numbers across Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which are $10 and $15 apiece?
And revenue also certainly doesn’t tell us exactly how much Microsoft is spending to achieve this turnover. What is showing us unequivocally is that there is a serious and continuing demand for this type of subscription service. Whether it’s Xbox Game Pass for consoles, Xbox cloud gamesor PC gaming, the service will likely be here for the long haul.
“Web specialist. Lifelong zombie maven. Coffee ninja. Hipster-friendly analyst.”
