Xbox Game Pass was already quite the deal, and now with the purchase of Bethesda by Microsoft, it’s about the get even more loaded with content. Ever since the service launched, Microsoft has shifted to it being the focus of the Xbox brand, even now getting third party titles from major publishers day and date with the retail release. It also seems that those that use it also are using it a lot.
As reported by Forbes, Microsoft’s Sarah Bond broke down some of the stats about Game Pass users. She said that roughly speaking, Game Pass subscribers spend 30% more time playing games, play 40% more genres. and spend 20% more on gaming in general. That last part probably may be a surprise, since Game Pass is a monthly subscription service and nothing else, but as she says, unlike a service like Netflix, Game Pass has a constant cycle of monetization from previous games, microtranscations, etc.
“When you subscribe to a channel that enables you to watch a video, like Netflix,” she says, “that’s kind of the end of the monetization cycle that you have with that piece of content. In gaming it’s the opposite: there are items that you can buy in the game, there are extensions you can buy, there’s a next franchise you can purchase, there are other genres that you can leap to.
“There are 200 million people who buy a console, and there are 3 billion people who play games. Today, a lot of those people don’t have the option to play many of these amazing experiences and iconic games that you see. When you really look at what we’re doing with Game Pass is we’re making that possible by linking that to subscription, and putting our streaming into subscription. We’re able to make the economics of all that work.”
At the beginning of the year, it was announced that Xbox Game Pass had surpassed over 18 million subscribers. As of now the service is available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC, with Xbox Cloud Streaming also being available for Android devices.
