Starfield
After killing off its popular $1 first month Xbox Game Pass deal at the end of March 2023, just three months later it has reversed that decision and brought back the deal once more. But with one alteration regarding Game Pass as a whole.
Right now, you can indeed get the first month of Xbox Game Pass for $1 if you’re doing Game Pass Ultimate ($17 a month after) or PC Game Pass ($10 a month after). Console-only Game Pass is $11 a month and doesn’t have a dollar deal.
However, there’s now an additional change where you can no longer convert Xbox Live Gold to Xbox Game Pass at a 1:1 ratio, which resulted in “stacking” for extended use. Now it’s a 3:2 conversion, so three years of Gold would be two years of Game Pass. So it’s not quite as generous as it was before.
The Deals
I am curious about the timing of this. Was the pause on the $1 deal always temporary, or did Microsoft see disastrous sign-up numbers for a quarter and realize they should reinstate the deal? Microsoft has long not reported any more console sales, but they also have not reported any Xbox Game Pass subscriber numbers since January of 2022 when they revealed it has 25 million subs. Growth appeared to be slowing back then, and you would think they would have announced when it hit 30 million, but it’s unclear where exactly subs are right now. Microsoft reports that Game Pass is profitable, despite speculation, and in FY21, it reportedly brought in $2.9 billion in revenue, and is 18% of the total Xbox business.
There’s another timing aspect to this too. Starfield is about to be released on September 6, just two months from now. And now as an Xbox exclusive property, it is launching day one on Game Pass. That means you could indeed get Xbox Game Pass for a $1, play Starfield for an entire month, then cancel. Or worst case, pay $18 to play it for two full months then cancel. Sure, it has the potential to be played a lot longer than that, given its size, but I am guessing Microsoft really, really does not want people to do this. While this was always a risk with both Game Pass and a $1 first-month deal, Starfield is likely to be the biggest launch of this generation. And keep in mind that this is a game that probably would have easily sold 10-20 million $70 copies otherwise.
We’ll see if Microsoft re-reverses course and gets rid of the deal again later, but they probably will not do so before Starfield is out, given how close it is. And when are we ever going to hear about actual subscriber numbers again?
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