When combined with the revenue from lower tiers, the Game Pass service as a whole generates $4 billion annually. These figures demonstrate the massive impact of Game Pass Ultimate on Xbox’s overall revenue.įorbes estimates that 70 percent of the 25 million Ultimate subscribers generate $297.5 million in revenue. Similarly, console revenue jumped from 5-10 percent to 50-60 percent. On PC, Game Pass Ultimate shares grew from 20-30 percent to 70-80 percent over the two-year period. The EU report highlights the substantial growth in both PC and console revenue. According to the EU’s findings, Xbox’s revenue has consistently increased from 2019 to 2021, thanks to Game Pass Ultimate. The European Commission’s (EU) document on the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal reveals the importance of this tier. Players paying a dollar more for Console lose access to online multiplayer, which seems bizarre, although it's likely that Microsoft is doing this to incentivize a shift to the $16.99-per-month Ultimate subscription instead.The highest-price tier of Xbox Game Pass, known as Game Pass Ultimate, has significantly contributed to Xbox’s revenue growth in recent years. The price suddenly looks a lot steeper - despite being the same as Xbox Live Gold - when placed alongside the rest of the Game Pass deals and seeing exactly what they include. However, now Xbox Live Gold is essentially part of the Game Pass model as Core, it makes it even more transparently greedy how online multiplayer is locked behind a subscription.
It used to kind of make sense when Xbox Live Gold was a separate service and was included as a bonus for Game Pass users subscribing to Ultimate, and this model was mirrored by PlayStation with its disbanding of its Game Pass Console-esque PlayStation Now into the new tiered PlayStation Plus, which acts more Like Game Pass Ultimate. Xbox Game Pass Core costs a mere dollar less for players to subscribe to the Console tier of Xbox Game Pass, which doesn't include online multiplayer but comes with significantly more games.
In principle, the whole idea is kind of dumb and feels like an easy way to milk some more money out of the gaming community, but an infographic on Xbox's official site that explains the new Game Pass Core tier makes it more painfully obvious than it was before.
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