Microsoft has announced that Xbox Game Pass has more than 10 million subscribers. It is not known how big the growth was in the past quarter. There are currently around 90 million gamers active on Xbox Live every month.
Xbox Game Pass is the subscription service of Microsoft that gives gamers access to a library of over 100 Xbox games for a fixed monthly fee. The prices start at 10 dollars for the basic subscription, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate costs 13 dollars per month. It is the first time that Microsoft has released the figures for the service.
The earnings call revealed that the number of monthly Xbox Live users increased by 42.8 percent from the first quarter of last year. The increase will be partly due to the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis and associated government measures such as lockdowns. As a result, more consumers are going to play online.
Another report is about Project xCloud which allows subscribers to stream games to different devices for a fixed monthly fee and can be already counted on hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. The service is currently being tested in several countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. The service can also be tried out in eleven European countries. With Project xCloud, games do not need to be downloaded or installed, as they are sent directly from the data centers to the devices.
Microsoft’s gaming division revenue was down by $14 million from the first quarter of last year to $2.35 billion. Sales from Xbox hardware fell 20 percent, according to Microsoft, due to the lower prices the consoles are offered for. The prices of the hardware have been lowered because the successor, Xbox Series X, will be released at the end of this year.
We saw record engagement in gaming this quarter:
• Xbox Live has nearly 90 million monthly active users
• Xbox Game Pass has more than 10 million subscribers
• Project xCloud has 100s of thousands of active users in preview across 7 countries, with more coming— Frank X. Shaw (@fxshaw) April 29, 2020
