Xbox Game Pass has been celebrating since the beginning of the year. After celebrating its 18 million subscribers, the service recently reached a new milestone with more than 400 titles available in the catalog. Last week, Sarah Bond answered questions from Forbes magazine and provided some new stats about the service. The head of game development at Microsoft also took the time to highlight the elements that set Xbox Game Pass apart from a service like Netflix. Selected pieces.
No more games and … more costs!
For many months it has been common knowledge that Xbox Game Pass has had a positive impact on development studios. The service shows surprising results that can be called counter-intuitive in terms of average consumption and spending by subscribers. Xbox Game Pass players spend more time playing and more gaming. And the differences are significant, according to Sarah Bond, who says Xbox Game Pass subscribers play:
- 20% longer
- 30% more games
- 40% more genres
Positive statistics and absolutely very important to seduce publishers and developers in the industry. These good numbers make it easier for Xbox to convince video game developers to offer their productions under the Xbox Game Pass. Especially since, unlike Netflix, subscription isn’t the only source of income for them.
If you subscribe to a channel that lets you watch a video like Netflix, that is the end of the monetization cycle you have with that content. With video games, it’s the other way around: there are items to buy in-game, there are expansions to buy, there is an upcoming franchise to buy, there are other genres to slide into.
And this is made concrete in the facts, since, according to Sarah Bond, the subscribers of the Xbox Game Pass always spend more money than the other players. On average, they spend 20% more on video game purchases than those who don’t have a current subscription.
Problem number 1: mobile
Along with these new stats, Sarah Bond also returned to Microsoft’s goal. The desire to reach 3 billion players may seem ambitious, but with that in mind, the company is now using xCloud. While home console users are limited to around 200 million people, there are many more mobile gamers around the world. And they don’t want to invest in a console. For this reason, it is a priority for the American manufacturer to make the games that we know about on mobile devices accessible.
Today, a lot of these people (who don’t play on consoles, editor’s note) don’t have the opportunity to play many of these amazing experiences and legendary games that you know. If you really see what we’re doing with Game Pass, we’ll make it happen by linking it to the subscription and adding our streaming offering to the subscription. We are able to build an economy that works for everything.
With the acquisition of ZeniMax Media and the release of its key exclusive products this year, Xbox Game Pass should set a new audience record. We should also receive updated numbers for the service starting next month. With the announced release of Microsoft Flight Simulator on Xbox Series X | With Halo Infinite’s end of the year, however, there is no doubt that the 20 million users will be reached quickly!