For nearly 20 years now, we’ve had three primary platform holders in the industry and now in 2021 all three are in different places and all taking their difference approaches. Microsoft has gone headfirst into subscriptions and services, with their Xbox Game Pass being their driving force going forward. The service is growing, too, as seen in their last earnings call.
In the call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that Xbox Game Pass has now topped 18 million subscribers among a list of other impressive accomplishments for the quarter. He reiterated that the Xbox Series X/S was the biggest Xbox launch ever, and that revenue from gaming hit $5 billion USD for the first time in a single quarter. Xbox Live hit 100 million monthly active users, and $2 billion of the revenue stated above came from third parties. Unfortunately, it seems we did not get a breakdown of platforms, so it’s unclear how many subscriptions are attached to PC, Xbox One or the new consoles. Big thanks to Gamespot’s Eddie Makuch for transcribing the information, which you can see via his Twitter below. For context, the service launched originally on Xbox One in 2017.
It’s been said that Microsoft has been in talks with pretty much every major publisher about supporting Game Pass, and that they are also looking to potentially add other subscription services as add-ons.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella:
– Series X|S launch moved the most devices in an Xbox launch month
– gaming revenue hit $5B, the highest-ever for a quarter
– $2B in revenue from third-party game sales
– Xbox Live hit 100M monthly active users
– 18M Xbox Game Pass subscribers.— Eddie Makuch (@EddieMakuch) January 26, 2021
