Or that’s what the consulting firm and independent analyst Omdia estimates in an article about Microsoft’s Xbox ecosystem strategy. The question is: is it a lot or a little? Let’s find out.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has stopped reporting Xbox hardware sales data for quite some time now, and last year, it seems that the company also stopped reporting Game Pass figures.
According to James McWhirter, senior games analyst at Omdia, the adoption of Xbox Game Pass is slowing down and, excluding the basic level, the total number of Game Pass subscribers was estimated at 33.3 million at the end of last year. That’s what we read today on IGN.
Can 33 million subscribers sustain the business?
“We are seeing a slowdown in the adoption of Xbox Game Pass, although Microsoft claims otherwise thanks to the repositioning of Xbox Live Gold as Xbox Game Pass Core,” the analyst told IGN.
McWhirter continued: “Our forecast estimates that the total number of Xbox Game Pass subscriptions (excluding Core/Live Gold) will be 33.3 million by the end of 2023, representing a subscriber growth of only 13%. Specifically, more than half (55%) are currently at the Ultimate level, regardless of the device.”
It is not known for certain if this is an exact figure, but in September of last year, Craig McNary’s LinkedIn profile, Senior Director of Marketing for Xbox, mentioned over 30 million Xbox Game Pass subscribers in August 2023.
Interestingly, two years earlier, in September 2021, the head of 2K Games, Straus Zelnick, suggested that Microsoft also had around 30 million subscribers. The Xbox boss did not comment on this figure, but instead referred to the official figure of 18 million published in January 2021.
What do you think about this estimated Game Pass figure? We cannot guarantee that these numbers are enough to sustain Xbox’s massive library, but it is clear that there are as many subscribers as to populate a small European country.
