Microsoft has revealed in a report how much money they make from Xbox Game Pass. However, the Game Pass reportedly cannot compete with Sony’s PS Plus (yet).
With Game Pass, Microsoft offers an extensive gaming subscription: You pay around 10 euros and can play as many games from a specific catalog as you want. Sometimes including current full-price titles at no extra cost.
A report about Microsoft has now revealed how much money they are making from Xbox Game Pass.
Microsoft earns almost 3 billion with Game Pass
What is this report about? Microsoft stated at the beginning of 2022 that they wanted to purchase Activision Blizzard. However, many authorities around the world need to approve this deal for it to be completed.
Several regulatory bodies, such as the Brazilian Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), have already approved the merger. CADE also published a public document, outlining the considerations for approval and including a lot of data about Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, and others (via tweaktown.com).
How much does Microsoft earn with Game Pass? According to the report, the company behind Xbox earned 2.9 billion euros with the subscription service in fiscal year 2021 (July 2021 – June 2022).
However, these are just the numbers from Xbox; the figures do not include PC Game Pass. It is also unclear how the revenues from Game Pass Ultimate fit into this number.
How much money is that in comparison? Compared to the revenues on Xbox in general or the total revenues of the entire company, these 2.9 billion seem very little (via forbes.com):
- With Xbox, Microsoft is said to have earned about 16.3 billion US dollars. The revenues from the subscription service constitute 18% of this.
- In the gaming and services area, the revenues amount to 12.6 billion US dollars, with Game Pass accounting for 23%.
- The total revenues of Microsoft are 184.9 billion US dollars – in this context, Game Pass, with a share of only 1.5%, seems almost trivial.
PS Plus is still the largest subscription service on consoles
How much money does Sony make with PS Plus? Sony has not provided an official statement regarding how much money they make with PS Plus. Estimates suggest that Sony earned over 4.2 billion US dollars with PS Plus last year (via forbes.com).
How much is that compared to Game Pass? That would be significantly higher revenue than Microsoft’s Game Pass. However, these figures are probably not surprising, as Sony reportedly has over 100 million subscribers on PS4 and PS5 – Microsoft claims to have only about 25 million people who pay regularly.
Although PS Plus is said to have lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers at the beginning of the year, Sony claims that this was not a major issue. A few months later, in June 2022, Sony introduced its new PS Plus model, and many people likely returned at that time.
You can read more about what to expect from PS Plus in the future at MeinMMO. Everything else you need to know about the competing model to Game Pass can be found here:
PS Plus Subscription: Essential, Extra or Premium – Which package suits me?
