Xbox Game Pass has emerged as Microsoft’s main strategy for gaming going forward. Whether it be on one of the Xbox consoles, PC or via cloud gaming, the subscription service has been what the company has pushed for the future. Much like most things Microsoft, actual numbers are hard to come by as the company has largely stopped reporting actual sales figures for their hardware and software outside a few rare occasions. The last time we heard a number for Xbox Game Pass was at the beginning of this year, when it was confirmed the service has passed 18 million subscribers, but nothing else so far. Now it seems as if the company was a tad short for their previous fiscal year.
As revealed in their most recent financial filings, and transcribed by Axios, Microsoft fell short of their planned target goal this last fiscal year running mid-2020 to mid-2021. They had hoped to hit 48% growth with the service, but only managed to get to 37%. It’s a stark drop in both goal and actual growth from the previous fiscal year, where Microsoft managed to greatly exceed their goal of 71% by managing to grow 86%.
Now, of course, as mentioned above, it’s hard to say what this means since none of that is reported with actual numbers of subscribers. At one point, Take Two CEO indicated that the service had managed to pass 30 million users, but later reporting claimed that was inaccurate. We’ll keep you updated on when more information becomes available.
