Microsoft reveals how much money Game Pass actually makes
Microsoft has revealed Game Pass earnings data to Brazilian regulators to help build a favorable case for the upcoming merger with Activision-Blizzard.
www.tweaktown.com
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Xbox console subscription services generated $2.9 billion in revenue in 2021, according to Brazil regulatory documents
- Thread starter Saucycarpdog
- Start date
www.tweaktown.com
That means there are 2.9 billion subscribers since everyone is on $1 trials!
edit: I also don't think this includes PC
edit: I also don't think this includes PC
That doesn't sound like that much when they will have to run Xbox studios, Bethesda and Activision
I don't believe it includes:
- Revenue made from Microsoft Store from people joining Xbox due to Game Pass
- People buying DLCs/MTX inside Game Pass games
- PC Game Pass revenue
- Indirect sales of games thanks to Game Pass
- Sales of Xbox first party games on Microsoft Store + Steam
1 billion divided by $20 would be 50 millions subs. So that number doesn't seem out of line. Factor in some people getting discounts through the family plan plus the release of the NSO Expansion Pack, the number of subscribers is maybe over 50 million.
So, what you're telling me is they don't need 500 million subscribers to be sustainable?
I'm assuming this does not include micro transactions from games included in Gamepass that have them.
OP
OP
Not that crazy. PS+ subs are at 47 million as of May. Not hard to imagine NSO has about the same if not more.
Obviously. We're talking the subscription itself.
And people wonder why the vc is done and subscriptions are the new king.
it was announced to be 25 million when they announced activision acquisition
I missed that. I would have expected more, at that stage.
It will be interesting to see if COD can cause a big increase. I don't think Halo moved many subs.
it was an increase of 7 million subscribers in a year as they previously reported 18 million in early 2021.
That is likely an estimate. Microsoft submitted estimates for their competitors in their original draft and in some cases those numbers were replaced by the competition's numbers from their own responses.
Brazil didn't get any feedback from Nintendo at all because they couldn't find a way to contact the company, (lol) so there's no shot they got that number from Nintendo themselves.
Define sustainable.
This is enough money to pay for about ~20-25,000 full time developers if they had no other sources of revenue.
Games on gp still sell conventionally and some of them have micro transactions, so we would need sales figures and dlc uptake numbers before we could give a realistic appraisal. We would also need to know how much it cost for the deals they make with 3rd parties.
It's nice to know but this is like no news for me tbh, it's just math. A rounded 22m users for 2021 paying standard gamepass price ($9.99) for 12 months would actually be 2.6b. But many use Ultimate which is $14.99 a month, and there is regional pricing in some countries. The final number makes sense. We'll never know operating income though, that would have been great info coming out of these documents... but I'm sure that would be redacted.
At 25 million subs, that's an average of 120 per person per year.
Which could make sense as some people got the service for cheaper while others paid for GPU.
Which could make sense as some people got the service for cheaper while others paid for GPU.
For the hypothetical Xbox who's profits come from only Xbox. Yeah probably not. For Microsoft just about anything is "sustainable".
For reference since PS+ revenue is missing and people are comparing across services here. Back of the envelope:
Which tracks with the % brackets in the table.
Which tracks with the % brackets in the table.
There is a number ascribed to game pass revenue (yet not exactly clear what it constitutes). There's not much more to explain as there is not additional disclosure or detail, thus any attempt to explain or deduce anything is…speculative.
Theres a bit of nuance theres as the number changed the entire year, from 18 million in jan 2021 to 25 in jan 2022. I would be its slightly above 130 usd per user.
It's a lot when you combine revenue just off microtransactions for Bethesda and Activision. In 2020 and 2021 respectively, AB generated over 12 billion in revenue for those years. People this think acquisition is mostly about exclusives and taking shit off competitor platforms, but the microtransactions generated from AB alone is massive.
Well 2021 started off with 18 million subscribers and ended somewhere around 25 million (January 2022), so this doesn't seem like surprising news considering anyone could have easily estimated that. Well it might be news if someone seriously thought a large portion of subscribers were on back to back $1 deals, or if they thought an actual large percentage of people were engaging in the 3 year deal.
There is no way Nintendo has anywhere near 50 million subscribers.
Switch Online had 32M subs as of September 2021 https://kotaku.com/nintendo-to-continue-to-improving-switch-online-followi-1848010196
Activision hasn't been acquired yet and wasn't a factor in 2021.
Think of it this way.
If you roughly benchmark a AAA game budget at a (generous) $150 million dollars, that amount of revenue in one year would fund 19 AAA games (which obviously take more than a year to build).
I think this should be the death of the word 'sustainable' in any conversation about Game Pass.
Also given the Average Revenue Per User you'd get from those figures you'd have to assume the vast majority of users are paying full whack and aren't on $1 deals.
It deals with the "everyone only subs for 1 dollar so they aren't making much from those millions of people" narrative.
Well it's a good thing Activision and Bethesda games will sell tens of millions on top of this, and then Xbox studios games on top of it.
Right now it's only Xbox game studios and Bethesda, and GP isn't the only revenue stream either (DLC, game sales etc).