It's impossible to pinpoint just one thing that led the Xbox to get to where it is today. But if there's one thing that bears a significant chunk of the blame, it's Game Pass. More specifically, Xbox's unrealistic expectations of what Game Pass would become.
Xbox finally confirmed the bad news the gaming industry has been unknowingly waiting for on Monday. The fate of five of its studios is now very much up in the air, with thousands of Xbox employees out of a job and thousands more layoffs to come.
Xbox expected a lot more of you to have a game pass
After Xbox confirmed its sale of the studio and plans for layoffs, the Wall Street Journal shared details about the current number of Game Pass subscribers. Around 30 million people are currently logged into Game Pass. What's interesting, troubling, and explains why Game Pass wasn't the juggernaut that Xbox needed it to be, is the much larger total number of subscribers Xbox expected the service to hit by now.
Game Pass reportedly cost Microsoft $300 million in Call of Duty sales
Call of Duty has always been a big seller, but not when it's on Game Pass.
According to legal documents shared during Activision Blizzard's Xbox acquisition, the console company predicted that 77 million people will now sign up for Game Pass. That's a staggering number and shows how delusional Xbox executives at the time were about what they expected the Activision deal to do for the brand.
Game subscribers left
Game Pass items aren't behind where Xbox expected and probably needed them to be in 2026, but they're not even close. Less than 40 percent of the way to the lofty goal Xbox has set for itself. In fact, if the WSJ figure of 30 million is accurate, the Game Pass subscription total has dropped since Xbox last released official figures.
Last we heard, 34 million people subscribed to Game Pass. This latest report, while not coming directly from Xbox, claims the number is down by as much as four million. Although it's not an official number, Xbox boss Matthew Ball recently revealed that millions of people opted out of Game Pass when the service's top tier nearly doubled.
Game Pass prices have since been reduced, though not where they were before the price hike.
The future of Game Pass is currently unclear. Games released on Xbox will no longer be included on Day One, as Call of Duty titles will be added to Ultimate a year after their release. It also seems like there's no guarantee that State of Decay 3 will be a Game Pass title one day, though that should really be expected from developers Undead Labs, one of the five studios affected by this week's “Xbox reset.”
- Number of devices simultaneously
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Five, with friends and family (in limited countries)
- Number of accounts
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1 Primary account holder
