Hundreds of millions of new Xbox Live friendships have been formed because of COVID-19, Xbox boss Phil Spencer confirms. Spencer's words follow an earlier report that that Xbox Game Pass has become hugely popular as more people are spending time inside gaming.
Speaking to the BBC, Spencer revealed that during COVID-19 lockdown "[Xbox] had over 270 million new friend relationships created on Xbox Live." It's unclear how long the Xbox team's idea of "lockdown" is, as different countries and different states in the United States have had travel restrictions in place for different amounts of time. Spencer also said that "not only are people staying connected with their existing friends, they're finding new friends online as they're playing together, which is really great."
Some would argue that Xbox has been in a better position to profit from lockdown conditions than its biggest competitors, Sony and Nintendo. While Sony does offer services such as game streaming service PlayStation Now, this is not seen as being as robust as Xbox's offerings. There are also fewer PlayStation Now subscribers compared to Xbox Game Pass subscribers, confirming that Xbox has the edge.
Xbox also adds its biggest first-party titles to Xbox Game Pass on launch day and several new games have been released during lockdown. One of these, Minecraft Dungeons, came to Xbox Game Pass just last month, giving gamers in lockdown another reason to sign up for a subscription to the service. Sony has been adding newer games to PlayStation Now, with Metro Exodus and Dishonored 2 being two games added this month, but it does not have the same first-party launch day policy.
Lockdown conditions do seem to be ending in many places around the world. Disney will be reopening its Disney theme parks next month and Universal Studios Orlando reopened just days ago. This means that the peak of new Xbox Live friendships may have also come to an end.
However, the push towards recurring revenues from subscriptions to service is unlikely to end with the lockdown. Plans for Xbox to "go big" with the Xbox All Access subscription suggests that getting this recurring revenue is now as important to the company as selling new consoles and copies of its games. Xbox Live friendships, which can help keep a player on the Xbox platform, will be something that Xbox can build on as it launches the Xbox Series X.
Source: BBC