The number of Game Pass subscribers has grown by only nine million in two years, but Microsoft insists it’s not coming to PS5 or Switch.
The big news during the Xbox ‘business update’ on Thursday night was that at least four exclusives are going multiformat and that new hardware is planned both for this year and a next gen in the near future, but that wasn’t the only topic of discussion in the 20+ minute podcast.
The Xbox execs present didn’t seem overjoyed to be talking about any of the issues – the update was originally planned for the summer and only happened because of a series of leaks over the last few weeks – but they did talk about Game Pass as well, confirming that the total number of subscribers is now 34 million.
Both Microsoft and Sony has stopped giving regularly updated subscriber numbers, it’s assumed because they’re not very good – with the concept of video game subscriptions not catching on as well as either excepted, with recent reports, and Phil Spencer in 2022, stating that growth is slowing.
However, Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed that the current total is 34 million, up from 25 million two years ago. That really doesn’t seem like much of an increase, not least because the total is four million less than the much more low-key Nintendo Switch Online service.
Spencer has indicated, in an interview with Game File, that the majority of Game Pass growth has been on PC and while he hasn’t broken that down in terms of figures it suggests the growth in terms of console gamers has been especially poor.
Many assumed that one of the main reasons for buying Activision Blizzard, for $69 billion, was to offer those games on Game Pass but while Bond announced that Diablo 4 would arrive on March 28 there’s still no mention of Call Of Duty being on the service.
While that may well have been the original idea, it’s possible that Microsoft changed its position once it saw how Game Pass growth was decreasing and that being on the service was likely to decrease traditional sales.
How they’ll hand that franchise remains to be seen but Microsoft did confirm that day one availability would continue for all first party titles. Technically that should include Call Of Duty, when the next one is released this autumn.
Microsoft also insisted that Game Pass will ‘continue to be only available on Xbox platforms’. A few years ago, long before the recent talk of games going multiformat, Microsoft was happy to encourage talk of Game Pass coming to PlayStation and Switch, but that rhetoric has disappeared in recent months.
None of the recent rumours mentioned the concept and while that’s no doubt primarily because Sony and Nintendo don’t want the service on their consoles, Game Pass now seems the one Xbox exclusive least likely to appear on other console formats.
