Highlights
- Xbox Game Pass hit 33.3 million users as of year-end 2023, Omdia estimates.
- That figure puts the platform's 2023 growth rate at 13%, 2 percentage points down compared to 2022.
- Microsoft stopped reporting Xbox Game Pass subscriber numbers in January 2022, when it revealed that the service reached 25 million users.
Xbox Game Pass growth is slowing down, a newly emerged analyst report suggests. This bit of unofficial insight into the popular service could help explain why there are currently no up-to-date Xbox Game Pass subscriber figures to speak of.
That wasn't always the case, as Microsoft was initially providing timely updates on the growth of its subscription offering after first launching it in June 2017. The tech giant was especially happy to share Xbox Game Pass subscriber milestones during the pandemic, when such updates became more frequent than its quarterly reports. But the last time it attached an official figure to its flagship service was back in January 2022, when it revealed that Xbox Game Pass hit 25 million users.
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Given the subsequent lack of communications, it stands to reason that Microsoft no longer considers the growth rate of Xbox Game Pass something worth boasting about. The latest piece of evidence substantiating that theory comes from London-based analyst and consultancy firm Omdia; speaking to IGN, Omdia Senior Analyst James McWhirter revealed that the British company's estimates put Xbox Game Pass memberships in the ballpark of 33.3 million as of year-end 2023. That figure suggests the platform's 2023 growth rate sat at 13%, two percentage points down compared to the previous year.
Xbox Game Pass Subscriber Count History
Month | Subscribers | Notes |
|---|---|---|
July 2017 | 460,000 | Launch month figure |
November 2017 | 1 million | |
April 2018 | 2 million | |
January 2019 | 5 million | |
December 2019 | 10 million | First reported in April 2020 |
September 2020 | 15 million | |
January 2021 | 18 million | |
January 2022 | 25 million | |
December 2022 | 28.97 million | Omdia's estimate |
December 2023 | 33.3 million | Omdia's estimate |
While the 10-million subscriber count was first reported in April 2020, a later FTC filing revealed that Xbox Game Pass had already reached this milestone by December 2019.
Omdia's estimate doesn't include subscriptions to Xbox Game Pass Core, which replaced Xbox Live Gold back in September 2023. Nevertheless, it does indicate that the annual growth rate of Xbox Game Pass has been on a steady decline since 2020, when the platform nearly doubled its subscriber count.
On a more positive note for Microsoft, Omdia believes that 55% of the current Xbox Game Pass user base is paying for the most expensive, Ultimate tier of the service, priced at $16.99 per month. That percentage is even more impressive in light of the fact that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is currently only available in 41 countries, whereas PC Game Pass covers 97 markets, as per the platform's official support pages. Meaning that Microsoft still has room to upsell some of its existing customer base to the more expensive tier of the service, thus boosting its profitability.
But margin-chasing of that sort is unlikely to happen in the immediate future; while Omdia's figures are another strong indicator that Xbox Game Pass is maturing, the service should still be able to find (many) more users before Microsoft might entertain the idea of better monetizing its customer base. For example, the rumored ad-supported tier of Xbox Game Pass would be a potentially efficient way for the company to reinvigorate the platform's stagnating growth. Doing so would almost certainly come at the expense of profitability, but maybe not the tech giant's bottom line, depending on the resulting growth boost.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is the highest tier of Microsoft's flagship game subscription service that offers over 100 game titles that you can play with a single purchase, making it one of the most outstanding value propositions of the Xbox ecosystem to date.